iCab is a

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...

for

Mac OS Two major famlies of Mac operating systems were developed by Apple Inc. In 1984, Apple debuted the operating system that is now known as the "Classic" Mac OS with its release of the original Macintosh System Software. The system, rebranded "M ...

by Alexander Clauss, derived from Crystal

Atari Atari () is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French publisher Atari SA through a subsidiary named Atari Interactive. The original Atari, Inc. (1972–1992), Atari, Inc., ...

Browser (CAB) for

Atari TOS TOS (The Operating System) is the operating system of the Atari ST range of computers. This range includes the 520ST and 1040ST, their STF/M/FM and STE variants and the Mega ST/STE. Later, 32-bit machines ( TT, Falcon030) were developed using a ...

compatible computers. It was one of the few browsers still updated for the

classic Mac OS Mac OS (originally System Software; retronym: Classic Mac OS) is the series of operating systems developed for the Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and ending with Mac OS 9. The ...

prior to that version being discontinued after version 3.0.5 in 2008;

Classilla Classilla is a Gecko-based Internet suite for PowerPC-based classic Macintosh operating systems, essentially an updated descendant of the defunct Mozilla Application Suite by way of the Mac OS port maintained in the aborteWaMComproject. The name ...

was the last browser that was maintained for that OS but it was discontinued in 2021. The downloadable product is fully functional, but is

nagware Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer ...

—periodically displaying a

dialog box The dialog box (also called dialogue box (non-U.S. English), message box or simply dialog) is a graphical control element in the form of a small window that communicates information to the user and prompts them for a response. Dialog boxes are ...

asking the user to register the product, and upgrade to the "Pro" version.

Versions

iCab 2.9.9 supports both 68k and

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...

Macintosh systems running System 7.5 through Mac OS 9.2.2. While no longer maintained, iCab 2.9.9 is still available for download and registration. iCab 2.9.8 runs natively on early versions of

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

, but Mac OS X compatible versions of iCab 2.x are no longer officially available for download. iCab 3.x can run on PowerPC systems running

Mac OS 8.5 Mac OS 8 is an operating system that was released by Apple Computer on July 26, 1997. It includes the largest overhaul of the classic Mac OS experience since the release of System 7, approximately six years before. It places a greater emphasis ...

through Mac OS 9.2.2, or PowerPC or

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

systems running Mac OS X 10.1 or later. iCab 3 was last updated in January 2008. iCab 4 was rewritten to use the

Cocoa Cocoa may refer to: Chocolate * Chocolate * ''Theobroma cacao'', the cocoa tree * Cocoa bean, seed of ''Theobroma cacao'' * Chocolate liquor, or cocoa liquor, pure, liquid chocolate extracted from the cocoa bean, including both cocoa butter and ...

API and the

WebKit WebKit is a browser engine developed by Apple and primarily used in its Safari web browser, as well as on the iOS and iPadOS version of any web browser. WebKit is also used by the BlackBerry Browser, PlayStation consoles beginning from the PS ...

rendering engine Rendering or image synthesis is the process of generating a photorealistic or non-photorealistic image from a 2D or 3D model by means of a computer program. The resulting image is referred to as the render. Multiple models can be defined ...

. It can run on PowerPC or Intel systems running Mac OS 10.3.9 or later. iCab 5 was released on June 12, 2012. It runs on Mac OS 10.5 or later. iCab 6 was rewritten using the new technologies in macOS Big Sur and released on October 31, 2020. It runs on macOS 10.13 or later.

History

The first versions of iCab were criticized for not supporting

CSS Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone techno ...

and

DOM Dom or DOM may refer to: People and fictional characters * Dom (given name), including fictional characters * Dom (surname) * Dom La Nena (born 1989), stage name of Brazilian-born cellist, singer and songwriter Dominique Pinto * Dom people, an et ...

. iCab 3 introduced improved rendering capabilities, including support for CSS2 and

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...

