[jwardell]

We all know the Carbon IE is horrible.
Omniweb is better, but has some major drawbacks:
- It is slow
- It renders some fonts too large while others too small at the same time, preventing any fix with the font preferences
- It downloads each page when you press the back button instead of reading them from the Cache. Furthermore the Back button does not drop down. On a slow server such as MacNN's forums this becomes VERY ANNOYING.

But I was very happy to find that iCab has posted a Carbon version of their web browser!

For those who have not used iCab before, it not only is the fastest web browser for Mac, but is also the only one to display fonts correctly. It is also the most standards-compliant, and has a whopping amount of features not found in other browsers, such as filtering out ad banners and pre-fetching web pages.

Right now all I can find missing from the Carbon version is the ability to change the button images. (Has anyone figured out how?)

[OSTenning]

I totally agree. My biggest frustration with X was slow web browsing...on my iBook se, classic hasn't crashed yet and is very fast, the system itself is only slightly slower than 9 since a clean install (and not installing bsd subsystem) and apps launch speedily enough...but the internet thing was driving me nuts. Mozilla was faster than IE (CRAP!) and OW, but iCab totally kicks ass in the speed deptartment. It did crash once so far, but so have the other 3 browsers. Love it!

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"I said 'lunch' not
'launch'!"

jwardell asked:

(Has anyone figured out how?) ... to change the button images.

go to www.icab.de/download2.html download your favorite alterntive icons and place in the same folder as icab. (You will need to be administrator to do this if you placed icab in your applications folder) restart icab and they should be there.

[Bluebeat79]

I agree. iCab is must faster than IE and OmniWeb - and easier to use, also.


On a side note - might it be possible that the slowdown in IE is because it's a poorly designed windows product (like all of them?)

Thank goodness that there are other web developers out there with vision in mind, not just another piece of the monopoly pie...

[theUpsetter]

even though iCab might be faster, i love Omniweb because it has such powerful features. Find is something I've wanted in a browser forever, and it has all the great features of IE like automatic fill and looks 10x better than any other browser out there, all the fonts seem fine to me.

Brandon

[sadie]

The browser wars haven't even begun yet! Just wait a few years and Q.BATi will be all you wished for - especially if you ask for it now!

Go to http://www.sourceforge.net/project/qbati2/ if you have any ideas. We're still at the early ideas phase, so come to the Forums and help out. All we do know is we're using the Gecko engine and writing a Cocoa wrapper for it and a native interface in IB. The design is totally up in the air.



(ps - i'm know as shrink_laureate on the Q.BATi forums).

[Br David]

I have had time to check out IE 5.1, OmniWeb (latest version) and iCab. I have to agree that at this point, iCab is my favorite. IE is really unpredictable, OmniWeb while nice is currently slow, and I have yet been able to import bookmarks into it from Netscape or IE. iCab, while occasionally crashing, boots fast, runs fast, and generally has been great. Of course, it is still early in the race, so who knows what tomorrows versions will bring. If Omni can speed up their browser, it would be great.


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A closed mind can never be free.
The only certainty in life is change. Embrace it!

[bipto]

My thoughts:

1. iCab does not support CSS. This is a big problem in my book.
2. IE 5.1 is indeed crap. I actually quite like 5.0, but I don't see any improvement in IE 5.1 since the PB release.
3. OmniWeb is slow, but beautiful. I'm hoping Omni works out the kinks. I actually paid them the $30 they ask just to help them along...
4. As for the font issue in OW, I've noticed that pages with fonts sizes specified in pixels (the preferred method) rather than points look great.
5. Sad but true, IE 5.0 under classic seems faster than both 5.1 and OW.

OK, I'll go download iCab. What the hell...

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[crazyjohnson]

iCab is the best ever. Just keep some crap like IE around for a few websites and features. I use only iCab on classic - I might have to use NS every once an a while . . .

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[bipto]

So I downloaded iCab. Still no CSS support and it crashed on the thrid page I looked at. Great browser...

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[marnie]

I would like nothing better than to use iCab. I have downloaded every pre whatever version since it was available in english. I keep trying. It keeps not working.

The chase manhattan bank site just forces the browser to quit. if I can't get to my bank info, I can't use the browser. period. I have the same problem with Omniweb. This is clearly a javascript issue.

Would someone using iCab check it out for me? go to chase.com and click on the log onto chase online links. if it works for someone (anyone!) I would love to know about it!


IE Carbon works for me, quick, no crashes or stalls - totally unlike my IE 5 in OS 9 experience... it works.

