iCab Changelog

What's new in iCab 6.2.2

Mar 25, 2024
  • The bookmarks sync feature via WebDAV is now able to either save the bookmarks as HTML file or as PLIST file (the latter was the only format tah was supported before). The format is chosen based on the file extension that is configured for the bookmarks file (the file extension ".html" saves the file in HTML format, the extension ".plist" saves the file as PLIST). The HTML format allows direct export/import from/to other browsers, but because many bookmarks features of iCab are not available in other browsers, these can get lost when exchanging the bookmarks with other browsers. The PLIST format is more compact and will always preserve all data, but other browsers won't support it.
  • Bugfix: Changing the favorites folder in the bookmarks did not immediately save the bookmarks.
  • Bugfix: Solves an issue when FavIcons could not be loaded and then a wrong icon was shown
  • Bugfix: The option "JavaScript is allowed to change the window size" is now ignored if the window is currently opened as Tab. This way no other Tabs in the same window will be resized anymore.
  • Bugfix: The option to close the downloads window as soon as the last download has finished does no longer depend on the option to remove the download entry when the download has finished.
  • Bugfix: The option "Video playback requires user interaction" was not enabled under macOS 10.13

New in iCab 6.2.1 (Mar 25, 2024)

  • When keystrokes occurred very fast (auto-repeat) within web forms, the App does no longer beep.
  • Since macOS 11 it is possible to search PDF files as well
  • Bugfix: For certain faulty authorization requests the App could crash
  • Bugfix: The AppleScript command to close a window could crash
  • Bugfix: When changing the user-defined Browser IDs, the changes were only accessible after restarting the App
  • Bugfix: When exporting the bookmarks, the tags were not included

New in iCab 6.2 (Apr 6, 2023)

  • Tab Groups can be used to save all the Tabs of a window as a unit (group) so the groups can be re-opened later again easily
  • It is now possible to have a sidebar in browser windows which allows easy access to the „page overview“, the „link overview“ and the „tab groups“
  • All links, bookmarks, etc within the App can be displayed as QR code
  • Bugfix: a workaround for a bug of the macOS solves issues with „data“ URLs which include a fragment identifier
  • Bugfix: „data“ URLs did not work when used directly in the address bar

New in iCab 6.1.5 (Dec 21, 2022)

  • New Option available in the „Windows/Tabs“ settings which allows to open new windows with a hidden tabs toolbar
  • Improved save/fill out forms features which works with more web sites. For the form-based fill-out feature it is now possible to use wildcards („*“ and “?“) within the URL and action parameters to make them more general.
  • When Printing or saving web pages as PDF while being in reading mode the Toolbar with the reading mode options will be hidden now.
  • New option „Duplicate Tab“ added to the File menu and the contextual menu of Tabs
  • New option „Lock Tabs“ added to the File menu and the contextual menu of Tabs. Locked Tabs can not be closed without an additional confirmation and can’t be overridden via address field or bookmarks. The App might open a new tab instead.
  • New option in the „General“ settings added, which can be used to enable an additional conformation whenever deleting anything within the App. This can be useful if you tend to activate the „delete“ option by accident.
  • Added a new Module to redirect „YouTube Shorts“ to the regular Youtube video player (for all users who find the Shorts video player too primitive and uncomfortable)
  • Bugfix: The auto-update of AdBlock Plus filters will now no longer activate filters lists which were deactivated before.
  • Bugfix: In case the configured Downloads folder does no longer exist (for example it lies on an external drive that is not connected, or the older was deleted) the App will use the default one of the macOS.
  • Bugfix: Handoff didn’t work if iCab was not running already
  • Bugfix: Recognizes some more file types that can not be displayed as „downloads“

New in iCab 6.1.4 (Aug 2, 2022)

  • It’s now possible to add Keyboard shortcuts to individual bookmarks, so these can be directly opened via this shortcut (via menu „Bookmarks > Manager Bookmarks“ and then using the information window for the bookmark).
  • For CSS-based filters iCab is now supporting the special rules „:has-text()“ und „:upwards()“ from the „uBlock“ ad blocker
  • Under macOS 11/12 the mode „Text + Icon“ was not preserved across App launches.
  • Under macOS 11/12 it could happen that toolbar icons were shown slightly distorted if the display did not support „Retina“ resolutions

New in iCab 6.1.3 (May 29, 2022)

  • Since macOS 12 iCab can also include the back/forward history when saving the browser session session
  • The "Dock" menu can be now also used to directly open a new window
  • Fixes an issue with the size of the „select folder“ in the downloads settings when the download path was too long.
  • Bugfix: A change within macOS 12 did cause the search within the history or filters to fail.
  • Adds a few smaller bugfixes and improvements.

New in iCab 6.1.2 (May 4, 2022)

  • Fixes an issue under macOS 10.13

New in iCab 6.1.1 (May 2, 2022)

  • Fixes an issue under older macOS releases (10.x) where the browser window remained empty.

