iCab 53
13 June 2008
Alexander Clauss has done it again with ß53 and brought Fluid (amongst other improvements) to iCab.
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, which will only display this web site.
I’ve found this type of thing useful for YouTube and Gmail etc., Alexander suggests it would be useful for all the Web Applications like “Google Documents” or the new “me.com” Web Application from Apple which look like normal Desktop applications.
These “stand-alone WebApplication” sites can be used like ordinary desktop applications, they have their own icon, they can be placed in the Dock, and they have their own private preferences, cookies, history etc. The problem I’ve found is that the generated icon is not the quality of a usual desktop icon, in this screen-shot you can see the .Mac and YouTube icons I made next the one automatically generated for Google Documents:
It seems to be a common trend that these WebApplications like “google documents” and as we have seen previewd “me.com” use their own buttons, Drag&Drop and self-contained AJAX, instead of following normal links. Therefore, the URL field, the forward/back buttons often aren’t of much use anymore, so by default the iCab browser toolbar is switched off.
In the process of saving a site as “stand-alone WebApplication”, you can enter the start page and filter which URL the application is allowed to access. Both these settings are automatically filled out by iCab, so usually these don’t need to be changed. This just leaves you to select your GUI language for the “stand-alone WebApplication”. One language must be activated and selecting more than one just uses more disc space.
As I said, there are other improvements with this release, but the only other one I will mention here is the Cache Browser.
Now available in the “Tools” menu, the Cache Browser (only available under MacOSX 10.5 and later) 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 is a preview available for all files, but this is a bit flakey and sometimes produced a crash before an image appeared. However, it is possible though, to use the contextual menu to save the files to disk/open it in a new window etc. Good stuff 
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Comments
6 Responses to "iCab 53"
I think I read mention of “Fluid” in relation to something about a developer release of Safari 4; so it’s a generic Webkit thing I assume?
I’m still not clear what advantages this overs over a web archive: you’re still enveloping only one page right, not reproducing an entire website hierarchy offline?
Yes, this is a part of the webkit within Leopard onwards.
The advantages are that this is a a real Universal Binary application, 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, cookies, history etc.
However, as a rule I can’t really be bothered with filling my dock with these mini apps – apart from YouTube maybe, but I can see the attraction of a me.com icon sitting in the Dock.
As an afterthought – it’s interesting how far some people are willing to go in almost doubling-up with applications that essentially do the same thing.
Unlike installing Fluid, this sub-set of iCab, though it may look like a doubling-up, there is no extra installation, it’s just a partitioning. I personally double-up on browsers i.e. webkit/safari/icab/demeter/sunrise, but’s that’s mainly for interests sake and the fact that I primarily use iCab – Safari comes with the box. Having Firefox around is useful for comparison and the occasional site that uses Math or experimenting with the likes of Symphony’s plugin wysiwyg editor (which doesn’t function in webkit).
What I have stopped doing is installing another webkit for newsfeeds – Vienna/NetNewsWire/Newfire/Shrook etc. Although some may offer certain advantages in some areas, Google Reader does an excellent all-round integrated job or there is the Safari/Mail reader.
Shame iCab hasn’t got an unread feed count sorted yet, but I keep on planning a browser cull
The WebApps are not a WebKit thing. This feature is independant of WebKit. Technically iCab creates a copy of itself, removing all the stuff that is not necessary for a stand-alone WebApp, replacing some parts, setting up the preferences especially for this web site etc.
Also the WebApp feature will work with 10.3.9 and 10.4.x as well.
So Alexander, is this feature downloaded with Safari or as part of the OS update?
Apple has build this into the next version of Safari like I have build this into iCab. So this will come with the next Safari update, not with the next OS update. Though of course a Safari update will usually also update the WebKit of the OS and therefore you can’t update Safari without updating the OS.