ICab

iCab is a proprietary web browser for Mac OS and Mac OS X developed in Germany by Alexander Clauss.

Support is currently available for three versions of iCab: iCab 2 for Motorola 68000 (68k) line processors; iCab 2 for Classic Mac OS, which runs on PowerPC processors; and Carbon-based iCab 3 for Mac OS X. iCab is one of the few browsers still being developed for Mac OS 9 and earlier, and the only one for 68k systems to offer tabbed browsing.

Although all these versions are available for download for free, they only work for a period of more than a year; iCab requires installing the latest available version to continue working after that date. On the other hand, iCab 3, although it is also available for free, restricts the use of certain features such as full screen mode and content filtering to users who have paid for a software license.

iCab's proprietary rendering engine is generally criticized for not having support for CSS or DOM, making it difficult to make modern sites for this browser. However, the first public beta of iCab 3 released in May 2005 featured significant improvements in this field, such as CSS2 support, although it is only available for 68k. iCab 3 also has Unicode support, using AITSU instead of the old WorldScript; this is why Mac OS 8.5 or higher is required.

Features

A distinctive feature of iCab is the iCab-Smiley. Depending on whether the HTML code of the currently visited website is valid or not, the face will be shown happy and smiling or sad. Clicking on the smiley shows a list with the errors on the page, although if you click on it while also holding the shift key, an easter egg is activated. This feature appeared earlier in the Crystal Atari Browser web browser, an earlier development by the same author for Atari TOS compatible computers.

Other features included in iCab:

• Tab navigation.
• Compatibility for Javascript (using your own engine called Inscript) and CSS2.
• RSS function.
• Translated into different languages (including Spanish).
• Filter: The filter organizer allows advanced filtering of images, plugins, Javascript and rules-based cookies that allow the use of wilds.
• Full screen mode.
• Download Manager: Allows the user to start, stop and continue downloads as well as maintain a download history; also allows you to download and save an entire page and also an entire site.
• It allows you to download and save pages in the ZIP compression format, including the document content along with your images.
• iCab 3 exceeds the Acid2 test, being the third web browser to achieve it.
• The browsing history can be ordered according to the document title, the last access date or the URL.
• A favorite mechanism that seeks updates from the marked documents, both manually and automatically.
• The possibility of reloading only one image of the document without reloading the document in its entirety.
• Allows to turn off animated GIFs and embedded sounds.
• Switch completely like another browser.