
iCab: Alternative Browser for macOS - kaptain
http://www.icab.de/
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Eugeleo
Wow, I helped translate this (well, the iOS version) into Czech many many
years ago! I’m glad it still exists, the author — Alex, if I remember right —
is very friendly and a great developer.

It was my first “freelance” project; I didn’t even expect him to pay, I just
liked his browser and wanted to feel like a grown man (was 14 at the time).
But he insisted he’ll pay me; it was the first money I ever made. Ah, good
memories. If the author sees this: Good luck!

~~~
kome
wholesome story! :)

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rgovostes
Anyone remember the “Make iCab Smile” campaign? The UI featured a little
smiley face in the corner that would change to a frown if there were too many
HTML validation errors.

~~~
dhoerl
I remember!

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maguay
iCab Mobile is also one of the only truly unique iOS browsers. Was the only
way to reliably download multiple files for years on iOS, and today still is
the closest to having browser add-ons in iOS. Supported uploading files long
before Safari too. Its custom zoom levels made many web apps usable on the
original non-pro iPad screen sizes as you could fake a higher resolution
screen (and you could change your user agent if websites refused to show their
desktop version). You can tweak iCab's interface quite a bit too, which makes
it a great way to make an internet appliance of sorts to show a single website
without having extra toolbars and stuff.

It's not my default browser, but is a great tool to keep around!

~~~
fmakunbound
Aren’t all browsers on iOS using WebKit by Apple decree? I mean the ones you
get via AppStore, at least.

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emayljames
That is correct. It means that as a web dev, you can only use IOS for testing
webkit.

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pcr910303
I personally use iCab for using the internet on classic Mac OS machines. Very
useful, as it’s the most recent browser supporting them.

Other than that, I’m not usre if this is worth the effort on usual machines...
I would recommend Safari instead.

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LeoPanthera
How does iCab compare to Classilla? Which itself is very out of date.

[https://www.floodgap.com/software/classilla/](https://www.floodgap.com/software/classilla/)

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kalleboo
Classilla handles modern pages better, but iCab has better performance/memory
usage

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wolco
That's how you would describe the Lynx browser or curl. Way better performance
and memory usage but much lower ability to handle modern pages.

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arkanciscan
I used to use this in college before I switched to Camino!

~~~
snapetom
Oh my God, I loved Camino so much! The browser scene for the Mac in the early
Aught's was such a mess. Netscape was bloated, slow as hell, and wasn't
keeping up with standards. IE was great, but you were always suspicious of
MS's agenda. Safari was still a bit rough and lacked a lot of features.

Camino was snappy, clean, and had very good standards compliance. Such a great
little browser!

~~~
Arsenije
Do you remember Shiira? :)

~~~
brigandish
Nostalgic! Very fast and interesting, and I like the style of it. I used that
and Camino but Omniweb was my favourite browser. Had features I wish other
browsers had now, and if they do it's not as easy, the interface was great.

I actually paid for it. Sad that there's not much to choose from nowadays.

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deca6cda37d0
I can't believe it still exists!

~~~
toufiii
Agreed! Have you ever built anything on it? Like extensions or plugin of some
sort

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peterburkimsher
I recognise it from Mac OS 9 days, and downloaded it to try it again now.

Something I miss from Safari on Mac OS 10.9 was seeing full names in the tab
bar. iCab, Chrome, and Firefox all shrink tabs down to their favicon.

Old versions of Safari would show the whole name, and if there wasn't space,
it would overflow into a dropdown list on the right.

Yes, you probably can accuse me of opening too many tabs, but I have an
amusing anecdote about how I recovered some front-end dev work from tab source
when our DigitalOcean server crashed a few weeks ago.

~~~
lukevp
What workflow could you have that your dev work on a DO server would be lost
if you didn’t have the html in your browser? Are you direct editing apps on a
DO server with no source control?

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toufiii
Good to see iCab is still around. For reals, kudos for perseverance!

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bhauer
I remember Cab for the TT and Falcon. I had not realized it went on to become
a Mac browser.

A shame, in a way, that the web is now so complex that alternative browsers
are ever more marginalized.

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captn3m0
Apparently it switched to Webkit a while back.

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superdisk
Why does this keep happening? Browsers sell their soul to just be another coat
of paint on top of WebKit. I honestly don't get it. If you're working on a web
browser as a personal or open source project, switching to WebKit is basically
just replacing the entire project that you've worked on, and then writing your
name on WebKit. There's not much more to a browser than a rendering engine.
There really isn't a killer feature that Chrome won't just absorb anwyay. So
why on earth would you decide to throw away your years of effort, and solely
try to differentiate yourself based on slight variations in how your back
button looks or your bookmarks work!?

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Presumably because doing anything else is just impossible in this day and age.

There are only two-and-a-half actively-maintained rendering engines in
existence: Gecko, and Chromium/Webkit. There's a reason for that. A single
person isn't going to be able to maintain their own.

~~~
userbinator
There's also Netsurf, Dillo, as well as Links and the rest of the text-based
ones.

The monopoly should definitely be fought.

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Wowfunhappy
Are those actually usable as a primary/only browser in 2020?

Unfortunately, I think the best way to fight the monopoly at this point is to
use Firefox. As bad as 2½ browsers is, I'd much rather have 2½ than 1½.

(On desktop, webkit is also fine, they need marketshare there. Anything that
isn't Chromium.)

~~~
tapoxi
I still don't understand the "fight the monopoly" argument. Should I use
Windows Server or FreeBSD to fight the "Linux dominance" monopoly?

~~~
Wowfunhappy
The problem is that, the web isn't really an open standard if there's only one
implementation of the standard. The standard just becomes "whatever works in
Chromium".

It also gives Google the power to unilaterally add or remove anything from the
standard as they think will benefit Google. Sure, Microsoft or Brave could
choose not to go along with the change, but Microsoft doesn't want to spend
resources maintaining a fork, so they're much more likely go go along with
whatever Google does.

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alpb
Anyone remember the browsers that made you small amounts of money per hour for
using them to surf the web?

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ac29
AllAdvantage? (probably showing my age here)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AllAdvantage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AllAdvantage)

~~~
marpstar
I forgot all about this... blast from the AOL past.

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onetom
This browser seems more customizable to me:
[https://next.atlas.engineer/](https://next.atlas.engineer/)

Based on iCab's homepage, it's unclear why would I want to use it really.

