Questions & answers (2013/01/30)
- Why doesn't it work when I click on links at Google?
- There's no problem at all with google pages in iCab Mobile, unless you change the "Browser ID" to certain IDs from Desktop browsers. The reason is
that the google page provides different versions of their site for different browsers and platforms. And if google assumes you're suing a desktop
browser, then it also assumes that you're using a computer mouse and the site will then rely on certain actions you can do with a mouse but which
can not be done with a touch screen.
For example the site uses so called "hover events" to trigger certain actions on the web page just by moving the mouse cursor over a link, without clicking. On a touch-based device this is impossible, triggering an action always require a touch (click). Apple tries to solve this issue within the iOS by simulating the "hover event" by a "touch" as well, which then requires a second touch to actually trigger the "click" event. Therefore if you really want to use the google page with a "Browser ID" of a desktop browser, you may need to click twice to open certain links. The first of these clicks will trigger the hover event, the second triggers the click event and actually opens the link.
In general it is highly recommended not to use a Desktop Browser ID für the google web site (and also some other web sites). You get the best experience when you stick with the Browser IDs "Safari (iPad)" and "Safari (iPhone)". These will be recognized by most web sites as "iPad" or "iPhone" platform and then these sites won't use features anymore which can not fully supported (or not supported at all) by the iOS platform.
- Why is the audio missing when playing videos under iOS 6?
- This is a bug of the new iOS 6. The problem has to do with the "mute" feature of the iOS, which can be used to switch off audio feedback for phone calls, notifications etc.
On the iPad a switch at one side of the device can be configured to be used as orientation lock and as "mute" switch. And the new iOS 6 seems to mess up these settings.
You may be able to get the audio working again when you switch on/off this switch and also reconfigure this switch for orientation lock and mute - maybe multiple times.
- How can I upload any file (not only photos) under iOS 6?
- Unlike the web engine of iOS 5.x and older, the web engine of iOS 6 has now basic upload support as well. But it only supports uploading photos and videos from the photo album. And this will only work under iOS 6.
The upload capability of iCab Mobile works under all iOS releases and supports uploading photos videos and all other file types. It can even scale down photos before uploading to save bandwidth.
But iCab's own custom upload capability has the disadvantage, that because of several iOS restrictions, it can not work on all web pages. Therefore under iOS 6, iCab Mobile provides a switch in the settings where the user can choose, if iCab should use the upload capability from the iOS (only photos, works with some more web pages) or the capabilities of iCab (photos and all other files, can't work on all web pages).
So if you need to upload other files than just photos, make sure that you set the option "Upload files via" in the settings to "iCab Mobile".
- Where do I find the Sync key for Firefox Sync?
- To login in your Firefox Sync account you need the login name (which is usually your email address), the password and the sync key. With all these data, you should be able to login at firefox sync within iCab Mobile.
You can find the Sync key within the preferences dialog of the Firefox browser. In Firefox please open the Preferences dialog and then the "Sync" panel. Here click on the link "connect device" and then on the link "I don't have the device with me". This will open a dialog box with the Sync key. Usually this key is in the following format:
x-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx
- The modules won't work anymore. How can this be fixed?
- Sometimes when you restore the device from a backup it can happen that the modules don't work anymore. In this case you can fix this my deleting all the modules within the modules list in the settings and then tap on the "Install defaults" button to let iCab install all the modules again.
- After updating to iOS 5, I can't transfer large file to other Apps. Why?
- This is a general issue of iOS 5 which affects all Apps, this is not a specific issue of iCab Mobile. When transferring files to other Apps using the "Open in" window, iOS 5 seems to abort all file transfers which need more time than one minute. And within one minute only about 300-350 MB of data can be transferred on most devices, longer files need more time and therefore can not be opened in other Apps anymore. You may need to ask Apple for a solution for this problem.
- Why is iCab always load the web pages from the Web again when switching between Tabs on my iPad (1st gen)?
- This happens because the iPad is runnig out of free main memory. To prevent that the device is really running out of memory and iCab Mobile is terminated, iCab will release as much memory as possible, and this includes the web pages within inactive Tabs.