New in iCab 6.1 (May 2, 2022)

  • The menu item „Send URL via E-Mail“ was replaced by the „Share“ menu item, which incudes the „E-Mail“ option and also some others.
  • The settings window is now able to scroll its content if the screen is too small to show the whole content
  • A new option in the security settings allows to upgrade „http“ connections into secure „https“ connections (is possible, since macOS 12)
  • Added new search engines
  • Add support for AppleScript
  • The contextual menu for tabs now includes a list of all available tabs of the window as well. This allows to switch to other tabs of the window as well
  • There’s a new option in the bookmarks menu to reveal the current page (tab) within the bookmarks (if the page is already bookmarked).
  • There’s a new option in the contextual menu for links where downloads can be started by first selecting a folder in which the download will be saved instead of the default downloads folder.
  • The window menu is now grouping tabs by their window
  • The window menu shows a loudspeaker icon for windows/tabs which have active audio/video playback
  • Support for client certificates added. iCab asks for the certificate and password when visiting such web sites and no matching certificate is available.
  • Web sites which want to use the camera and microphone can do so now, if the user gives the permission.
  • Bugfix: Fixes an issue when importing smart bookmark folders with certain rules.
  • Bugfix: The feature to automatically stop audio/video playback for background tabs did no longer work under macOS 11 and 12
  • Bugfix: Windows with Tabs should no longer „jump“ when moving the window alter adding new Tabs to the window
  • Bugfix: When searching bookmarks in the bookmarks window the result could contain additional results which did not match the search criteria

New in iCab 6.0.15 (Jan 10, 2022)

  • A new option in the window settings allows to make all new windows/tabs private windows/tabs by default
  • The suggestions list for the address field is now also listing active tabs and lets you switch to these tabs from here
  • A new exception list in the filter manager allows to disable all filters for certain web sites and also to block certain web sites completely.
  • Bugfix: In kiosk mode it was possible to partly disable the fullscreen mode by pressing the ESC key and this way it was possible to reach certain parts of the Desktop which should be always unreachable.
  • Fixes an issue with domain exceptions within CSS filters
  • Search suggestions from „Baidu“ were displayed in the wrong character set
  • The item „Open URL“ in the menu of the „Dock“ will now also bring the App to the front.

New in iCab 6.0.14 (Aug 6, 2021)

  • Bugfix: Fixes a small issue with evaluating the site-specific Browser IDs

New in iCab 6.0.13 (Aug 3, 2021)

  • Bugfix: Due to a bug in the latest developer frameworks from Apple, the Bookmarks window did no longer open under macOS 10.13 or 10.14, it still worked under macOS 10.15 or 11.0

New in iCab 6.0.12 (Jul 30, 2021)

  • Bugfix: solves an issue with the search on the current page where it could happen that the page was scrolled to the top.
  • Bugfix: a few downloads were not correctly recognised as download
  • Bugfix: When exporting bookmarks the smart folders will be now encoded inactive way which allows other browsers to ignore this feature (which they don’t support). So importing the bookmarks in other browsers will no longer fail because of features these browsers don’t support
  • Bugfix: the download of complete web sites could fail if the page used an unexpected text encoding
  • Workaround added for a bug of the macOS and its print window. For a few printer driver printing to a PDF could crash.
  • In the filter manager it is now possible to directly access all external resources of a page for your own filter groups, so it’s much rasiert to create new filters for certain page resources.

New in iCab 6.0.11 (Mar 24, 2021)

  • Danish localization added
  • New option available in the „Windows“ settings to open windows in a „cascade“ instead of using the previous position.

New in iCab 6.0.10 (Feb 15, 2021)

  • There’s a new option „Tabs Support“ for the Kiosk mode. This options allows to switch off support for Tabs in Kiosk mode completely. So in case a web site tries to open a link in a new window or tab, it will open in the same.
  • Bugfix: In case a web page could not be loaded because of an error, reloading would fail to load the page again.
  • Bugfix: The search within the web page could not be closed using the ESC key.
  • Bugfix: it could happen that downloads where the web site redirects to a HTML page first (and this HTML page has the exact same file name as the file that should be downloaded) iCab only downloaded the HTML file instead of the real file.
  • Bugfix: When opening new windows it could happen that the active Tab in the current window has changed.

New in iCab 6.0.9 (Jan 14, 2021)

  • Bugfix for Big Sur where some of the toolbar icons did not change their icon or color depending of the current state

New in iCab 6.0.8 (Jan 10, 2021)

  • Saving a download could fail if the suggested filename was too long.
  • Improved Reader Mode
  • Fixes an issue where updating the cookies window did clear the selected entries.
  • If the App is configured to show visited links in another color, this will now also work
  • Added a new toolbar icon to restore the original font size.
  • Various improvements and fixes for macOS 11 (Big Sur):
  • A bug in Big Sur had the result that opening the „certificate chain“ („Lock“ Icon) did only work correctly the very first time
  • The preferences window did not show all icons by default
  • Fixes several toolbar glitches under Big Sur
  • The Fav-Icon was missing in Tabs
  • Saving a web site as PDF provides additional options: the page can be now saved either using the screen or the printer stylesheet

New in iCab 6.0.7 (Dec 14, 2020)

  • Holding down the Option key while selecting the „reload“ command (via menu or button), the current web site will be reloaded without applying any filters. This is an easy way to temporarily load a page without filters without the need to switch off the filters in the settings manually then reloading the page and then switching the filters on again.
  • Bugfix: Fixes a rare crash while downloading a file
  • Bugfix: The history was not always fully deleted when quitting if the App was configured this way.

