Questions & answers for iCab Mobile (2020/10/04)
ICab Mobile is a web browser for the iOS. It provides many unique and useful features you won't find in other iPhone browsers. APPLE WATCH: The Watch App is a remote control for iCab Mobile, so you can navigate, zoom, scroll, open bookmarks, links, the homepage, switch tabs or sitch on/off the fullscreen mode. IceDragon features privacy and performance enhancements over the Firefox core browser as well as additional features such as SiteInspector malware scanning, Comodo Secure DNS and improved social media functionality. Firefox Protected by a Dragon. I'm hooked on Ice Dragon, and enjoy the added peace of mind of integrated. What's new in iCab 6.0.11: New option available in the „Windows“ settings to open windows in a „cascade“ instead of using the previous position. There are various web browsers available for macOS, and most users oscillate between popular titles, such as Safari, Opera, Google Chrome, or Firefox. ICab is yet another alternative for. Icab Browser For Windows Software To Its If you would like to use this software to its optimum capability, you will possess to buy the pro version. Users possess access to a filter manager that hindrances unwanted content, including internet web pages that change off all the navigation toolbars or text messages in the status-line.
iOS 13/14
Apple has received a lot of complaints about this decision from developers, so they have considered to bring back the old behaviour under certain conditions under iOS 14: The App has to explicitly set the web engine into „mobile“ mode, which iCab Mobile doing when the Browsers ID is set to a 'mobile' one (like 'Safari (iPad)' and 'Safari (iPhone)').
So in case you're still using iOS 13, please update to iOS 14. The you can get change the font size again. Also use the Browser ID 'Safari (iPad)'.
In the past it was still possible to switch to the 'classic' web engine of the iOS, which always allows to change the font size. But Apple does no longer allow to use the classic engine, so this option is not available anymore.
Filters
Individual filters can block certain resources, hide page elements (CSS-based filters), block cookies (only supported by iCab Mobile 10 and later) and define exception filters which can override other filters to make sure that in this special case the resource is not blocked but loaded.
In general the filters are searched in the given order. But the old filter system expects the exception filters located before the other filters they would override. The new filter system expects the exception filters after the filters they should override. This is an important difference (iCab Mobile 10 will automatically change the order when converting the old filters into the new ones after updating the App).
Also in the old filter system filters of one collection can affect filters of other collections (important for the exception filters), the new filter system keeps each collection separate, so filters in different collections do not have influence of filters in other collections. This is important for the exception filters. In the old filter system it was common to have a dedicated collection which comatins the exception filters and which was placed before all other collections. This doesn't work in the new filter system anymore. Here the exception filters must be located within the same collection in which those filters are located which should be overridden by the exception filter.
So when updating from iCab Mobile 9 or older to iCab Mobile 10 and newer, you should delete the old 'whitelist' filter collection (the ones for the exception filters), because it would no longer work.
Also all the third-party filters (AdBlock Plus, Easylist, uBlock and compatible) which you've imported in the past in iCab Mobile 9 and older should be deleted in iCab Mobile 10 and newer and imported again. This is useful because iCab Mobile 10 supports much more features of these third-party filters than iCab Mobile 9 and older.
All the filters you've created yourself should be checked manually after updating from iCab Mobile 9 to 10, to make sure that there are no unwanted issues (like the exception filters which won't work anymore).
The filter of iCab Mobile 10 itself provides much more paramaters than the filters of iCab Mobile 9. The old filters could only block based on the URL of a resource, the new filters can be much more detailed, for example a filter can differentiate between first-party and third-party resources and between different file types and even limit a filter to certain domains of the main document.
iOS 11
But in case you do not need Drag & Drop in iCab Mobile in all areas, you can simple switch it off in the 'User interface' settings. This way the contextual menu will again open after just 1 second. You can disable 'Drag' operations for links in the web view, for the bookmarks window, the history, the downloads and the reading list.
User Interface
As Admin user you can configure how to leave the kiosk mode the 'User Interface' settings of the Kiosk account. The options which are available are: tap at the top and bottom of the screen at the same time, tap all four edges of the screen at the same time or tap with 5 fingers on the screen. This will then open the password window where you have to enter the korrekt Kiosk password to be able to leave the kiosk mode.
Another way to leave the kiosk mode would be to open the Settings App of the iOS and go to the iCab Mobile settings you can find here. Enable the option to logout all users and go to iCab Mobile again. iCab will now show the standard login screen, so you can login in any of the available accounts again.
