iCab Mobile

iCab Mobile

iCab Mobile FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

General information

The current iPhone OS has some issues and limitations. There are still some known memory issues in certain components of the OS (Firmware 2.x), so apps which are using these components will run out of memory sooner or later. One of these components is the WebKit component. In iPhone OS 3.0 Apple has fixed most of these memory issues.

There are also some artificial limitations of the SDK, features which Apple has hidden for third-party apps and which can't be used in iPhone apps. For some of these features there are workarounds, but some are impossible to implement without violating the iPhone SDK agreement.

Questions & answers

When "Private Browsing" is enabled, Tabs won't be restored anymore. Why?

The visited web sites are considered as private data, just like the history. So while the "Private Browsing" feature is enabled, the Tabs can not be restored automatically, because this would reveal the last visited web pages.

All web pages I visit fo look very basic with a very simple layout. Why don't I see the standard layout of the web page?

You've probably enabled the "Site Compression" feature (via "Google Mobilizer"), which is stripping down the web page so it can be loaded much faster. To get back the standard layout, just switch off the "Site Compression" feature.

iCab crashes sometimes. What can I do?

As mentioned above, the WebKit component of the iPhone OS still has some memory issues (Firmware 2.x), it doesn't free all the memory (cache) that is no longer needed, so after a while the device is running out of memory. And when the device is running out of memory, it quits the apps to get more memory back. To limit the memory usage, please avoid open too many Tabs at the same time. Each Tab is creating a WebKit object, which eats up additional memory.

Sometimes it can even help, to switch off the iPhone or iPod Touch completely (hold down the home button and the button at the top of the case at the same time for several seconds, until a slider appears on the screen to switch off the device) and switch it on again.

In case you're still using an older releases of the iPhone OS (firmware 2.x), please update to 3.x, this will fix many bugs and most of the memory issues.

How do the offline bookmarks work?

If you create a bookmark from the currently displayed web page, you can activate a switch to create an offline bookmark. Offline bookmarks are basically ordinary bookmarks, but in addition they also save the whole content of the web page on the device. In the bookmarks list these bookmarks do have an "offline" button to the right. If you tap on this "offline" button, the page is loaded from the saved data, without an internet connection. If you tap the bookmark entry without hitting the offline button, the page is loaded from the web, just like this would be done with normal bookmarks.

You can also remove the "offline" state from the Offline bookmark when in editing mode. Just switch off the "offline" switch. This will remove all the saved data and convert the offline bookmark into an ordinary bookmark.

I've switched off images, but some are displayed nevertheless. Why?

The iPhone OS doesn't provide a way to find out the content type of the data that is loaded by WebKit. Only the URL can be used as a hint. So if an image can not be identified as image because the URL does not include any of the usual file extensions for example, the image will be displayed nevertheless. But this affects only a few images.

There's a form which I can't save and fill out automatically. Why?

Forms can be only filled out, if the form still uses the same address to submit the form data and if the basic form fields are still unchanged. If the form uses a different address to submit the form data, or the form structure has changed, the form can't be filled out automatically anymore.

Is it possible to switch off JavaScript?

No, this is not possible. The iPhone OS doesn't support this for third-party apps. Also because of the limitations of the iPhone OS, iCab Mobile has to use JavaScript as a workaround for these limitations and to implement several of its features.

Is it possible use iCab Mobile as default web browser on the iPhone?

No, the iPhone OS will always launch Safari when another App asks to open a web page. This can't be changed at the moment.

Some web pages do always present the mobile version of the page with less information. Is it possible to force these sites to deliver the "real" version of the page?

Yes, this is possible. These web sites are usually checking the browser ID (UserAgent) to detect if you're using a browser of a mobile device. And in iCab Mobile you can modify this browser ID. So for example if you select "Safari (Mac)" as ID iCab will indentify itself as Safari browser on a Mac computer and now web pages will deleiver the "real" web pages to iCab mobile. In a few cases you may still get the mobile version of the page. In these cases the web pages probably have stored the information to deliver the mobile version in a cookie as well. So you can delete the cookies in iCab Mobile as well.