Omniweb 5 Beta


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Just incase anyone didn't know Omniweb 5 is now out in Beta form

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/5166

I've just tried it, and I'm not that impressed, it's slow to start (could be due to being a beta) and the rendering seems slower than Safari 1.1 on my machine :(

The tabs are nice, but get in the way if you've got a small screen :no: not really worth the asking price if you ask me :rolleyes:

post-60-1075730328.jpg

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personally I think its ****loads better than Safari. Omniweb has always been the prettiest lil ol cocoa browser on OS X, and now with the addition of tabs (yes!) workspaces (woohoo) and other enhancements like preferences that you can set per site (I'm in heaven), and the HUGE speed boost, The Omni Group may be set to take back over the OS X browser crown.

As is normally the case with omniweb all you will get if you don't pay up is rather amusing nag screens once in awhile so there is no reason really not to try it

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It looks nice in movies and pictures but I can't seem get used to everything the app does.

Tabs: This is one of the biggest changes, I love the way tabs look in omniweb but they aren't as funtional as I'd like them to be. Coming from an iMac with a resolution of only 1024x768 I'm not at all happy with how much space the drawer takes up. And not to mention they are incredibly slow loading. Omni needs to provide an alternate, not everyone has a massive resolution.

Speed: The app took off after 6-7 bounces, not bad but then again not good. I'm finding it really hard to get used to Safari's 1.0 rendering engine which is slow as all hell in comparison to Safari 1.1 and pathetic compared to 1.2 which has been seen the recent betas of Mac OS X 10.3.3. I thought omniweb would have jumped on 1.1 form the start, they say they are working on it for a 5.1 release due in a month or so. (in a month, most users will be enjoying all that Safari 1.2 has to offer)

I hate the way it handles ads. The ad should be blocked out, but instead you left with a small indeed and the text source of what the ad should say. I prefer PithHelmets method which blocks the image and leave no space whatsoever. Sure its not a Safari feature but its something both browsers need to tone up on.

In all, its a half way decent browser, for now I'm going to stick with Safari . Its sleeker and alot faster. But it'll be nice to see how this beta expands. And to see if it can surpace Safari as the best OS X browser

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they are actually going to be using webcore 1.2 in the next beta which should be out in the next 2 weeks. Also I just noticed after I went to the BBC News website that it has a built in RSS Feed Reader which is quite cool

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ooh, looks nice, is it any better than Firebird?

hmm better than plain vanilla firebird I'd say yes, but firebird with extensions I'd have to think about it for a minute

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personally I think its ****loads better than Safari. Omniweb has always been the prettiest lil ol cocoa browser on OS X, and now with the addition of tabs (yes!) workspaces (woohoo) and other enhancements like preferences that you can set per site (I'm in heaven), and the HUGE speed boost, The Omni Group may be set to take back over the OS X browser crown.

As is normally the case with omniweb all you will get if you don't pay up is rather amusing nag screens once in awhile so there is no reason really not to try it

I love it too as well!

There are several bugs that needs to be worked out, such as speed, text boxes, stability, etc, but on the whole I like how it functions. I look forward to a stable release and I will definitely purchase it.

Cheers,

ss1.

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I love it. The tabs are sweet, and I am on a low-res iBook.

It will be a lot better once it uses the latest webkit, but it isnt bad at all now. Definitely better then the safari betas.

The form editor I am using to post this is cool to, but when you close it the text doesnt show up in neowins post screen...

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Seems nice for the moment, I've only given it ten minutes tho. I've always been a fan of OmniWeb, so I'm quite sure it'll probably be paid for, and become my browser, when its released.

Is anyone having issues with 'Quick Reply' on this board? I typed, but nothing came up, and yet when i hit the form editor button (this feature always rocked :D) my text was indeed picked up. For now, these ext box issues, might keep me from using it, but it seems VERY promising, IMO. :)

It seems most people aren't really 'diggin' this browser too much, for me it seems as good as Safari does, speed-wise. I can understand the issues with tabs for 15" iMac or iBook users tho...

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I haven't downloaded this yet, but I've used OmniWeb 4 a bit and judging from these screenshots, I'm still not sure I like the look of the browser at all. OS X seems to be at its most elegant with soft, slim UIs.. from those icons just don't look very X-like (I know they're in all kinds of apps, but they're still ugly ;)), to that big bar along the bottom of the window (why is it there? Can you hide it?), and even the black separator bar above and below the tabs just sticks out and looks wrong to me.

Having said all of that, it's not going to stop me using it when I do download it. It's only going to make me focus harder on any other flaws it might have.

Workspaces rock though, wow that's an excellent idea. C'mon Apple, is this too big of a change for Safari 1.2? Probably :)

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It was actually just as fast if not faster for me than Safari. I am a little confused about everyone's reports of slowness. It started up with only one dock bounce and the rendering engine brought up everything extremely fast.

