Questions & answers (2011/12/16)
- Why does the Firefox Sync login always fail when I use iCab Mobile in French?
- There's an error in the French localization. It always states that the login failed, even it it was successfull. But you can nevertheless see if the login was successful or has failed: If iCab displays L'authentification n'est pas valide! Vérifiez votre nom/email, mot de passe et sync-key! then the login has really failed. If iCab only displays L'authentification n'est pas valide! then the login was actuallly successful.
This issue will be fixed in one of the next updates.
- Why can't I see the downloads in the "file sharing" section of iTunes anymore?
- Since Apple introduced the iCloud with iOS 5, Apps are no longer allowed to store files that can be downloaded again so that these files are
included in the iCloud backup. Apple wants to keep the iCloud backup as small as possible. Under iOS 5.0.0 this means that iCab
can no longer store the files in the folder which is used by the "iTunes FileSharing" by default.
You can still use the "file sharing" feature of iTunes to transfer the dwonloads to your Mac/PC, but you have to explicitly enable this feature within the iCab settings. iCab will then move the downloads into the folder that is accessible through iTunes. Please note that this will also result that the downloads will be included in the iCloud backup under iOS 5.0.0. To prevent this, you can switch off the "iTunes File sharing" setting again. If you don't use the iCloud backup feature, you can simple keep this feature enabled. If you use the iCloud feature, and you want to exclude the downloads from the backup, you need to switch off this setting and only enable it temporarily for transfering files to your Mac/PC.
Alternatively you can use the Export/Import feature to transfer download to your Mac/PC via WLAN.
Since iOS 5.0.1 the situation has changed: iOS 5.0.1 allows to exclude files from the backup individually, so there's no conflict anymore betwee the "iTunes FileSharing" feature and the iCloud Backup. Under iOS 5.0.1 you can enable iTunes FileSharing all the time and stilll the downloads won't be included in the backup.
Future versions of iCab Mobile will provide an option, to enable the backup for certain downloads manually. So if there are certain file which are very important, you can enable the Backup for these files (iOS 5.0.1. and newer). Also the "iTunes FileSharing" switch will be only provided when using iOS 5.0.0.
- 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 and the iOS tells the front-most App (in this case iCab Mobile) to release memory that is currently not needed. If the iOS doesn't get back enough free memory, it starts terminating Apps (if there are background Apps which can be terminated, the iOS starts terminating these to get the required free memory, if there are no background App that can be terminated, the forground App has to die). To prevent that iCab is killed, it is releasing the inactive Tabs when the iOS askes to release memory.
If and when iCab releases inactive Tabs can be configured in the Settings App from the Homescreen/Springboard. Here you'll find additional settings for iCab Mobile which are not found within the iCab Mobile App itself.
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 very little main memory, like the 1st gen iPad, the 4th gen iPod Touch, the 1st and 2nd gen iPhone and iPod Touch.
- iCab can be configured to release inactive tabs only in critical memory conditions. But because the iOS doesn't provide any information about how critical the memory condition is, iCab can only do a vague guess. This setting can keep inactive Tabs longer in memory, because when iCab doesn't treat the memory condition as critical, it will not release inactive Tabs. The iOS might then start to kill background Apps much earlier. The setting works relatively well on all devices, but because iCab has to guess how critical the situation is, especially the devices with very little main memory (iPad 1, 4th gen iPod Touch) there's a higher probability that ther device is running out of memory nevertheless and icab is terminated.
- iCab can be configured to never release inactive Tabs. This will always keep all Tabs in memory. This setting is recommended for devices with lots of main memory, like the iPad 2 and the iPhone 4.
Some background info:
The iPad 1 and some other devices (like the 4th gen iPod Touch) have not enough main memory built in. So these devices are almost constantly running at their limits. The device is often running out of memory, which forces Apps to release memory that they do not need at that moment. If Apps don't do this (releasing memory) and the memory is running out, they will be terminated by the iOS (it looks like they've crashed). At least the iOS tries to kill Apps in the background if the foreground App can not release enough memory, but if there's no background App that can be killed, and the system is out of memory, the foreground App has to die.The problem with the iPad 1 (and some other devices) is that they have barely enough memory to keep one or two Apps at the same time in memory, so when opening multiple Tabs they almost instantly having memory problems. And it's likely that there are not many Apps in the background which can be terminated to fullfill the memory requirements. So a "crash" is likely if the foreground App does not release as much memory in low memory conditions as possible.
For iPad 2 (and other devices with more main memory), there can be lots of Apps kept in memory, so it's not necessary that an app releases all of its memory that is currently not essentially needed, because if memory is getting low, there're usually plenty of Apps in the background, which can be closed.
What does this mean for iCab Mobile:
Modern Web pages can require a lot of memory for the tons of JavaScript code and images, videos etc. So on an iPad 1 opening only 3 Tabs with web pages of a moderate complexity can already bring the device in a low memory condition even without any background Apps running. So on this device, iCab has to be prepared to release inactive Tabs in low memory conditions (and this is why Safari is doing this as well). - 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 file hosting sites like rapidshare and megaupload?
- The iOS does not support file upload at all, so iCab has to take the file upload task out of the web page context and do it itself. This works fine as long as a web page lets the browser do its job when processing forms. iCab recreates the standard form processing when doing a file upload, so this is exactly what the browser would have done if file upload would be supported. But file hosters like rapidshare and megaupload do not want that the browser is doing its "job" and therefore these pages are overwriting the default form processing with their own form processing code. These pages disable iCab's own upload feature by overwriting it with their own upload code, and then they can only use the features which are supported by the iOS. And because the iOS does not support file uploads, you can't upload files on these web sites.
Also other sites rely on their own upload code instead of letting the browser do its job, like "yahoo mail" where you can not upload files for attachments.
But there are also many web pages, which do not mess up the standard form submit behaviour of a browser and on these web pages, the file upload feature works fine.
Here're a few examples where file upload works fine:
- You can upload photos to your Flickr account.
- Some less known file hosting sites like file-upload.net and twwa.selfip.org do also work fine.
- 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.
- iCab crashes sometimes. What can I do?
- Alomst all of the crashes are most likely caused by the device running out of main memory.
Unfortunately the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad devices do not have much main memory (some devices have more, some less memory, but with the exception of the iPhone 4 and iPad 2, all devices do have not enough), so you should in general avoid to open too many Tabs at the same time. The large screen resolution of the iPad 1 and iPod Touch of the 4th generation and their extrem lack of main memory results in a very serious critical memory conditions almost all the time. These two devices are almost always at their limits, and so you can not open many Tabs at the same time. iPhone 4 and iPad 2 are the devices where you can open the largest number of Tabs without getting into trouble.
To avoid most of the crashes, you can configure iCab to free and release inactive Tabs in low memory conditions. To do this open the "Settings" App from the home screen. Here you'll find some additional settings for iCab. And there's also a setting for low memory conditions where you can tell iCab to free/release inactive Tabs in all low memory conditions. On iPhone 4 and iPad 2, it is no problem to let iCab keep all inactive tabs all the time.
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 also 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.
- 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.