Clearly everyone has a different experience, we view different sites, we have different configurations. I'm sure I'll keep downloading iCab, like the 4 versions of Omniweb I've downloaded since Thursday. I'll keep trying, but it doesn't work for me... for now.

[NeoMac]

Sorry guys, but OSX is in desperate need of a really amazing browser. IE, iCab, and OmniWeb just are not good enough - they all suffer from serious faults.

For starters, none of them handles Java applets, which sucks big time.

iCab is fast, but it is not Cocoa, and it has a poor interface.

OmniWeb has improved the interface, but fonts are WAY too small, proportional sizing is slow and it is constantly reloading for every little damn thing it does.

IE 5.1, well, that is a POS that a stable horsefly wouldn't touch with a 10ft pole.

[jwardell]

Well it has been a few days now. I can agree with some of your comments. iCab instantly crashes at certain web pages. But that's not too much trouble, crashing isn't that serious in X and it's back up and running before most other browsers even render the page.

For pages that don't work well/at all/crash iCab, I just use Classic IE. Strange how much better it is than Carbon IE.

Lurker it's not that simple...it turns out to change the buttons you put the resource file in the directory, but then you must select them in preferences. A little different than before.

[wjsomni]

jwardell writes:

iCab wins the OSX browser war

Darn, guess I'll just quit, then.

- It is slow

Well, that seems to be a matter of contention. On some types of connections we do appear slower, but on our T1 OmniWeb loads pages with graphics a LOT quicker than iCab does. iCab does present text to the user very quickly after it starts loading a page. On the other hand, it doesn't bother loading the CSS resources pages specify (since it doesn't have CSS), so it doesn't have to wait for those to be loaded to start displaying.

Pretty much the vast majority of pages I look at have some CSS on them now.

- It renders some fonts too large while others too small at the same time, preventing any fix with the font preferences

Too large and too small are funny terms, no? I mean, we understand CSS, and when CSS asks for a 12 point font, that's what we give you. I'm not sure how much room for improvement there is there.

- It downloads each page when you press the back button instead of reading them from the Cache. Furthermore the Back button does not drop down. On a slow server such as MacNN's forums this becomes VERY ANNOYING.

Ken just fixed this.

. It is also the most standards-compliant, and has a whopping amount of features not found in other browsers, such as filtering out ad banners and pre-fetching web pages

Ahem. Have you looked at any CSS pages in iCab? Check out, say, www.wildtofu.com. Now, who does more standards?

Also, filtering out ad banners is fully handled in OmniWeb. Check out privacy preferences.

We don't think pre-fetching web pages is a particularly good idea, but we could be wrong. For example, what if you are at a store site and following a link actually makes a purchase for you? Also, it just seems like poor network citizenship -- let's download everything from the net and throw away what the user doesn't actually want, because the net has infinite capacity, no?

NeoMac writes:

OmniWeb has improved the interface, but fonts are WAY too small, proportional sizing is slow and it is constantly reloading for every little damn thing it does.

We have a new minimum and maximum font size preference in the next release, and there are also font bigger/font smaller buttons to make a whole page bigger or smaller, plus you can change the base font size in preferences if you want all pages to be smaller or bigger.

So, I think we should have you covered.

The reloading thing Ken just fixed for cf3.

-Wil Shipley
President, The Omni Group

[Zarafa]

Originally posted by wjsomni:

[...]

We don't think pre-fetching web pages is a particularly good idea, but we could be wrong. For example, what if you are at a store site and following a link actually makes a purchase for you? Also, it just seems like poor network citizenship -- let's download everything from the net and throw away what the user doesn't actually want, because the net has infinite capacity, no?

[...]

-Wil Shipley
President, The Omni Group[/B]

Wil, thanks for joining the discussion. I should probably preface this by saying that unlike some here, I am extremely pleased with OW (and am a long-time user from NEXTSTEP days, so it's been interesting seeing the evolution over time).

To your point above, and from a perspective as a network admin, I would strongly urge you to continue to NOT pre-fetch pages. You're absolutely right, it makes for poor corporate citizenship.

However, I have one variant on this to suggest. I've noticed that Mozilla in recent builds (at least on Windows, haven't tried the Mac version) will start to download a file as soon as it's clicked, before I've specified where I want to save it or what it should be called. By the time I've finished with the dialogue box, the file is often completely downloaded already, or nearly so. Makes for a seemingly-faster download since the human-interaction piece is occuring in parallel with the download.

However, although I like this, it's definitely not a good idea on a slow link. So if you implement something like this, make it an option, and leave it off by default. Even somehow linking it to location would be a good idea, so OW would know that on a dial-up link it should never do this, whereas on my home DSL or office T1 it's OK.