The 'today' widget itself is found in the notification center in its 'Today' section. As any other widget, you can enable or disable it by tapping on the 'Edit' button within the notification center.
You can edit the list of pages within the Today widget in iCab Mobile within the Bookmarks window. The root folder of the bookmarks window should have an item for the Today widget, in case there are any pages saved for the today widget.
The number of Tabs that can be opened before the device is running out of memory depends on the web pages themselves (more complex web pages with many photos or videos require more memory than simple text-based pages), the device model, the background Apps and the iOS version.
In the Settings ('Other' section) you can enable the 'Memory savings Mode' (which is enabled by default) to reduce the memory usage for inactive Tabs. Enabling the memory savings mode will slightly slow down switching between Tabs, but on most devices this is hardly noticeable.
It is even possible to configure iCab in the 'Other' settings to no longer release the web pages in inactive Tabs when the memory is running out. But it is not recommended to do this in general. If the memory is running out and the iOS is unable to get enough memory to continue, it starts to terminate Apps, even the App in the foreground.
There's and option 'Open At Launch' in the 'App Start' settings, which tells iCab what to open when it is launched. iCab can either keep or restore the last session (keep all Tabs open), open the homepage, the QuickStarter or an empty page. If the Tabs should be kept open, you have to make sure that the 'Session' is selected here.
Another option which affects what exactly is opened when launching the App is the 'Private Mode'. The private mode is supposed to not store any private data, so the Tabs are not stored forever (they are considered as private data). By default iCab will only keep the Tabs open for a few minutes after leaving the App, so you can at least leave the App for a short time without losing anything. But when leaving iCab for a longer time, the Tabs and other private data will be lost while the private mode is enabled. In the 'Privacy'settings of iCab you can configure the details about when and which private data is deleted in private mode.
Web Sites
First of all, you have to save the forms manually (either by using the 'Save forms' item from the 'Action' menu or by tapping the 'Same forms' button that is attached to the keyboard). Saving the form manually has the big advantage, that you can control what exactly will be saved. You fill out the form with all the data that should be saved, then you use the 'Save forms' command. The forms in it's current state will then be saved. This way you can explicitly exclude certain form fields to be saved.
Switch on the option 'Auto fill out forms' in the settings (Web sites > Save & Fill out forms) if iCab should automatically fill out the forms which were saved before.
To change the default browser under iOS 14, launch the 'Settings' App form the Homescreen and open the Settings for icab Mobile you can find here. Now you should see the option to change the Default Browser.
Most web pages which provide a 'normal' and a 'mobile' version will determine which version they deliver based on the 'Browser ID' (UserAgent) setting of the browser. This setting can be found in the 'network' settings of iCab Mobile.
Selecting an ID of a Desktop browser (like 'Safari (Mac)') will usually have the result that web sites deliver the 'full' version of a page that is meant for desktop browsers.
Please note that if web pages determine mobile devices by their screen size and the touch gestures support, using a certain 'Browser ID' might not work.
Also note that some web sites which assume that the browser is a desktop browser do rely on features which are only available on desktop browsers (like relying on a computer mouse or a physical keyboard, or relying on the Flash Plugin) which are not available on the iOS platform. So the desktop version of these pages might not fully work on a mobile device.
It is possible to define the Browser ID based on the URL of web pages. This makes it possible to keep the standard Browser ID ('Safari (iPad)' or 'Safari (iPhone)') for most web sites and only use a special ID for those pages which do not work with the standard ID.
InApp Purchases
- Why are the promised features of the InApp Purchase missing?
- Normally the App should automatically determine if these features should be enabled, either because you've bought the InApp Purchases or you've purchased the App itself within the time period where these features are available for free.
But if you've restored the device from a backup or switched to a new device or installed the App via iTunes, the purchase information might not yet available on the device. In this case go to the settings within the App, open the 'Store' panel and tap on the 'Restore Purchases' button. This will load the purchase information from the AppStore again and will unlock the features if everything is correct.
Most people I know choose their Web browser based on which one crashes less often. Invariably, either Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer is ridiculously unstable, so they choose the other. Sad, but true. If you’re lucky, the browser you prefer actually works reliably on your system.
Enter iCab, a new browser built by a small German company. (See ATPM’s interview with iCab Company and the iCab Web site for more information.) iCab has been getting a lot of press lately, but opinions are divided. About half the people I’ve talked to think iCab is terrific. The other half seem to have no idea why people rave about it. This column will focus on answering that question.
