iCab 4.5: WebKit based and written in Cocoa

A quick look at iCab 4.5

Posted on March 10th, 2009 by admin

When it comes to Mac OS Classic and PPC Macs, you really only have one choice when it comes to browsers—iCab—which is available in versions for 68k Classic, PPC Classic, PPC OS X (10.3.8 & earlier) and Universal OS X 10.3.9 and up. That’s the big selling point—wide compatibility with both new and old iterations of the Mac.

New and / or fixed features in this release include:

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 bug fixes and other improvements

A quick look

According to the wikipedia, iCab is the love child of Alexander Clauss and derived from Crystal Atari Browser (CAB) for Atari TOS compatible computers. It is the only browser being developed for Mac OS 9 and earlier, and is the only browser available for 68k-based Macs to offer tabbed browsing.

Based on WebKit and written in Cocoa, this browser renders pages crisply and visually is very Mac like. Importing bookmarks is easy and trouble free, though viewing and working with bookmarks requires a separate window, which is less than smooth.

In terms of performance on my 2.1GHz MacBook running OS 10.5.6, iCab 4.5 is roughly on par with Firefox 2.x. I suspect this relative lag is due to Java performance.

iCab isn’t free and a license goes for $25. Although it’s fully functional without paying, it is nagware, meaning it will periodically pester you until payment is made.

Get your copy of iCab 4.5—download (8.3MB).

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