New in iCab 6.0.6 (Nov 21, 2020)

  • Bugfix: Fixes and issue with downloads handled by the web engine of the system
  • Bugfix: Fixes and issue when auto-updating 3rd-party filters which are missing certain meta data
  • Bugfix: If the toolbar is hidden or does not include an address field, the Cmd-L command will now open a new window to enter an address

New in iCab 6.0.5 (Nov 1, 2020)

  • The support for the popular filter lists from "Adblock Plus", "Easylist", "uBlock" and compatible was improved. Now, iCab also supports the fully automatic update of these filter lists in the background
  • In dark mode the empty page will become dark as well
  • When open windows and tabs manually the address field will be now activated immediatelly
  • In the bookmarks window all folders will now also show the number of bookmarks in these folders.
  • After changing the filters the filters will be ready much faster now
  • The URL suggestions will now show the matching last visited web page from the bookmarks or history as top hit at the very first suggestion.
  • Visited links can be drawn in another color. This feature can be disabled in the „Web sites“ settings.
  • Old iCab archive files (file extension „.icabarchive“) from older iCab releases can be opened by iCab 6 now as wll.
  • Bugfix: In Kiosk modus the „Services“ menu will be no longer shown in the contextual menus ausgefiltert.
  • Bugfix: The menu item „Favorites“ was disabled for the current window
  • Bugfix: unknown URL schemes will be passed to other Apps now
  • Bugfix: The „Undo“ command for closed Tabs did not always work
  • Bugfix: Fixes smaller issues when importing AdBlock Plus and compatible filters

New in iCab 6.0.4 (Oct 18, 2020)

  • It is now possible to directly import filter lists from the original AdblockPlus web site
  • Links to the Mac AppStore can now open the AppStore App
  • When searching within a web page, the search will now be done „live“ while typing
  • When saving PDF or image files the save box did still show an option to change the file format, which did not work for these files.
  • It is possible to add buttons to open or close tabs into the toolbar
  • Closing Tabs can be undone
  • Bugfix: When registering the App with a very old registration code, it could happen the umlaut characters in the name were not recognised correctly
  • Supports the „Picture in Picture“ mode for videos (if the macOS supports this)
  • New option available in the web site settings to allow web sites to send notifciations.
  • The Malware/Phishing protection should no longer block for larger updates of the malware/phishing database

New in iCab 6.0.3 (Oct 2, 2020)

  • New menu item added for the web search (activates the search field in the toolbar, if present, the address field otherwise)
  • There are tooltips for all buttons in the favorites toolbar and the status bar
  • The box which helps filling out and saving login forms is now only shown when the form-bases fill out feature is enabled.
  • Bugfix: After configuring the browser toolbar the address field was no longer updated
  • Bugfix: Moving tabs from one window to another should work now
  • Bugfix: macOS Catalina put certain downloaded ZIP archives into quarantine, so that Apps contained within the archive could not be launched.

New in iCab 6.0.2 (Sep 30, 2020)

  • Bugfix: A wrong folder was configured as default downloads folder
  • Bugfix: In the „Save as“ window the file name wasn’t modified correctly if the file type option was changed, so a file could be saved with the wrong file extension.
  • Bugfix: If a web address was passed to iCab while it was not running, the page did not open.
  • Bugfix: Installing modules from the internet didn’t work

New in iCab 6.0.1 (Sep 30, 2020)

  • Fixes an issue with the validation of the registration data of a few users.

New in iCab 6.0 (Sep 28, 2020)

  • iCab 6.0 is completely rewritten, therefore there’re many new features and existing many old features have changed. The new release uses the newer modern web engine of the macOS which is much faster and smoother than the classic engine that was used by older iCab releases. It also supports more web technologies.
  • Because the modern web engine had too many limitations under macOS 10.12 and older, the minimum macOS release for the new version of iCab is therefore macOS 10.13. Older macOS releases are no longer supported. This has the advantage that iCab can now rely on many native macOS features which are only available in newer macOS releases.
  • iCab now uses the native „Tabs“ feature of the macOS, so the tabs in iCab will now behave just as the Tabs in all other Apps using the native Tabs feature (like Safari Mail, the Finder etc). All the capabilities of the macOS to manage tabs are fully available in iCab as well.
  • iCab is now using the native filter capabilities of the modern web engine of the macOS. Therefore the filter manager is completely new. The new filter manager supports the popular filter lists from AdBlock Plus, Easylist, uBlock and compatible. The filter manager window provides a few links to web sites where you can find these filter lists. using the „Add“ or „Subscribe“ links on these sites can directly import these filter lists, but you can also simply download these lists into a file and then use the „import“ feature of the Filter Manager to import these files.
  • iCab 6.0 supports syncing of tabs, bookmarks, reading list, filters and search engine via iCloud. The iCloud sync is compatible to iCab Mobile for the iOS platform, so you can now sync all this data between iCab for the Mac and iCab Mobile for the iOS as well.
  • The new web engine provides more control over audio and video playback. It is possible to immediately stop all audio and video playback with a certain menu command. But it can also make sure that audio and video playback only occurs on the active tab.
  • Modules of the module manager can be put into the status bar, so these modules are directly accessible very fast and comfortably.
  • The App supports private tabs which do not save any private data (Cookies, Caches etc). Private tabs are marked with a red border around the address field.
  • And much more

New in iCab 5.9.2 (Mar 5, 2020)

  • Fixes an issue with failing downloads caused by a server error.

New in iCab 5.9.1 (Feb 25, 2020)

  • Fixes several issues under "Catalina".
  • Under Catalina the Cookie window did not update itself when new cookies were set or existing were deleted
  • Under Catalina certain Downloads did no longer work correctly
  • Fixes smaller glitches in the user interface
  • The App is „notarized“ for Catalina.
  • Updated Browser IDs.

New in iCab 5.8.6 (Oct 1, 2018)

  • Fixes an issue under "Mojave" when configuring the toolbar icons..

