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iCab: Alternative Browser for macOS

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Re: iCab: Alternative Browser for macOS

#61

Post by ValentineC »

snapetom wrote: post #36
arkanciscan wrote: post #7

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

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!

Back in 2005 or so, I used Camino whenever a page insisted on being "IE only" — the browser seemed to have some magical compatibility layer built-in.

I still have it on my Mac, but it's only good for checking how pages look like if they're viewed on a browser that doesn't support the latest web standards.

Re: iCab: Alternative Browser for macOS

#63

Post by shp0ngle »

fmakunbound wrote: post #42
maguay wrote: post #34

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 age…

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

iCab on desktop uses WebKit anyway...

Re: iCab: Alternative Browser for macOS

#64

Post by brigandish »

Arsenije wrote: post #46
snapetom wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Do you remember Shiira? :)

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.

Re: iCab: Alternative Browser for macOS

#65

Post by Wowfunhappy »

userbinator wrote: post #13
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's also Netsurf, Dillo, as well as Links and the rest of the text-based ones. The monopoly should definitely be fought.

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.)

Re: iCab: Alternative Browser for macOS

#67

Post by toyg »

snapetom wrote: post #36
arkanciscan wrote: post #7

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

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!

> IE was great

IE on Mac had its very own class of display errors and incompatibilities, making webdevs' lives even more miserable than they were before.

Re: iCab: Alternative Browser for macOS

#68

Post by Wowfunhappy »

why_only_15 wrote: post #24
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Think the chromium one is called "blink"

It absolutely is and I actually debated which term I should use in my post. Everyone seems to have settled on using "Chromium" to describe browsers based on Google's engine, and I want to use the word that the most people will be familiar with.

Re: iCab: Alternative Browser for macOS

#69

Post by asveikau »

rched wrote: post #30
asveikau wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this space really evolving that much anymore though? I don't follow this field; what's been going on in web standards lately? Seems like lately, from a user perspective, the current emphasis is mostly on doing the same things faster. So an indie browser developer probably won't get JS JIT down as well as a megacorp, but is that it? It seems to me like if you are standards compliant as of 5 years ago there shouldn'…

I can understand why it might seem that way but it is actually evolving very quickly. Probably faster than any other time in history. There are a few things driving this evolution but I think the most important one is a desire to make the web a competitive platform for most types of software. This means lower level APIs, deeper integration with OS, and yes a large focus on performance. 3D graphics, offline support, p…

There are a small number of people pushing that, but where is the adoption, and is the web at large really inaccesible without it? One example, I see a lot of websites offering to send me push notifications, and I always click no. A browser could not implement that feature and I would not notice, in fact it would be an improvement in experience.

Re: iCab: Alternative Browser for macOS

#70

Post by asveikau »

IggleSniggle wrote: post #56
asveikau wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this space really evolving that much anymore though? I don't follow this field; what's been going on in web standards lately? Seems like lately, from a user perspective, the current emphasis is mostly on doing the same things faster. So an indie browser developer probably won't get JS JIT down as well as a megacorp, but is that it? It seems to me like if you are standards compliant as of 5 years ago there shouldn'…

Oh my no. There's the plethora of Web APIs to attend to, with ever new things that require support in order for websites to work. And each of those creates complex security concerns. The js spec is ever moving, with new syntax and features. Accessibility concerns interact with all of these other parts. It's "normal" to ship complex desktop apps deployed to the browser now. And THEN, after all that, you need to mainta…

People who ship desktop apps as a web browser are already doing that with chromium built in. As far as I can tell a typical user reading the normal web isn't going to be locked out of it with a browser that's a few years old. Not everyone writing web content is an activist trying to disrupt desktop apps.
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