I like the interface. I mean, it's a browser, there is not too much to add. Most websites are longer vertically than they are horizontally, so the theory is that the more vertical space used is less of a website that you could be viewing. This is the very reason for the tabs on the side. This theory has some flaws in it that I can see. Number 1 being that the eye is more accustomed to seeing horizontally than vertically, take wide-screen movies for case. So, although the drawer might be able to handle more tabs visually, it could be argued that you are really not seeing anymore than you were with horizontal tabs.

The argument also flaws in that both the status bar and the favorites bar appear in a horizontal position, taking up the very space they were trying to save in the first place.

This still does not even address the fact that it uses a drawer. Some like em, some don't. I guess it all boils down to personal preference on this one, however, most users 'do not' like scrolling horizontally.

Okay, to all the "regular" tab lovers:

1) Screens are generally wider than they are tall, while web pages are generally taller than they are wide. Thus, if you have a constrained screen size, in general, the vertical real estate is more valuable than the horizontal real estate. Which is why we make it easy to get rid of all the vertical content above and below the actual web page (by clicking on the standard hide/show toolbar lozenge).

2) It is true that scrolling vertically is a lot more "comfortable" than scrolling horizontally, so while horizontal real estate is generally more available, you do want to make sure that you don't use up too much of it and force a horizontal scroller. Fortunately, the tab drawer isn't really very wide (although you can widen it if you want larger previews/titles). I have yet to see a page that doesn't fit well on a 1024x768 screen with the drawer open. So unless you've got an orange or blue toilet seat iBook, you'll be fine.

3) For large numbers of tabs, the advantages of a vertical list (turning off previews) should be fairly self-evident. "regular" tabs don't scale well beyond about 5-6 tabs to a window.

4) For small numbers of tabs (5 or less) the previews are extremely useful because they give you a lot more "instinctive" information about the state of the tab than you get from "regular" tabs. You can usually click back and forth without reading titles, you can tell at a glance when enough content is there to make switching to read it worthwhile even while the loading indicator is still spinning, etc. The feel is quite a bit different, but it is hard to describe until you've tried it for awhile - sort of an Expose-ish thing.

5) Here is my trump card: so go ahead and close the tab drawer! You use zero screen space, and can still use cmd-up/down arrow for switching between them. Remember that you can drag and drop reorder tabs within a window, or from one window to another, and can move windows from one workspace to another, all of which can be saved in one or more workspace snapshots. So you can always temporarily open the drawer, order the tabs appropriately for your use, then close it again.

This works great for the two most common tab uses: (a) sets of sites you view often: order them as you like and it becomes instinctive to know what follows/precedes what, and (b) queues of pages that you want to look at in order (like picking multiple search results): when you finish with one just close it with cmd-w or move on to the next with cmd-down arrow - in this case you don't really care about 'real' navigation among tabs at all.

So yes, we're going to force you (as much as we can, since you aren't obligated to try the browser at all...), to try the tabs our way and see what you think. If we get a lot of feedback about people wanting "regular" tabs after using OW5 for awhile, then yes, we'd probably add that option.

I can think of two sites that I visit regularly that will not fit in the window with the tab drawer activated. www.designtechnika.com and www.twusa.ca both will not fit. So I guess they need to rethink some things.

Overall, I would say this release is good news for the community. Competition is always a good thing and will maybe cause Apple to take a closer look at some features, but the big killer is Safari is free, omniweb is not. Simple as that. People are generally not willing to pay for something or switch unless they see a dramatic advantage of doing so and I fail to see how omniweb offers that.

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Seems nice for the moment, I've only given it ten minutes tho. I've always been a fan of OmniWeb, so I'm quite sure it'll probably be paid for, and become my browser, when its released.

Is anyone having issues with 'Quick Reply' on this board? I typed, but nothing came up, and yet when i hit the form editor button (this feature always rocked :D) my text was indeed picked up. For now, these ext box issues, might keep me from using it, but it seems VERY promising, IMO. :)

It seems most people aren't really 'diggin' this browser too much, for me it seems as good as Safari does, speed-wise. I can understand the issues with tabs for 15" iMac or iBook users tho...

Yeah, I had the same problem with the QR feature.

This *IS* a little slower then safari 1.2, but I am sure it will be fixed once they start using the latest webkit.

The tabs are not that bad anymore, I am used to them already on my 1024x768 display. I am sure on a cinema display they would be better though, because you could make them huge...

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Tabs: This is one of the biggest changes, I love the way tabs look in omniweb but they aren't as funtional as I'd like them to be. Coming from an iMac with a resolution of only 1024x768 I'm not at all happy with how much space the drawer takes up. And not to mention they are incredibly slow loading. Omni needs to provide an alternate, not everyone has a massive resolution.

Speed: The app took off after 6-7 bounces, not bad but then again not good. I'm finding it really hard to get used to Safari's 1.0 rendering engine which is slow as all hell in comparison to Safari 1.1 and pathetic compared to 1.2 which has been seen the recent betas of Mac OS X 10.3.3. I thought omniweb would have jumped on 1.1 form the start, they say they are working on it for a 5.1 release due in a month or so. (in a month, most users will be enjoying all that Safari 1.2 has to offer)

I hate the way it handles ads. The ad should be blocked out, but instead you left with a small indeed and the text source of what the ad should say. I prefer PithHelmets method which blocks the image and leave no space whatsoever. Sure its not a Safari feature but its something both browsers need to tone up on.