I do not know of anyone who finds iCab unstable, even in its present preview state. It has never crashed or unexpectedly quit on me. I wish I could say that about the Big Two, which are significantly larger than iCab in both company size and disk usage. Netscape Communicator 4.5 takes up more than 20 MB on my system. Granted, it does a lot more than browse the Web, but that’s all I use it for. Internet Explorer 4.5's folder uses about 5 MB, and it also puts several files in the System Folder (there are some code sharing reasons for this, but overall I think it’s a bad idea). Further, IE 5.0 (for Windows) weighs in at 110 MB; we can only hope that they have better plans for the Mac version (which, apparently, is delayed until fall).
iCab 1.3 Preview uses a mere 2 MB. Both Netscape and IE require installers, although IE’s is self-running. iCab needs only one file (the iCab application) to run. Back in 1984 people took this stuff for granted. Today it is a feature.
Is your Web browser a memory hog? Netscape Communicator uses about 8 MB of RAM. IE uses 4 MB in the Get Info window, but it also gobbles up your system’s temporary memory. Although Microsoft has commented that IE releases memory when other applications need it, that has not been my experience. After a hour or so of surfing graphics-heavy Web sites in multiple windows, IE gobbles up more than 100 MB of RAM on my system, and I am forced to quit it.
What about iCab? It uses only 1400K of memory.
Even better, iCab is very fast at rendering pages. It’s not fast enough to make one forget how slow Web browsers always seem to be, but it feels much faster than Netscape and IE, especially when rendering local files. This may change in the coming months as iCab Company adds support for Cascading Style Sheets and Netscape’s display engine is replaced with the new Gecko, however at present iCab is the speed champ in my book.
Features You’ve Come To Expect
Of course, speed and stability are worthless if the browser is missing features you have grown accustomed to. iCab does not disappoint. It has a nice download manager that is very similar to IE’s, supports the command-click shortcut for opening a link in a new window that I have been unable to live without since IE 3, has the usual support for bookmarks (called the Hotlist), and so on.
Like IE, iCab lets you download an entire Web site, however iCab gives you more options than IE, which only lets you limit the link depth; and unlike IE, iCab does not store the downloaded site in a proprietary format. iCab even has some of the new features from IE 4.5, namely support for auto-filling forms. However, it does not have the latter’s Page Holder or Print Preview.
Innovation
Maybe disk and memory usage don’t concern you, and your current Web browser runs fast and stable. In that case, iCab would not be worth a look if it did not offer any extras. Luckily, it does.
iCab has great support for Web developers. Unlike Netscape and IE, if you save an HTML source file (in BBEdit, say) the open copy in iCab will automatically update without the need to click the Refresh button. The browser window includes a little face icon that smiles or frowns depending on the correctness of the page’s HTML. Clicking on the face summons a list of HTML errors. You can even choose which HTML specification iCab uses to validate pages. Even though HTML authoring tools like BBEdit and Adobe GoLive have syntax checkers, Web developers will find iCab’s validator useful because it can check the page after server-side includes have been inserted. Normal Web surfers can in turn see how the HTML of their favorite sites stacks up. I think they will be surprised at how bad some of it is. If iCab ever gains a significant market share, it may provide some incentive for Web developers to fix up their HTML. A rather humorous preference lets you control whether iCab simulates rendering bugs in Netscape and IE, in order to display certain pages “correctly.”
Probably iCab’s most controversial feature is its filtering. Like the WebFree control panel that has been around for a few years, iCab can filter which images are downloaded based on their URLs. It can also filter out images with certain dimensions. iCab comes pre-configured (but with filtering disabled) to block many advertisement banners. Since many sites (ATPM included) depend on advertisement revenue to provide their services, I’d prefer people didn’t use this feature. Nevertheless, I have personally found it very helpful at speeding downloads when I’m on the road accessing the Internet through a modem. I doubt Microsoft or Netscape would ever include such functionality in their browsers.
