iCab

ICab is a web browser for Mac OS, Mac OS X and iOS.

Objectives

One goal of iCab is to be a standards-compliant browser as possible. So iCab shows for websites conformance to the standard HTML to, lists on request the errors found and provides the context menu option to check a web page through the W3C validator to. Since version 3.0, iCab is the Acid test, with the imaging capabilities of web browsers are checked.

History

ICab has its roots in CAB, the Crystal Atari Browser. Its developer, the Darmstadt Alexander Clauss is, even today almost the only person who writes to iCab, only the JavaScript engine comes from Thomas Much.

As iCab appeared in early 1999, it impressed with its speed, small size and economical use of the available memory in comparison with the then available alternatives Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. There were also extensive filter functions for partially unwanted web content such as banner ads, cookies, pop- up windows and more that were more sophisticated over time. iCab is currently the browser with most filter options.

Although since its release iCab is a complete web browser, the previously released versions have long been available as a preview ( Preview = ) referred to indicate that not all planned features have been implemented. In particular, the CSS support was for a long time still incomplete. A "finished" version had been expected in early 2002; completion has been delayed. A first beta version to 3.0 has been released in December 2004.

The version of iCab 3 is the only modern browser that will be further developed yet for Mac OS Version Mac OS 8.5. The Mozilla developers recommend that all Mac OS 9 users switching to iCab.

Version 4 of iCab, published on 1 January 2008, has been completely rewritten, now based on Cocoa instead of Carbon, so the rendering engine WebKit is used, and requires at least Mac OS X 10.3.9.

For older systems (including 68k Macs) and the version 2.9.9 is available, but which is no longer being developed.

For the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad from Apple, there is a special version of the browser called iCab Mobile, which is present in version 7.2.1 since 7 October 2013.