New in iCab 5.8.5 (Jun 21, 2018)

  • Smaller bug fixes and improvements.

New in iCab 5.8.3 (Mar 18, 2017)

  • Works around an issue of macOS 10.12 (Sierra), where not all videos could be played anymore.

New in iCab 5.8.2 (Mar 8, 2017)

  • Bug fix: Fixes a crash when closing the very last Tab if the Tabs sidebar was enabled.
  • Bug fix: The menu item for the Reader mode was not shown, if the "automatic update" was disabled.
  • Bug fix: Under certain older Mac OS X versions the the "Undo" function did not work for the last closed tab.

New in iCab 5.8.1 (Mar 2, 2017)

  • Improvements for the "Reader mode" which works on more web sites now.
  • Bug fix: The Malware/Phishing warnings didn't work in 32-Bit mode.
  • Bug fix: Fixes an issue with the cookie filters.
  • Bug fix: Under macOS 10.12 (Sierra) the "Undo" function did not work for the last closed tab.
  • Some other Bug fixes.

New in iCab 5.8 (Feb 27, 2017)

  • Removed the "Readability" support (Readability has shut down) for the reading list.
  • Added Instapaper support, so the reading list can be now linked to the reading list.
  • Added a new "Reader mode" in that is accessible through the "View" menu. The "Reader Mode" (Read now) will reformat the web page using a better readable layout, removing all the clutter. This mode only works for web sites which do only contain a single articles as main content. It is not meant for link lists or overview sites. The "Reader Mode" layout allows to change the font size and color scheme and also has an option for speech output.
  • The Google "Safe Browsing" support (Malware/Phishing warnings) was updated to the new API.
  • Updates the list of Browser IDs
  • Under MacOSX 10.11 and later, iCab's own private cookie storage is removed and only the cookie storage of the MacOSX is used here (which is also private since MacOSX 10.11).
  • Fixes a few issues.

New in iCab 5.7 (Aug 5, 2016)

  • The JavaScript event handler "onbeforeunload" will be now also evaluated when closing a window or Tab
  • The "download" attribute for the "A" tag is now supported as well.
  • The form fill out feature is now more forgiving when it encounters malformed HTML code
  • Fixes a few issues under Mac OSX 10.11

New in iCab 5.6.2 (Dec 19, 2015)

  • Fixes an issue with filling out forms, if the web page defines the form with invalid/broken HTML code.

New in iCab 5.6.1 (Dec 19, 2015)

  • Fixes the issue where Tabs could only be dragged with the FavIcon.

New in iCab 5.6 (Dec 19, 2015)

  • Several fixes for Mac OS X 10.11 (El Capitan).
  • Supports the full-screen mode for HTML 5 videos.

New in iCab 5.5 (Nov 7, 2014)

  • Several fixes for MacOSX 10.10 (Yosemite).

New in iCab 5.2 (Jun 4, 2014)

  • Several bug fixes and improvements for Mac OSX 10.9
  • Fixes a crash under Mac OS X 10.10 Beta (Yosemite).

New in iCab 5.1.1 (Sep 14, 2013)

  • Bug fix: The history will be now cleared correctly, when iCab is configured to clear the history when quitting
  • Bug fix: Opening multiple ZIP Web Archives at the same time will work again.

New in iCab 5.1 (Sep 3, 2013)

  • New feature to save a single window as "Session"
  • Faster restoring of sessions and Tabs
  • Improved fullscreen mode under MacOSX 10.7/10.8
  • Many additional improvements
  • Several bug fixes.

New in iCab 5.0.1 (Jun 13, 2012)

  • Fixes a small issue with the Google Safe Browsing feature (Malware/Phishing detection).

New in iCab 5.0 (Jun 13, 2012)

  • Modul Manager added (access it from the "Tools" menu or the status bar of a browser window).
  • The Module manager includes a large number of modules (small JavaScript applications), which can be used for many different tasks, like posting the current web page on social network sites (Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, etc). It is even possible that users write their own modules, here's a description how this can be done: http://www.icab.de/blog/2010/02/17/modules-for-icab-mobile/
  • In the Module manager you can change the settings of the module, and you can disable the modules you don't need. To start a module, just select it from the contextual menu or the status bar of the browser window.
  • In general modules require that JavaScript is enabled in the browser.
  • Added an inline search bar for in-page searches. The old separate search window can be still used, when it is enabled in the "expert" settings (enter "settings:" in the URL field)
  • The search field in the toolbar does now support search suggestions from Google and Yahoo. this can be switched of and configured in the "Searches" settings within the preferences dialog .
  • Added a Sidebar for Tabs. The sidebar can be used together with the standard tabs toolbar or also alone. It can be enabled or disabled from within the "View" menu or from within the Browser toolbar if the "Tabs sidebar" icon is added to the toolbar. The sidebar itself has buttons to create a new Tab, close the sidebar or move the sidebar to the other side of the window.
  • Added a "Reading list" feature with "Readability" support. The reading list can be used to save web pages you want to read later. When opening a page from the reading list, its entry will be automatically marked as "read". The reading list can be linked to a Readability account, so it can be automatically synchronized with other Apps and programs with Readability support. But the reading list does also work without a Readability account, but then without syncing with other devices and Applications.
  • The reading list can be opened from within the "Tools" menu (menu item "readability"), the contextual menu or with the Readability icon from the browser toolbar (if you've added the icon to the toolbar).
  • The reading list will be displayed in a sidebar attached to a browser window. This sidebar contains buttons to configure the Reading list (including linking the reading list with Readability), add new pages to the reading list (this can be also done from within the contextual menu of the web page) and to move the sidebar to the other side of the window.
  • Clicking on an entry of the reading list will open the page and move the entry to the "read" section. Clicking on the blue button with the "sofa" icon will open the page with a special "Readability" layout which is easier to read.
  • Also the "Sofa" icon within the URL field will open the current page in the "Readability" layout. But you can also switch off the "Sofa" icon in the URL field in the "expert" settings (enter "settings:" in the URL field), if you don't like it there.
  • Support for the DoNotTrack header added. This can be configured in the Network settings. (see "http://donottrack.us/")
  • iCab supports Firefox-Sync as a source when importing bookmarks (currently there's only read-access for the Firefox-Sync-Bookmarks).
  • Supports the Fullscreen mode of Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion".
  • Privat mode added. When active, iCab does no longer store private data, like cookies, history and searches. Also Caches will be automatically deleted when quitting the Application. iCab will show a red background in the URL field to indicate that the private mode is active.
  • Supports the new Google-Safe-Browsing-API (used for Malware/Phishing detections)
  • Adapted the 3 finger trackpad gestures of Mac OS X to Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion" (Back/Forward/Switch Tabs)
  • New setting added in the expert settings (enter "settings:" in the URL field) to switch off the multitouch gestures for the trackpad
  • Bug fixes:
  • Bugfix for Cookies which are set for certain subfolder of a domain.
  • Bugfix for the private cookie storage where cookies would not be stored when a HTTP request was redirected into the downloads manager
  • The "All links" feature will now also include links from AREA elements
  • Bugfix: Tags which were set for folders in the bookmark were not stored.
  • Added a workaround for web pages which do calculate the height of the window as "0" when they are opened in a background Tab (which means they are opened totally invisible and hidden).