(via the

ATSUI The Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging (ATSUI) is the set of services for rendering Unicode-encoded text introduced in Mac OS 8.5 and carried forward into Mac OS X. It replaced the WorldScript engine for legacy encodings. Obsolescence A ...

toolkit). iCab 4 switched to WebKit for its

, giving it the same rendering abilities as Apple's

Safari A safari (; ) is an overland journey to observe wild animals, especially in eastern or southern Africa. The so-called "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and Cape buffalo – particularly form an importa ...

browser. On 7 June 2009, iCab 4.6, using the WebKit rendering engine, became the first desktop browser released to display a score of 100/100 and pass the

Acid3 The Acid3 test is a web test page from the Web Standards Project that checks a web browser's compliance with elements of various web standards, particularly the Document Object Model (DOM) and JavaScript. If the test is successful, the results ...

test. Apple's Safari 4 browser was released one day later and has been officially credited as being the first official release browser to pass the Acid3 test with a score of 100/100.

Features

iCab features a filter manager which allows users to avoid downloading advertisements and other content. Currently iCab comes with two filters (advertisements and video). Other kinds of filters add features, such as the

YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...

video filter which adds a download link on all

page views. iCab has features for

website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google Search, Google, Facebook, Amaz ...

developers, including an

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...

validity checker, an automatic page refresh option, a Web Inspector, DOM Inspector,

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...

debugger, and a Console. iCab's "Automatic Update" option, for any page it is rendering directly from the local hard disk, will automatically reload the page when changes are saved to disk. The HTML syntax validity checker displays a

smiley A smiley, sometimes referred to as a smiley face, is a basic ideogram that represents a smiling face. Since the 1950s it has become part of popular culture worldwide, used either as a standalone ideogram, or as a form of communication, such a ...

face in the Status Bar and also, optionally, in the Toolbar. Clicking on the smiley will bring up a list of any errors on the page, as will "Error Report" from the Tools menu. Double clicking on an error will display the page source, with the offending syntax highlighted. The HTML syntax validator was first seen in the same author's earlier web browser, CAB. iCab's Download manager allows the user to start, stop, resume and review downloads. It maintains a download history, and supports downloading of an individual page, or a whole site (crawling) with many user-selectable crawl-constraint options. It can save as portable web archives (a ZIP archive containing HTML, images and other files), or as individual files on the local hard drive. iCab also contains the following features: *

Tabbed browsing In interface design, a tab is a graphical user interface object that allows multiple documents or panels to be contained within a single window, using tabs as a navigational widget for switching between sets of documents. It is an interface ...

. * Javascript and

CSS2 Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone technolo ...

support. * Multiple language support, including Arabic on older Macs (cannot display

UTF-16 UTF-16 (16-bit computing, 16-bit Unicode Transformation Format) is a character encoding capable of encoding all 1,112,064 valid code points of Unicode (in fact this number of code points is dictated by the design of UTF-16). The encoding is variab ...

pages). * Filtering: ** Filtering out of images and plugin content (e.g. ads). ** Adjust rendering, network, JavaScript, and cookies settings for individual sites or types of pages. * Kiosk mode: full-screen display and access controls. *

Acid2 Acid2 is a webpage that test web browsers' functionality in displaying aspects of HTML markup, CSS 2.1 styling, PNG images, and data URIs. The test page was released on 13 April 2005 by the Web Standards Project. The Acid2 test page will be ...

test compliance. * Configurable print dialog. * History window which can sort by title, last access date, or URL. * Hotlist (bookmark) mechanism which can automatically or manually check for updates to bookmarked sites. * Reload a single image on a page without needing to reload the whole page. * Disable web "annoyances" such as animated

GIF The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , see pronunciation) is a bitmap image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released on 15 June 1987. ...

s and embedded sound files. *

User agent spoofing In computing, a user agent is any software, acting on behalf of a user, which "retrieves, renders and facilitates end-user interaction with Web content". A user agent is therefore a special kind of software agent. Some prominent examples of use ...

(i.e. pretending to be another browser). * Support for sessions (i.e. saving and then loading all open windows and tabs). * Add any query (e.g., search engine,

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...

) to the toolbar search widget by point-and-click.

References

External links

*
"Thoughts on the Memory Efficiency of iCab and Programming in the 80s"
by John A. Ardelli {{Web browsers, desktop 1999 software Macintosh web browsers MacOS web browsers News aggregator software Software based on WebKit

Versions

History

Features

See also

References

External links