iCab

Last minor update: 24 May 2004
Last major update: 24 April 2003.
Tested version: 2.9.8.

iCab is an independent browser for Mac only. Unfortunately it is way behind its competitors, and I don't recommend it as your default browser

Fact sheet:

This independent browser for the Mac is still in development. Eventually it's going to become a commercial browser, but all previews are free.

When I discovered iCab back in 2000, I was pleasantly surprised that a small independent software vendor was taking the risk of producing a browser. However, the iCab project just goes too slow. Now, in mid-2004, it still doesn't support absolute positioning, meaning that even that archetypical DHTML application, sliding layers, is impossible.

W3C DOM support: hardly any. CSS: OK-ish, but not really good, especially where tables are concerned. :hover support: none.

Need I say more? As much as I'd like to wish iCab a glorious future, it's just too meager (and buggy, in spots) to be a serious competitor.

Oddities

For more information on iCab's CSS capabilities, see MacEdition.

If iCab crashes, it may help to trash the iCab Preferences from your Preferences folder and have iCab create a new one.

Note that you may have to switch on JavaScript on. iCab calls it InScript, by the way. One definite problem is the bad quality of JavaScript error messages. Usually you can't find out where your script goes wrong.
To make up for this iCab introduced the special debug() method. It writes a message to the InScript console. This can be very useful.

if (self.debug) // support detect
{
  debug('Error message written to console');
}