New in iCab 4.8a (Jul 19, 2010)

  • Fixes an issue with the Kioks mode (only the 64 Bit version was affected).

New in iCab 4.8 (Jul 19, 2010)

  • Fixes some issues with the new WebKit of Safari 5.
  • Fixes some issues with HTTP authentication.
  • Fixes several other bugs.
  • Several improvements.

New in iCab 4.7 (Oct 12, 2009)

  • iCab is now available as 32 Bit version (MacOSX 10.3.9-10.6) and as 64 Bit version (MacOSX 10.5-10.6).
  • Italian translation added.
  • Undo feature for closing Tabs implemented.
  • Several other improvements.
  • Many Bug fixes.

New in iCab 4.6.1 (Jun 25, 2009)

  • Fixes a few minor issues with the new WebKit 4 engine.
  • Fixes an issue under 10.3.9 when loading ZIP Web Archives.

New in iCab 4.6 (Jun 7, 2009)

  • TopTen feature implemented. Displays the most visited, the last visted and the favorite web sites similar to Exposé as thumpnail overview.
  • Bookmarks can get color labels.
  • IRI support (can be switched on/off), displays language-specific characters in URLs as clear text.
  • Many other improvements and some bug fixes.

New in iCab 4.5 (Mar 6, 2009)

  • Smart Bookmarks folders implemented.
  • Bookmarks can be tagged.
  • Multitouch gestures for the new MacBook/MacBook Pro/MacBook Air.
  • Improved build-in RSS Reader.
  • Some additions for the download manager.
  • Many bugfixes and other improvements.

New in iCab 4.2.5 (Oct 1, 2008)

  • New keyboard shortcuts for the Download Manager added.
  • Fixes an issue with the preview fo the cache browser.
  • Includes a workaround for a new bug of 10.5.5.

New in iCab 4.2.1 (Sep 10, 2008)

  • Fixes a bug which cuases iCab 4.2 to report new updates even when no new updates were available
  • Fixes a few issues in Kioks mode. It was possible to open new windows in Kiosk mode which shouldn't be possible. Also some keyboard shortcuts are now disabled in Kiosk mode, which were accepted even if the feature doesn't work in a Kiosk.

New in iCab 4.2 (Sep 8, 2008)