If and when iCab releases inactive Tabs can be configured in the Settings App from the Homescreen/Springboard.
There are the following choices for low memory conditions:
- iCab can release inactive Tabs in all low memory conditions which are reported by the iOS. This setting can prevent most of the memory-related "crashes", and this is what Safari is doing as well. This setting provides the best stability for devices with a very small amount of main memory, like the 1st gen iPad, the 4th gen iPod Touch, the 1st and 2nd gen iPhone and iPod Touch. When using iOS 5 or later, this option should be selected on all devices.
- iCab can be configured to release inactive tabs only in critical memory conditions. Under iOS 5, this option is identical to the first choice from above. Under iOS 4.x and older this option allows iCab Mobile to prevent that inactive Tabs are released too early. iOS 4.x and older sends out memory warnings very early, while the device is not yet running out of memory.
- iCab can be configured to never release inactive Tabs. This will always keep all Tabs in memory. This setting is only recommended for devices running iOS 4.x and older and which have lots of main memory, like the iPad 2 and the iPhone 4.
- iCab crashes sometimes. What can I do?
- Almost all of the crashes are most likely caused by the device running out of main memory. Especially the iPad 1 and the iPod Touch of the 4th and 5th generation are affected because these devices are running out of memory
faster than all other devices, because of the lack of much main memory.
You can configure in the "Settings" App of the device (the one from the homescreen) what iCab should do in low memory conditions and so avoid most of the crashes.
There are the following options available:
- iCab can release inactive Tabs in all low memory conditions which are reported by the iOS. This setting can prevent most of the memory-related "crashes", and this is what Safari is doing as well. This setting provides the best stability for devices with a very small amount of main memory, like the 1st gen iPad, the 4th gen iPod Touch, the 1st and 2nd gen iPhone and iPod Touch. When using iOS 5 or later, this option should be selected on all devices.
- iCab can be configured to release inactive tabs only in critical memory conditions. Under iOS 5, this option is identical to the first choice from above. Under iOS 4.x and older this option allows iCab Mobile to prevent that inactive Tabs are released too early. iOS 4.x and older sends out memory warnings very early, while the device is not yet running out of memory.
- iCab can be configured to never release inactive Tabs. This will always keep all Tabs in memory. This setting is only recommended for devices running iOS 4.x and older and which have lots of main memory, like the iPad 2 and the iPhone 4.
The special "Memory Saving mode" will release some memory of all inactive Tabs (without unloading the web pages) and can greatly reduce the overall memory requirements of iCab. But there's also a small issue: switching between tabs will be a little bit slower when this option is enabled, because when switching to another tab, the released memory nneds to be allocated and restored again which needs time. But on fast devices like an iPad, this is hardly noticeable. On older and slower devices you should check out if the speed is more important (faster Tab switching) or the memory usage (more Tabs can be opened).
Currently (March 2012) this option should be enabled when using a new iPad 3. A bug in the memory management of iOS 5 can have the effect that the iPad 3 is running out of memory very fast, so enabling this option can prevent this, or at least slow it down.Because of the same bug of the iOS the option "Release Tab if free memory is less than x%" can help on the iPad 3 to avoid that the device is running out of memory and the App is terminated. Normally the iOS notifies the Apps when the device is about to run out of memory, so the Apps can release memory they currently don't need, flush caches etc. Becase of the bug this might no longer happen. with this option enabled, iCab will observe the free memory itself and will release inactive Tabs whenever the free memory drops under a certain limit.
Also the iOS itself can eat up more and more memory when the device is running for months without a reboot. So it can sometimes help to reboot the device from time to time. To reboot, hold down the sleep button at the top of the case until a slider appears on the screen to switch off the device. Use the slider and when the device is off, hold down the sleep button again to swith on the device again.
- Why does logging-in into a page doesn't work?