My favorite innovative feature in iCab is the navigation toolbar beneath the URL box. This bar contains a slew of icons that provide access to meta information embedded in the LINK REL tags of certain Web pages. This information can include links to the next or previous page, the home page, the copyright notice, the “parent” page, and more. If every browser and Web developer supported this meta information, a good portion of the buttons and text links on Web pages could be eliminated. Instead of having to scroll and decipher cryptic image maps, users would always have quick access to the essentials of navigation on the navigation bar. The same buttons would work for every page, making the Web much simpler to navigate. The Web pages, meanwhile, would be free to devote a higher percentage of their space to actual content. Although these tags have been official since 1997 and were around long before that, they are not widely used because neither of the Big Two implemented support for them. If they ever become widely used, they will be a boon for users and may make possible a new generation of intelligent software agents that understand the link structure of pages.
Icab Browser Download For Windows
Usability Improvements
In many ways, iCab works a lot like Netscape or IE, yet it manages to improve on them. You can set your preferred fonts for viewing pages in, and you can also set a preferred language and different fonts for headings and body text. Not only can you quickly increase or decrease the size of the display font from the toolbar, but you can also set its exact size without going to the preferences. The standard array of commands is available through contextual menus, however iCab also offers submenus listing links from the current page and subsections of the current page. The History works much like IE’s, and iCab also uses a different icon to show which history pages currently reside in the download cache.
There is full support for accepting and rejecting cookies, as well as blanket rejection for whole domains. You can choose how iCab identifies itself to Web servers, masquerading as a different browser for compatibility if necessary.
A neat feature lets you save logs of communication with Web servers. I imagine this feature was probably used internally by iCab Company for debugging, but Web developers may find it useful for testing out their servers.
iCab has the usual controls for managing its disk cache, however, it also lets you manage separate caches for Web pages and for images. Personally, I like to cache images, which rarely change, rather than HTML, which is often updated between my visits to pages.
As usual, you can view the source of an HTML page color-coded for readability. In addition, you can customize the colors of the different HTML elements, and edit the HTML in-place from within iCab. Alternatively, you can set iCab to always view the source in a helper application like BBEdit.
Whereas IE and Netscape have rudimentary support for finding text on a Web page, iCab also lets you search whole folders of local HTML files (useful for searching the HTML-formatted help files that many programs now provide) as well as simultaneously searching a collection of Web search sites, à la Sherlock. In addition to searching for strings of text, you can exclude or require certain words.
My favorite: iCab actually supports drag and drop in a sensible way. A much-touted feature of IE 4.5 is the ability to drag a translucent copy of an image to the Finder to save it to disk. But have you ever tried that with a large image? That can cause even a G3 to freeze for a second when you first start dragging, and the whole process feels incredibly slow. iCab simply displays an outline while you are dragging: less flashy but it works better. Similarly, it lets you drag text to the desktop (IE doesn’t!), and when you drag a link to the desktop it makes an OS 8.5 URL clipping (usually what I want) instead of downloading the link to disk. Just about any text you see in iCab-even HTML errors-is draggable. Use it too much and IE (which is already the smoother of the Big Two, in my opinion) starts to feel downright clunky.
So What’s the Catch
Whether iCab can replace your current Web browser depends on whether you require Cascading Style Sheets, JavaScript, Netscape Plug-Ins, or security certificates. As far as I know, none of these is currently supported (although CSS support is definitely on the way). The only other catch is that iCab will eventually cost about $25; however I think that is a small price to pay for one of the most important applications on your hard disk. I see it as a way I can vote for a standards-based Macintosh product, in the face of less-inspired loss leaders from the corporate giants. Although it is far from perfect, iCab is the first Web browser since Cyberdog that I actually like.
Shortly after writing a piece lamenting the lack of competition in the Macintosh software market, I am very encouraged by the scope and quality of work put into iCab. Perhaps it is still possible for two guys in a garage to overthrow entrenched standards. At the very least, we now have evidence that speed and stability are not the only areas where Netscape and IE can improve.
“The Personal Computing Paradigm” is copyright © 1999 by Michael Tsai,mtsai@atpm.com. Support for iCab’s navigation bar is coming to an ATPMWeb site near you. Look for a review of iCab when the final version is released.
Also in This Series
Icab Browser Download For Windows 10
- How Cool Is Your Mac? · May 2012
- Mac OS X’s Increasing Stability · August 2006
- Coping With Mac OS X’s Font Rendering · January 2006
- E-Mail Archiving with Eudora and Mail.app · January 2003
- Grab Bag · October 2002
- Mac OS X 10.2—First Impressions · September 2002
- Mac OS X 10.1—First Impressions · October 2001
- Mac OS X Tips · June 2001
- Mac OS X—Finally · May 2001