  • When saving a web page it's now also possible to save the web page as "stand-alone WebApplication". This creates a real Universal Binary application for this web page. Technically the new application is an iCab browser where many features and GUI elements are removed, and this new "mini iCab" will only display this web site. This is useful for all the Web Applications like "Google Documents" or the new "me.com" Web Applications from Apple which look like normal Desktop applications. When saving these sites as "stand-alone WebApplication" the user can use these WebApplications like ordinary desktop applications, they have their own icon, they can be placed in the Dock, they have their own private preferences, private cookies, private history etc. For example if you use yahoo mail with multiple email accounts, you would need to logout of one account before you can login to another account. If you save the yahoo mail page multiple times as Web Application, each of these copies
  • can be used for a different mail account, and because all the copies do have their own private settings, you can run all these copies at the same time and therefore access all mail accounts at the same time again. You don't need to login/logout anymore.
  • By default the browser toolbar is switched off in a Web Application, but if required it can be enabled again.
  • When saving a site as "stand-alone WebApplication" the user can enter the start page and a filter which defines which URLs the web application is allowed to access. Both settings are already filled out by iCab so usually these don't need to be changed. The only thing the user should change is the GUI languages which should be included in the "stand-alone WebApplication". One language must be activated. The more languages are actived the more space is needed for the "stand-alone WebApplication" on disk.
  • Web-Applications can also use filter configurations for the Filter Manager of iCab. To install a filter configuration in a stand-alone Web-Application just drag the filter configuration file in the Finder onto the Web Application icon in the Finder. For example if you create a Web Application for YouTube, you can install the Video Download filter for YouTube in the Web Application as well.
  • In the Security settings of the Preferences dialog iCab can now be configured to warn the user if he/she tries to access phishing or malware sites. This Phishing/Malware protection is only available for registered users and requires an iCab license.
  • This service is provided by Google (and is also used by Firefox) to warn the user when he opens a suspected phishing site or a site that offers some kind of malware. iCab will regularily (approx. every 30min) load/update a list of phishing/malware sites from google to do all these checks. iCab will never send any information about visited sites to google. All the checks are done on the computer itself. iCab only has to regularily download the lists of phishing/malware sites from google.
  • A Cache Browser is now available in the "Tools" menu. The Cache Browser is only available under MacOSX 10.5 and later, under MacOSX 10.3/10.4 the Cache browser is not available because the format of the cache files is unknown under these MacOS releases. The Cache Browser window displays a list of all files that are stored in the web cache. It is possible to filter out certain items by activating/deactivating the file type buttons or by entering some text. There's also a preview available for all files. Through the contextual menu it's also possible to save the files to disk.
  • In the Bookmarks settings it's now possible to activate the synchronization of the bookmarks via WebDAV server. This feature can be useful if the user has multiple computers and wants to keep the bookmarks consistent on all computers. If this feature is active, iCab will save the bookmarks not only on the harddisk of the computer (as usual) but also on the WebDAV server whenever the bookmarks are changed. After launching iCab, iCab will check if the bookmarks on the server are newer then the local copy of the bookmarks and will load the bookmarks from the server if this is the case. To configure the synchronization it's only necessary to enter the URL of the WebDAV server where iCab should save the bookmarks. This must be the complete URL to the (existing) folder on the server. For example "http://www.domain.tld:81/folder/" would tell iCab to save the Bookmarks in the folder "folder" on the Server "www.domain.tld". It's also possible to change the default file name which is used by iCab to save the bookmarks on the server, but the default filename should be usually fine.
  • Important: The synchronization feature currently only works if only one copy of iCab is running at the same time, or if only one copy of iCab is changing the bookmarks if multiple copies are running at the same time. If multiple copies of iCab are running at the same time and all of them change the bookmarks, only the bookmarks of the copy of iCab which are saved last will survive.
  • Under MacOSX 10.4 and newer iCab is able to show all the Exif data for images. You can get this data by opening the contextual menu on an image and selecting the menu item "Image > Information". Also in the "File Overview" window of the "Tools" menu, the preview area will list all the Exif data for the selected image.
  • The GeoTag support now includes some workarounds for Flickr (www.flickr.com). Flickr supports geotagging photos, but unfortunately Flickr uses only a proprietary internal solution instead of all the standards and common solutions. Especially Flickr does not save the Geo data in the photos where one would expect to find them. So iCab will now search for the proprietary geo data from Flickr as well.
  • In the contextual menu there's a new option to search for the selected text in the default search engine. Until now this feature was only available through the main menu "Edit > Find > Find in Internet"
  • When iCab is configured for "private browsing" in Kiosk mode, iCab will now use a private Cookie storage for the Kiosk mode which is seperate from the private cookie storage that is used in normal mode. So the cookies which are collected in normal mode are no longer deleted when a new