- You've probably enabled the "offline mode". But the offline mode is not supposed to be enabled all the time. The offline mode is meant only to be used when you want to force iCab Mobile to work offline and when iCab should not load data from the internet. In this case iCab will always load web pages which are already or still in the disk cache (because you've visited the page before) from the disk cache, and never from the internet. This is useful to save bandwidth and traffic in situations where using an internet connection would be expensive or even impossible. But logging-in somewhere usually doesn't work in offline mode, because the server is never contacted
and therfore never gets the information about your login attempt.
So in general you should switch off the offline mode. In case there's no internet connection available (for example in "Airplane mode"), iCab will automatically use the offline mode. You don't need to explicitly enable the offline mode in this case. The disk cache itself should be enabled, unless you never intend to use the offline mode.
Only if the device is connected to the internet but you explicitly want to avoid to go online to revisit a previously visited web page, you can explicitly switch on the offline mode.
- Why is it no longer possible to download and install modules?
- Apple has requested that I remove this feature. Therefore it is no longer possible to download and install modules from the internet. I'm sorry.
But I've included all of the modules which were available for download from our own server into iCab Mobile, so all of the modules can be still used.
If you know of other third party modules, or if you have written a module yourself, which you want to have included in iCab Mobile, please let us know. We can't let you download the modules from the internet anymore, but we can still include these modules directly in iCab Mobile.
- 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.
As of iCab Mobile 4.5 you can configure in the "Settings" App of the device, what exactly iCab should do in private mode. So you can configure the private mode to be less private and keep the Tabs.
- How can I let iCab Mobile fill out forms automatically?
- For standard login forms (normal HTML forms), iCab behaves a little
bit different than other browsers to get more flexibility and also
more security and privacy.
First of all, you have to save the forms manually by using the "Save forms" button from the menu of the second button in the toolbar. Saving the form manually has the big advantage, that you can control what exactly will be saved. You fill out the form with all the data that should be saved, then you use the "Save forms" button. The forms in it's current state will then be saved. This way you can explicitly exclude certain form field to be saved by not filling them out before saving the form.
For example when you do not want to save passwords on the device, but it is OK to save the login name and other data that is not a secret, you can fill out all the data with the exception of the password and then you save this data only. When iCab will automatically fill out the form later, it will fill out the form with the saved data, and then you can (and have to) enter the password manually. This way no one is able to use your passwords, even if your device was lost or stolen, because the passwords are not stored on the device.
If you don't care that much about the passwords, you can also enter the password before saving the form, then iCab can automatically fill out the complete form, including the password. The choice is yours.
But especially on a mobile device which can be easily lost or stolen, it can be dangerous if a web browser (like Safari) can only save all or nothing. If the device is stolen, the thief can get access to your accounts by just using the "form auto fill" feature.
Once you've saved the form, you can either use the "Fill out forms" button of menu of the the second button in the toolbar, to fill out the form from the saved data manually, or you can switch on the option "Auto fill out forms" in the settings, which lets iCab look for forms on each web page that is loaded, and if there are saved data for this site available, icab will automatically fill out the forms.
- Can I change the download limit for 3G/Edge connections?
- Yes, you can change the download limits in the "iCab Mobile" settings of the "Settings" App of the device.
- Why is the file upload feature not working on a certain web page?
- The problem is the web engine of the iOS, which does not support file uploads, and Apple does not allow to use other web engines than the one that's built-in in the iOS.
So in order to support file uploads nevertheless, iCab has to replace the standard "browse file" buttons with its own custom buttons, and has to modify the form submit request internally to add the file data, which the web engine did not include in the request. This works fine for most web pages, but a few web pages try to process the form data before it is submitted and if they get confused about the new custom file buttons of iCab, they might fail to submit the form properly.
Another problem are web pages which only add the "select file" buttons when the user has initiated certain actions on the page. In this case iCab did not know about these buttons, so these buttons remain disabled (the iOS does not support these and therefore only draws them in an inactive state). In these cases you can tap and hold your finger on the disabled "select file" button for about a second, and iCab will now activate the button and lets you select a file for the upload.