In all, its a half way decent browser, for now I'm going to stick with Safari . Its sleeker and alot faster. But it'll be nice to see how this beta expands. And to see if it can surpace Safari as the best OS X browser

Omniweb is back! Woot!! I love it. With Safari 1.2 being the most buggy release yet, it's a perfect time to test this out.

Tabs: This is one of the biggest changes, I love the way tabs look in omniweb but they aren't as funtional as I'd like them to be. Coming from an iMac with a resolution of only 1024x768 I'm not at all happy with how much space the drawer takes up. And not to mention they are incredibly slow loading. Omni needs to provide an alternate, not everyone has a massive resolution.
I like the tabs over there. Like was previously stated, vertical space is more valuable that horizontal. If this was the first implementation of tabs in ANY browser, people would love it. I could care less if the whole page isn't visible in the tab. I still know what it is.
Speed: The app took off after 6-7 bounces, not bad but then again not good. I'm finding it really hard to get used to Safari's 1.0 rendering engine which is slow as all hell in comparison to Safari 1.1 and pathetic compared to 1.2 which has been seen the recent betas of Mac OS X 10.3.3. I thought omniweb would have jumped on 1.1 form the start, they say they are working on it for a 5.1 release due in a month or so. (in a month, most users will be enjoying all that Safari 1.2 has to offer)

Speed. Safari 1.0 is NOT that much slower than 1.2. We're talking about fractions of seconds here. Not a big deal.

I hate the way it handles ads. The ad should be blocked out, but instead you left with a small indeed and the text source of what the ad should say. I prefer PithHelmets method which blocks the image and leave no space whatsoever. Sure its not a Safari feature but its something both browsers need to tone up on.

Ads. This is the CORRECT way ads should be handled. When you get rid of the ad and the placeholder, it can screw up some pages pretty badly. By keeping a placeholder there, everything belongs where is should.

I love the individual site preferences. Versiontracker is a great example. If you go there with OW, it will look horrid. VT has already said this is their fault. BUT, if you customize the toolbar and add the site preferences pane up there, you can make OW act like Safari and VT will load fine. If you want the ads and pictures to be blocked on a certain page, just set up the site preferences. And as a nice addon, when you go to a page that has individual preferences set, that page's favicon will show up in the site preferences icon on the toolbar. Nice addition..imo.

Workspaces. What can you say. It's about freakin time somebody adds this in. I know I had other things to say, but I want to go play around with OW more. For a beta, this browser is outstanding. Safari may have just been kicked off my dock.

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I like the tabs over there. Like was previously stated, vertical space is more valuable that horizontal. If this was the first implementation of tabs in ANY browser, people would love it. I could care less if the whole page isn't visible in the tab. I still know what it is.

I wouldn't. I have 1024x768 resolution and there are quite a few sites I visit regularly that would cause a horizontal scroll bar. On top of that, I just hate drawers no matter what is in them. So I guess not everyone, but I assume many people wouldn't mind, especially with larger monitors.

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I wouldn't. I have 1024x768 resolution and there are quite a few sites I visit regularly that would cause a horizontal scroll bar. On top of that, I just hate drawers no matter what is in them. So I guess not everyone, but I assume many people wouldn't mind, especially with larger monitors.

I constantly got horizontal bars just while browsing Neowin...

Sorry, it looks good and all, but there's nothing worth $30 at all.

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I'm really liking it so far. With the drawer open with nice big thumbnails, it eats up my 1280*1024, but thats not a bother. :) One thing that does tho, is the thumbnails (Tabs) I have them quite big, and so after the 5th tab, it invokes vertical scrolling the drawer. This is annoying, I'd like to see the Tab Drawer have the option to scale the thumbnails to fit all, on the fly like the Finder does with the Left side content bar. Anyone agree? I'd like to submit this idea to the Omnigroup, anyone know where i'd email? :p

Edit, seems funny how a lot of people have spoken of speed, for me, many times i've clicked a URL, and then moved to another tab, seen the 'tick' and thought - 'its loaded already' ? :o Seems fast 2 me, just the text reply content bug, is bugging me right now! :(

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I'm really liking it so far. With the drawer open with nice big thumbnails, it eats up my 1280*1024, but thats not a bother. :) One thing that does tho, is the thumbnails (Tabs) I have them quite big, and so after the 5th tab, it invokes vertical scrolling the drawer. This is annoying, I'd like to see the Tab Drawer have the option to scale the thumbnails to fit all, on the fly like the Finder does with the Left side content bar. Anyone agree? I'd like to submit this idea to the Omnigroup, anyone know where i'd email? :p

Edit, seems funny how a lot of people have spoken of speed, for me, many times i've clicked a URL, and then moved to another tab, seen the 'tick' and thought - 'its loaded already' ? :o Seems fast 2 me, just the text reply content bug, is bugging me right now! :(

omniweb5@omnigroup.com

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