  • kiosk session starts or an old session ends. Important: iCab must be configured to use the private cookie storage (which is the default setting) and not the global cookie storage.
  • New settings implemented in the preferences dialog ("General > Other" and "Downloads") to play a sound when a web page has finished loading or a download is completed.
  • The max size of the database that can be created by JavaScript code of a web page can be now configured in the JavaScript preferences.
  • The Web-Inspector is now also available through the "Tools" menu. Before it was only available through the contextual menu.
  • On US keyboards it's now also possible to use Cmd-{ and Cmd-} (Cmd-Shift-[ and Cmd-Shift-]) to switch between Tabs in addition to the existing shortcuts.
  • The Icon "Add Bookmark" in the browser toolbar will be drawn in two different variations "solid" and "hollow" to show the user if the URL of the current web site is already in the bookmarks (hollow) or if the page is not yet bookmarked (solid).
  • It's now possible to add a special Address Book folder in the Bookmarks. This folder will be populated automatically by iCab with all the URLs that can be found in the address book of MacOSX.
  • Under 10.4.x or newer a click on the "lock" icon in the status bar that is activated when visiting a secure web site ("https") will display the certificate chain.
  • iCab now supports the keyboard shortcuts for the "Snap-Back" feature of Safari: Cmd-Alt-P: goes back to the last "root" page in a window or Tab; Cmd-Alt-S: goes back to the last results of a search engine request (which are initiated via search field for example).
  • When saving a "Session" iCab will now also save minimized browser windows. When loading the session again, these minimized windows will be still minimized.
  • The "field-based" form fill out feature (second tab in the Forms Manager window) can now be activated automatically when a web page has finished loading. So it's no longer necessary to seelct the menu item "Fill out forms".
  • In the "Page Layout" ("File" menu) settings there's now an additional settings panel (available through the "Settings" popup button) where you can change the margins which iCab uses when printing.
  • When importing bookmarks from other browsers, iCab will now also import the seperator lines.
  • In the browser toolbar you can now also insert a combined button for "back" and "forward" only.
  • When entering the URL "settings:" in the URL field and opening this page, it's now possible to get access to some "experimental settings". These settings are not available in the preferences dialog. Some of them never will, some may end up in the preferences dialog later when this makes sense. These experimental settings are usually not (yet) useful for most users, or are only useful for very special circumstances and normal users should never have to deal with these settings. Currently you can change the maximum and minimum widths of the Tabs, hide the "close" box of Tabs, hide textlabel of icon of the favorites buttons, change the font size of contextual menus, change the timeout for network access, print messages about invalid cookies in the console window and enable the use of multiple colors for the URL field.
  • When printing PDF files which are directly loaded in iCab (not being embedded in HTML code and without a PDF plugin) the WebKit seems to behave very odd. Sometimes it just prints the parts which are visible on the screen instead of printing the whole PDF page. To prevent this, iCab will now search through the internal private view hierarchy of WebKit to locate the PDF view object and print this directly.
  • For many top level domains (TLD) the second level domain (SLD) has a special meaning and is used as if it is part of the TLD (for example "co.uk"). This is important for the "Same Origin Policy" that is used for Cookies that should be only accepted from the main document and for the "foreign server" settings/filters of iCab. Some of these special SLDs were not recognized by iCab.
  • In the non-German resources of the "file overview" window the contextual menu was not connected.
  • Because of a bug in MacOSX it could happen that iCab could use a Cookie that should be already deleted. This could happen in HTTP redirections when the cookie has to be deleted as part of this redirection process. It seems that Cocoa is using a cached copy of the cookie to load the new destination of the redirection even when this cookie is explicitly deleted. Now iCab avoids a certain Cocoa routine to work around this issue.
  • When downloading, iCab will now process the HTTP header "Content-Disposition" itself instead of letting this handle the Cocoa classes to avoid some issues of Leopard.
  • The Growl notifications "Download Successful" and "Download failed" were mixed up. This was only visible if the user configured Growl to use different layouts for the two notifications.
  • Fixed a small bug in the Cookie processing. In rare cases it could happen that a cookie was not accepted even if this cookie was valid.
  • Workaround implemented for a bug in WebKit which treats the HTTP status code 200 and 204 identical. Now iCab makes sure that WebKit no longer removes the currently displayed page when a status code 204 is received.
  • Workaround implemented for invalid URLs which contain space characters in the host name.
  • RSS feeds and GeoTags were only searched in the root document of a frame page. Now iCab looks for this information in all frames as well.
  • Automatically filling out forms didn't work reliable when the HTML code related to the forms was seriously damaged or invalid. iCab is now more robust when checking such invalid HTML code.
  • If the last item of the Bookmarks or History window was found while searching within the bookmarks/history iCab could freeze when deleting this last item and if the search was continued.
  • In case the Download folder that was configured in iCab does no longer exist, iCab could no longer download any files. Now iCab will use the default folder (like the Desktop folder) as Download folder if the original one is not found.