Upload forms which are embedded within a FRAME or IFRAME element and which are loaded from a different domain than the main document can not be supported by iCab. The limited API of the iOS only allows to access the content of the web page via JavaScript through the main document and the so called "same-origin-policy" prevents that iCab can access the form in this case.
- How can I upload photos to facebook?
- Currently (June 2012) facebook provides multiply ways to upload photos. One way is to use the upload form directly within the timeline, another way is the upload form within the facebook photo album.
The upload form within the timeline won't enable the "select file" button automatically. In order to select a photo, just hold down the finger on this disabled button a longer time (about one second), then iCab will enable the button and you can select a photo for the upload.
The upload form within the photo album does not have this issue, it even allows you to upload up to 5 photos at once. It's only a little bit confusing that the "Add Photo" button within the photo album actually does not allow to upload new photos, instead it only creates a new folder for the photo album. So you have to open a folder of the album first, and within the folder the "add photo" button will open the upload form for photos.
- Some Popop windows won't open. Can this be fixed?
- The iOS has several limitations. One of the limitations is that the WebKit component of the iOS does not support windows/tabs at all for non-Apple Apps, so all links or actions which would open a new window are ignored by the iOS. With a few tricks it is possible to implement links which open in new windows/tabs nevertheless. Also some popup windows can be supported, but unfortunately not all of them. Popup windows which use the JavaScript call "window.open(url)" will work,
but if a web page uses the same call "window.open()" without providing the URL for the new window, it does not work. This is because the the web page would need a reference to the new window to be able to open the URL afterwards in the new window, but because the iOS does not support windows, there's no way to get the reference to the new window.
- Some links to the AppStore don't work. What can I do?
- Links to the AppStore do work fine. But many of these AppStore links are affiliate links, which means, they do not link directly to the AppStore but instead they link to an affiliate server that processes these links first and then redirects to the AppStore. And if you've enabled the filters in iCab Mobile, it is likely that these affiliate links are blocked. And this is why the redirection to the Apptore won't work. You may switch off the filters or at least switch off the filters which match the affiliate servers.
- In a web forum I can't enter text in text fields. Is there a solution?
- Some web pages do use a "rich text" editor to enter nicely formatted text. These text editors assume that the Browser can get key strokes all the time. But on the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad devices, this is not the case. Key strokes can only be processed if the virtual keyboard is activated and the "rich text" editor can not enable the virtual keyboard. This is a general issue of "touch" devices and virtual keyboards. The only solution would be that the web page provides a standard text field for entering the text for mobile devices. And many web pages are already doing this, but fail to recognize iCab Mobile as "mobile" browser. But you can change the "Browser ID" setting in iCab Mobile to configure iCab to identify itself as "Safari (iPad)" or "Safari (iPhone)". Because most web pages do support Mobile Safari, changing the browser ID to the one of Safari IDs will usually work fine.
- Some web pages do contain textfields or elements which are only partially visible. How can I see the parts that are hidden?
- You can scroll these areas. But you have to use two fingers for scrolling these areas instead of only one finger. One finger
will always scroll the whole web page, with two fingers you can scroll these embedded areas (text fields, frames and some other elements).
- Why are Cookies not saved, though I've configured iCab to save and keep all cookies?
- You've probably enabled the "private browsing" feature. And because the cookies are private data, these are not stored while the "private browsing" mode is enabled. Switch off the private mode to let iCab save the Cookies permanently.
- All web pages I visit do 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.
- The App doesn't restore my session, even when configured to do so
- You've probably enabled the "Private Browsing" feature. And because all the visited web pages are considered as "private"
data, you can't restore the last session if "Private Browsing" is enabled. Restoring the session would require to reveal
the pages you've visited the last time. So if you want to restore the last session, you have to switch off the private browsing mode.
- 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 iOS, iCab Mobile has to use JavaScript as a workaround for these limitations and to implement several of its key 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.
But if you install a certain bookmarklet in Safari, you can easily open the page that is currently displayed in Safari in iCab Mobile. In the iCab Blog you'll find a description how to install this bookmarklet in Safari.
- 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 deliver 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.