I just adore the iPad and think it’s an incredible platform, and while I can understand Apple wanting to ensure that no malicious code enters the walled garden, I really think they need to make the rules and the approval process much more transparent and consistent if they really want the platform to evolve and thrive.

Thanks for all your hard work and good luck with any future development!

If I understand your use case correctly, you need something that controls the whole browser. This is something the modules can’t do.

But I guess you can achieve something similar by writing a small wrapper page using HTML and JavaScript yourself. Within this page you can add some iframes and with the JavaScript code
you can load/reload different pages within these iframes and switch between them.

Did you think of adding a new module-feature? There is a plugin in Chrome that is great to create presentations that cycling through different websites at time intervals. We use it to have several google analytics tabs and then the plugin pass from a tab to another each X seconds, and it reloads every tab every Y seconds. Do you think it’s possible to add this kind of module in your browser?

I’m one of the first users of your great App. And the fact that they don’t allow it to add modules from internet it’s something bad… but as long as you can add all modules as you say in the post, it’s ok for your users. I’m sure of it.

Best regards from Spain,
jc

BTW about iCab: best browser for iphone, keep up the good work, hurray!! But there is a BUT for me: it’s getting too much heavy weight even on iPhone4.

Hi Alex!
Can you please point me to some API’s that would let my app run http server with file import/export functionality @ 192.168.x.x:8080

I dont wish to reinvent the wheel.

I dont know where to start and google has many misleading friend… Thanks, Tank

When iCab introduced the modules, there was no restriction which has forbidden to download them. And because the modules were pure JavaScript that is interpreted by UIWebView, they were allowed as “interpreting language” (otherwise almost all Apps using the UIWebView would have be pulled from the AppStore). And Apple accepted this for many many iCab Mobile updates.

When they called me to remove the modules or at least remove the “download” feature, there was no public rule for this. This rule came some time later, after they called me. So they changed their guidelines sometime, but have not published it immediately, noticed that iCab now violates one of the new “secret” rules and called me. And this made this call so “strange”: The guy at the phone could or would not tell me which of the rules was violated by iCab Mobile.

It went a little bit like this:
Apple: “Your App violates rules of the AppStore guidelines, so you have to change feature X”.
Me: “Which rules are those?”
Apple: “I can not tell!”
Me: “If you can’t tell me what’s wrong, how should I suppose to know what I need to change?”
Apple: “I can not tell!”

In fact “I can not tell” was a response I heard almost all the time when I tried to ask something.

In any case: Interpreted stuff is not allowed to be downloaded at all. It seems that Apple wants to review everything that is code and is not entered by the user of the App himself. I think this is why downloads are forbidden now.

On the other hand interpreters in general seems to be no longer limited to the ones that are built-in into the iOS (which means JavaScript). There’s an App Codea/Codify, which implemented an interpreter for the “Lua” programming language, looks really great and is in the AppStore. But again: download and sharing your own “Lua” programs via Internet is not possible or very complicated.

I like your blog wicht I only just discovered after searching something about UIWebView. Keep up the good work with iCab!!!!
I wandered if you know that Apple has reversed its position with regards to interpreted languages. I think (but am not entirely sure about the timing) that at the time you received this phone call, interpreted languages were not allowed at all, period. But now, the rule is: interpreted languages are allowed as long as the content is never downloaded, and if the content is downloaded, it has to be JavaScript running in an UIWebView. I don’t know if Apple would allow downloaded JavaScript if your UIwebview has a mechanism that allows you to communicate to the objective C layer. But it seems to me that you are pretty safe if you’d added a text input area for JavaScript. So, maybe that is an idea for you.