Just a suggestion. From a user perspective I like it, but I'm a fence-sitter while wearing my network admin hat. It's not nearly as egregious as the pre-fetching of pages on a constant basis, though it does still impose a load that will [sometimes] be unnecessary, if the user changes his/her mind about the download.

Anyway, thought I'd throw that out! Keep up the excellent work!

[gooeynougat]

Originally posted by Zarafa:


Anyway, thought I'd throw that out! Keep up the excellent work!

I agree! I love OmniWeb - it renders most pages beautifully, and now that it has CSS support, it is my full-time browser. I like it so much, I bought a license. That aside, iCab is definitely better than IE, but iCab is just so hideous and has a clunky interface, imho. I wouldn't call the war won at this point by any means.

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http://www.torres.cx

[bipto]

Will,

So, does Omniweb handle pixel-specified fonts better than point-specified fonts? It seems to me that it does and I'm always looking for more amunition in trying to convince designers that pixels are the way to go.

By the way, OW is my default, preferred browser. It rules. Keep up the good work and I hope you enjoy my $30!

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[Colonel Panic]

currently, the browser crop isn't impressive. OW shows potential, but isn't there yet, in my opinion. Crashes a decent amount, and seems slow. In iCab, scrolling is like molasses. The scrolling continues when i lift my finger off the down button because it can't keep up with keystrokes.
Hate to say it, but I think the best X broswer is IE at the moment. And it isn't great.
For whatever reasons, browsers in Classic seem downright zippy compared to the Carbon /(or Cocoa) crop.....

[osiris]

The first time I loaded up IE I knew I something was evil here. IE is so remarkably slow that I almost soiled myself entering a state of shock. When I learned of iCab for X I was thrilled.

iCab works well and fast. The Java support works most of the time (I manually set the InScript for Java to work) It did crash a few times after the intitial installation, but for two days it's been steady. The only problem I really have is the lack of plug-in support - I can't get Quicktime plug in to work and the lack of RealPlayer makes it annoying too, but that's another story.

So a thumbs up for iCab.

BTW I'm a disgruntled Netscape fan - in Classic or booted to 9.1 , Netscape 4.7 destroys both IE and iCab. (What the heck happened to Netscape, dammit)

[NeoMac]

Mr. Shipley,

OmniWeb is a fine browser. I use it daily since I installed OSX 10.0. I consider it the only viable browser for OSX at this time.

There are flaws in the browser, but none greater than the lack of Java applet support.

Basically, as long as my girlfriend can't play Yahoo games & Pogo.com games from OSX, she's sticking with Windows and giving me hell about OSX.

Ken has to make Yahoo Games and Pogo games the yardstick by which to implement applet support in OmniWeb.

Congratulations on the new interface. It is much better than pre-4.0 releases. It used to be so horrible, I started to think you guys are closet-Windows developers.

Thankx.

[jpinnix]

I am not happy with any of these browsers. IE has tons of issues with SSL, and OmniWeb is so tediously slow. I think we will just have to be patient.

[Br David]

I think Will made a good point that on a high speed broadband connection OmniWeb really shines. Unfortunately, we don't all have that luxury. I really like OmniWeb, especially the design, but on my dialup connection it is really slow. Right now I use iCab as my primary browser under OS-X. However its lack of support for CSS and Java aplets is a problem. I keep IE handy for when I need to access my credit union website. Periodically though I will load OmniWeb just because I like the way it works, especially when I am not in a hurry. I am wondering what I might be able to do in the preferences, to speed it up. iCab has won the first battle for speed on dialup connections under OS X, but the war is not yet over. I hope Omni keeps up their excellent development work. They are a contender. Then again, I hope that iCab will do the same. As for IE??? Well........ I will try to be nice and not say anything.


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The only certainty in life is change. Embrace it!

[Titania's Oberon]

iCab, Banking, and CSS...

There are specific features in most banking operations that iCab does not yet support, and they have (somewhere) indicated (probably in German LOL) that CSS are to be supported - in final version.

Both these issues have been discussed in threads in the main "Software / Internet Software" forums.

Not having money to do banking with, I don't miss the first feature.

I do find iCab a delight under 9.1 for almost all my browsing -- except pining for the CSS support.

[This message has been edited by Titania's Oberon (edited 03-31-2001).]

[ctt1wbw]

iCab lasted less than five minutes on my drive. Every time I went to www.wachovia.com to do online banking, the browser quit. And it won't display www.msnbc.com worth a damn, either. So far I rank IE number one and then OW. I know that sounds crazy, but those are just the facts, ma'am.