New in iCab 4.1.1 (May 5, 2008)

  • New feature implemented: "Tab Overview". The "Tab Overview" can be activated from within the "Window" menu or by clicking the new icon at the right side of the Tabs Toolbar in the browser window. The "Tab Overview" requires at least MacOSX 10.4.x. The "Tab Overview" is something like Expos� for Tabs. When activated, all Tabs will be shown as small thumbnail images ontop of a dark transparent fullscreen window (like Dashboard). You can easily identify the Tabs, activate another Tab and also delete Tabs. This can be done either using the mouse but also using the keyboard: Tab/Shift-Tab and the arrow keys can be used to select a new Tab, the "Return", "Enter" or "Space" keys can be used to activate the selected Tab, the "Backspace" or "Delete" keys will close the selected tab and the "ESC" key will close the "Tab Overview" itself.
  • iCab recognizes geo-tagged web pages. The status bar now has an additional icon which indicates if the currently displayed web page is geo-tagged via META tag. Clicking the icon will then open a popup menu where the location is displayed in plain text (if provided by the web page) and when selecting the menu item in the popup menu the location is shown in google maps (At the moment the popup menu of this GeoTag icon will only have one menu item. Later it may have additional menu items for geo-tagged images or other geo-tagged media that is found in the web page).
  • In the Filter Manager there's a new text field in the "Page Layout" panel where CSS code can be entered that will be applied to the web pages which are addressed by the filter. The new advertising filter which you can find in the iCab archive uses this new field to filter out the ad banners of the mactechnews.com web site. So you should replace the old advertising filter by the new one if you're using this filter.
  • New setting added in the "Special websites" section of the "Forms Manager". It's now possible to change the form checks to be less strict. This way filling out forms can be made as comfortable as in other browsers (but also as insecure as in other browsers).
  • Using MacOSX 10.5.x the contexual menu of the browser will now also include meu items to search the text selection in the "Dictionary" and in "Spotlight".
  • In the URL completion preferences it is now possible to configure which URL schemes iCab should use for the URL completion feature and which schemes it should ignore.
  • The contextual menu in the browser window can now be also opened by holding down the left mouse button for a while, if this feature is enabled in the Preferences dialog in the "General > Contextual Menu" panel. The standard way to open the contextual menu (Right-Click or Control-Click) does always work.
  • It's now possible to enter Cmd-Return, Cmd-Shift-Return, Cmd-Alt-Return and Cmd-Alt-Shift-Return in the URL field and Search field of the browser toolbar to open the URL or search result in a new window or Tab in the background or foreground.
  • Syntax hilighting for the source code window implemented
  • Colors and bold face text in the error report window help to find the important keywords.
  • The HTML attributes "cite" and "longdesc" are now also listed in the "Link Manager" window.
  • Double-clicking in the background of the Tabs toolbar will now also create a new Tab.
  • When searching in the History window iCab will now also search in closed folders, opening them automatically when needed.
  • When loading files from a local disk ("file:" URLs) iCab will now show a "proxy" icon in the titlebar of the window. Control-Clicking or Cmd-Clicking the proxy icon will display a popup menu where you can access all the parent folders of the local file, so it's very easy to locate the file in the Finder..
  • Added a new option in the Tabs settings to swap the keyboard shortcuts for new windows and new Tabs. Before this shortcut swap was bound to the option "Open Tabs instead of Windows". Now these are individual settings. This way you can get the same shortcuts as in Safari (which doesn't have the option "Open Tabs instead of Windows").
  • In the Network settings you can now configure if iCab should process FTP links itself or if the external FTP application that is configured in the system as default FTP application is called instead to precess the FTP link.
  • When loading Session files iCab will now (optionally) ask if it is OK to overwrite the current session with the one from the file or if the current session should be saved before the file will be loaded. This confirmation can be anabled/disabled in the "General" preferences in the "Other" tab.
  • Javascript code is now able to use databases (via "window.openDatabase()")
  • When saving a web page, iCab will now also offer to save it as PDF file. So it is no longer necessary to use the "print" command to save it as PDF file. Using the "save" command is much more intuitive.
  • The "YouTube Video Download" filter from the folder "Filter Manager Examples" is improved now. It will now offer to download the video as Flash movie or as MP4 movie (though the MP4 format is not yet avaiable for all videos). So when you're already using the Youtube download filter you should import the new filter again to replace the old one.
  • The new keyboard shortcut Control-Alt-T can be used to switch on the Tabs Toolbar when it is hidden (for example because the window only contains one single document and iCab is configured to hide the Tabs toolbar in this case). The shortcut can be useful if the user wants to drag the document of this window as Tab into another window to combine the two windows into a single one.
  • iCab now supports the ".url" files of Internet Explorer (Windows or Mac version). These files are the windows counterpart of the "webloc" files on the Mac.
  • French translation added
  • Help is now available in English as well.
  • When explicitly opening a link in a window by the user the "Referrer" information gets no longer lost.
  • The "Save" button in the PDF view (a PDF document is opened without any PDF plugin) does work now in iCab as well.
  • When changing the titles of bookmarks in the Favorites folder of the Bookmarks window, iCab didn't update the Favorites toolbars immediately.
  • JavaScript bookmarkslets can now open windows even when the JavaScript setting "open windows without user interaction" is unchecked.
  • Bugfix for the shareware reminder dialog box which could cause a crash in very rare circumstances under MacOSX 10.4.x.
  • The error report feature didn't always select the right location in the sourcecode when showing the error location. This happened only when the source code contained some Unicode characters from a "higher" Unicode code page.
  • If the Force-Quit-Command was disabled in the Kiosk preferences, which also disables Expos� and Dashboard, Expos� and Dashboard were not enabled again when the Kioks mode was left.
  • Small adaption to the new WebKit release (Safari 3.1) where the click with the third mouse button (middle button) didn't work anymore. Now iCab hooks itself into internal WebKit structures to get such clicks again.
  • When the user edits the URL of a finished download to repeat the same download with a different URL, some internal Download settings did not refect the new URL immediately.
  • If the option "Stack windows" is enabled in the Window preferences, iCab will no longer remeber the sizes of all the open browser windows. This is only done when this setting is switched off.
  • When quitting iCab while downloads are still running, iCab now asks the user if iCab should really abort the downloads and quit.
  • Asking for the number of windows in AppleScript did also take the closed and invisible windows into account. This doesn't happen anymore.
  • The "Search" window will now always on the active "Screen" when "Spaces" of Leopard is active.
  • Bugfix for the Error report. iCab could crash if an extrenal CSS file was completely empty.
  • When imported bookmarks files did use an invalid text encoding, bookmark titles with non-ASCII characters could be imported with an empty title instead. Now iCab will try out different encodings and if none will result in valid text, iCab will just remove the invalid characters and keep the rest.

New in iCab 4.0.1 (Feb 21, 2008)

  • Added localized resources for Danish, Norwegian, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish (thanks to Mogens Thyregod, Leif Halvard Silli, Michael Krekin, Hans Yu, i_zac, Manuel Montero Barro)
  • When saving a web page it's now also possible to save it as plain text.
  • Under MacOSX 10.5 the contextual menu will now include special menu items for PDF files when PDF files are displayed.
  • In MacOSX 10.4.11 and later the TEXTAREA fields in web pages can now be resized
  • In MacOSX 10.4.11 and later iCab will now enable the Web-Inspector of the MacOS. The Web-Inspector can be opened by choosing the menu item "Element Information" from within the contextual menu.
  • Added support for the JavaScript call "print()"
  • It's now possible to use small icons in the browser toolbar.
  • New option in the "Page Layout" preferences to enable support for language-specific quote characters
  • It' now possible to drag URLs into the Tabs toolbar to open it as Tab.
  • iCab can be configured in the bookmarks preferences to add a menu item "Open as tabs" in each submenu of the bookmarks menu to open all the menu items of such a submenu menu as Tabs.
  • In the search engine settings you can now also set the text encoding that should be used for the search engine.
  • Help files in German are available (English ones will follow)

New in iCab 4.0.0 (Jan 9, 2008)

  • This version is completely rewritten and is available as Universal Binary which runs natively on all Macs with G3, G4, G5 and Intel processors.