Current version: 1.9 (preview)The preview versions are free. When a full release ("iCab Pro") is available, it will cost US$29, but there will still be a free version.
Get it from: http://www.icab.de/
Actually, some of these are control panels or extensions, rather than applications. I've started using Kaleidoscope again, but I'm still not using Décor. Instead, I've found some really cool desktop patterns by Don Barnett and someone who calles himself dude.
I'm using Microsoft's Internet Explorer again -- version 4.5 is significantly faster than the earlier 4.x releases, and much smaller than recent versions of Netscape Navigator. I can't actually recommend either of them. There are still no good web browsers, only some that are less bad than others.
I've also taken Userland Frontier off the list. I still use the last freeware version, but it's a bit buggy with MacOS 8.x, and I can't afford the commercial releases.
Current version: 1.9 (preview)
The preview versions are free. When a full release ("iCab Pro") is available, it will cost US$29, but there will still be a free version.
Get it from: http://www.icab.de/
iCab comes close to being a good browser for the Mac. I expect the full release will actually be good.
iCab is far more standards-compliant than either of the Big Two, is smaller and faster, and offers far more useful options. It's cookie control is impressive and detailed, and it has built-in ad banner filtering. It's the only graphical browser I've heard of that supports the LINK tag.
Version 1.9 has (very) limited JavaScript support, and still lacks CSS support.
Commercial software: US$119 (US$79 Academic)
Current version: 5.1
Get it from: http://www.barebones.com/bbedit.html
BBEdit is the most popular text editor on the Mac platform. It's fast, feature-rich, and expandable. The current version especially kicks ass if you also use MacPerl (which I find myself doing with increasing frequency).
There's also a "Lite" freeware version of the program which is probably worth checking out. The full version only costs US$79 if you're upgrading from the BBEdit Lite. BBEdit Lite is available from various public FTP servers, but you might have to have downloaded it from the Bare Bones website in order to qualify for the price break on upgrade.
Freeware
Current version: 5.2.0r4 (based on Perl 5.004)
Get it from: http://www.ptf.com/macperl/depts/getmp.html
Perl has been described as "the duct tape that holds the Internet together" and "a Swiss Army chainsaw." It's a fast, flexible programming language. MacPerl is, obviously enough, the Macintosh port of this language.
Shareware: US$20
Current version: 2.7
Get it from: http://www.dragthing.com/
This is a very flexible improvement on the Launcher app that ships with current Macs. It allows drag-and-drop onto the launch tiles; the lack of this feature had kept me from using Launcher.
Shareware: US$20
Current version: 1.1
Get it from: http://www.falken.net/webfree/
This is one of the coolest web browsing enhancements I've ever seen. WebFree improves the quality of your browsing experience by letting you block ad banners, keep animated GIFs from repeating, block cookies on a server-by-server basis, and deactivate the <BLINK> tag. It's the first of those features that got my attention since I don't run into very many sites that use <BLINK> anymore, but lots of sites waste space in my browser window with advertising banners.
WebFree works by looking for certain patterns of characters that tend to show up the tags sites use in their ads,
and stripping those tags out of the HTML source as it downloads.
It's not perfect, but it does let you add and remove elements to and from the blocker list.
I found, for example, that that Yahoo!'s ads still got through until I added "/RedirectID=" to the list.
Shareware: US$25
Current version: 2.2.2
Get it from: http://www.kaleidoscope.net/
One of those fun user-interface utilities, Kaleidoscope allows you to alter the appearance of your menus and windows. With version 1.5, third-party color schemes are being fully supported.