The last thing you might expect in today's computing universe is a totally new, full-featured Web browser for the Macintosh.
After all, Netscape and Microsoft's Internet Explorer have been freely available for years. So who would waste time developing an alternative with a price tag, and then compound the foolishness by turning their noses up at the much larger Windows market?
Alexander Clauss and Oliver Joppich, that's who. This pair of intrepid Germans have given us iCab, "the Internet taxi for the Mac." Clauss wrote the code; Joppich founded the company and serves as spokesman.
The first preview version (in German only) was posted to the iCab Web site (www. icab.de) about a month ago, followed shortly by a partially translated English version. Within three weeks of the program's appearance on the Web, more than 50,000 people downloaded it.
A couple of weeks ago, a more refined preview version 1.25 appeared, fully translated into English. A version for older, pre-Power PC Macs has been posted as well. Both require System 7.5 or later, 4MB of free RAM, Thread Manager and Internet Config, both of which have been incorporated into Mac OS 8.5.
All the preview versions are free, but they expire in May. Joppich has said in the future a free version will co-exist with a more advanced "commercial" version that will cost 49 German marks (about $29).
In an interview with MacWorld's German counterpart, MacWelt, Joppich said his company's goal was to produce a "slim browser that would give users a smooth ride on the Internet." Indeed, iCab consumes just 2 MB of hard drive space and its preferred memory partition is a mere 1.4 megabytes. By comparison, Netscape Communicator 4.5 eats up 10 MB of hard drive space and prefers at least 8.2 megs of internal memory.
To prevent iCab from bloating like its rivals, non-essential features were omitted. For example, iCab has no e-mail client, although it can transmit e-mail. The browser's creators figure you're better off using a dedicated e-mail program like Eudora Pro or Claris Emailer.
In another fat-trimming move, iCab has no built-in Java, but rather depends on Apple's built-in Mac Runtime for Java 2.0 or later.
I was especially pleased with iCab's quick and simple installation, which neither resource-clogging extensions into your System Folder (like Explorer) nor foists unwanted features on you (like Netscape's AOL Instant Messenger).
Nevertheless, iCab incorporates many of the best features of the Big Two and manages to top them in a few instances, such as the ability to filter out advertisements while allowing other page graphics to load. I also liked a preferences option that deletes any accepted cookies when you quit the browser.
The main iCab window is straightforward, with a row of easily identifiable icons at the top, including two that can increase or decrease the size of the text on a Web page, which is also one of IE's strengths over Netscape. The new browser displays its underdog charm with a page-loading icon in the upper-right corner that shows a cartoon image of a moving taxi spewing white clouds of exhaust .
Borrowing another of Explorer's best features, iCab preserves a history of Web sites you've visited over the previous several days.
Two of the biggest concerns with browsers are speed and stability. In these areas, unfortunately, iCab performs similarly to the competition.Sometimes it has problems properly displaying pages that IE or Netscape handle flawlessly. A few sites that require the user to log in refused to load at all.
For a preview version, though, iCab is a remarkably polished piece of software. If Clauss and Joppich can work out the kinks, they just might convince a fair number of Mac users to pay for a Web browser.
Wunderbar!
Send e-mail to david.zeiler@baltsun.com.
Pub Date: 03/29/99