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The only thing missing from Camino and Safari (or any browser, for that matter) is the filtering power of iCab.

" and OmniWeb... is pretty good, but I've not used it much. My recollection is that it was slow to render. "

Yes. Dreadfully slow. They have released a new slew of "sneakypeek" betas, in which they use webcore from apple/khtml as their rendering engine. So it's gotten quite a bit snappier.

4.5sp2 Thursday, April 10, 2003

OmniWeb 4.5sp2 contains the following changes since 4.5sp1

* Corrected a problem that could result in some windows not auto-sizing correctly (probably most noticeable when opening new windows)
* We now cache font metrics rather than recalculating them each time we need them, This should help speed up rendering in some cases as well as resizing of windows.
* We now save the "continuous spell checking enabled" setting to preferences when you leave a text area, and restore it from preferences when you enter one.
* Speech Recognition has been completely disabled for now, the preference setting for this is not honored.

Unfortunately, there is no trial version of OmniWeb 4.5 sneakypeeks. You need a real license, which is a bunch of crap, IMO.

Unfortunately, there is no trial version of OmniWeb 4.5 sneakypeeks. You need a real license, which is a bunch of crap, IMO.

Guess it does..

US $29.95 to be exact..

Does it have enough unique features to compete with any of the freeware browsers?

(other than for those who can't/won't download, and would buy a boxed browser)

I'm reading more about it now, and might try the trial version.

Guess it does..

US $29.95 to be exact..

Does it have enough unique features to compete with any of the freeware browsers?

(other than for those who can't/won't download, and would buy a boxed browser)

I'm reading more about it now, and might try the trial version.

Guess it does..

US $29.95 to be exact..

Does it have enough unique features to compete with any of the freeware browsers?

(other than for those who can't/won't download, and would buy a boxed browser)

I'm reading more about it now, and might try the trial version.

The .dmg is here. This is their disclaimer/readme.

The .dmg is here. This is their disclaimer/readme.

"Back to the Visio board...."

Maybe that's the problem! They need OmniGraffle! The new version will be Visio compatible and everything!

You would have to be *quite* ambitious to port hdiutil from Darwin to anything. Unfortunately, hdiutil is not open source:
http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/archive/macosx-de v/2002-June/027270.html

Does anyone know of a way to open dmg files on platforms other than OSX?

You should note that Omni likes tabbed browsing and they're doing work on it:

I really like the tabbed browsing feature found in Netscape 7/Chimera Navigator/Mozilla. Do you have any plans to add this feature to OmniWeb?

We feel the functionality that tabbed browsing provides is very useful and we do plan to add something similar to OmniWeb with version 5.0. Entry last updated on June 24, 2002

source: OmniWeb Support + Help Page

The downloadable Webcore has updated KHTML code from 3.0.2. You can download stuff from KDE CVS and do the diff yourself if you doubt this. No need to re-integrate the SAFARI_BRANCH code.

As for the embeddable HTML component - search for "Safari SDK" on the following link.

Or read Dave Hyatt's blog (where he says the same thing) here.

Or see what the folks at Omnigroup are saying
here and here.

The downloadable Webcore has updated KHTML code from 3.0.2. You can download stuff from KDE CVS and do the diff yourself if you doubt this. No need to re-integrate the SAFARI_BRANCH code.

As for the embeddable HTML component - search for "Safari SDK" on the following link.

Or read Dave Hyatt's blog (where he says the same thing) here.

Or see what the folks at Omnigroup are saying
here and here.

Nah they believe in the interface guidelines so you get the aqua look. But the setup panels are pretty, you get a lot of control over how toolbars look, etc..

Nah they believe in the interface guidelines so you get the aqua look. But the setup panels are pretty, you get a lot of control over how toolbars look, etc..

In any case, in the Aqua interface, trays are a specific & unambiguous interface style that for whatever reason hasn't been used very often so far. The best example I can think of from one of the "core" applications is Mail.app, for which there is a screenshot at Apple's site. The other big application I can think of right now is Omniweb, which uses a drawer to organize bookmarks. (I'm not an Omniweb user, so I wasn't aware of that until searching for this post :). Of freeware apps that I use regularly, the best example I can think of is (the very slick) MacJournal, which uses two trays -- one to present a list of journals, the other to present entries within a particular journal (for example).

Now that I poke around a bit, the best critical reviews of the tray interface I can find so far are this MacEdition review and this Oreillynet tutorial. (John Siracusa also wrote some excellent OSX reviews for Ars Technica, but I can't find a section that focuses on drawers in particular.)

But the authoritative reference -- which unfortunately doesn't seem to have screenshots to go along with the prose -- is the Apple MacOS X Human Interface Guidelines:

Drawers are a special window type, found only in Mac OS X. They are child windows--which slide out from a parent window--that users can open or close (show or hide) while the parent window is open. These windows should be used for tools or controls that are closely associated with the parent window and frequently accessed, but do not need to be visible all the time. For example, Mail uses a drawer to provide access to the user's mailboxes.

So while this isn't incompatible with what you're asking for, it looks to me like it's not quite the same thing. This is an existing toolkit that could be called on by any Cocoa or Carbon application, and it seems to me like this is a perfect example of where best to apply it.

In any case, in the Aqua interface, trays are a specific & unambiguous interface style that for whatever reason hasn't been used very often so far. The best example I can think of from one of the "core" applications is Mail.app, for which there is a screenshot at Apple's site. The other big application I can think of right now is Omniweb, which uses a drawer to organize bookmarks. (I'm not an Omniweb user, so I wasn't aware of that until searching for this post :). Of freeware apps that I use regularly, the best example I can think of is (the very slick) MacJournal, which uses two trays -- one to present a list of journals, the other to present entries within a particular journal (for example).

Now that I poke around a bit, the best critical reviews of the tray interface I can find so far are this MacEdition review and this Oreillynet tutorial. (John Siracusa also wrote some excellent OSX reviews for Ars Technica, but I can't find a section that focuses on drawers in particular.)

But the authoritative reference -- which unfortunately doesn't seem to have screenshots to go along with the prose -- is the Apple MacOS X Human Interface Guidelines:

Drawers are a special window type, found only in Mac OS X. They are child windows--which slide out from a parent window--that users can open or close (show or hide) while the parent window is open. These windows should be used for tools or controls that are closely associated with the parent window and frequently accessed, but do not need to be visible all the time. For example, Mail uses a drawer to provide access to the user's mailboxes.

So while this isn't incompatible with what you're asking for, it looks to me like it's not quite the same thing. This is an existing toolkit that could be called on by any Cocoa or Carbon application, and it seems to me like this is a perfect example of where best to apply it.

An organization called the Omnigroup , a well-respected Mac and NeXT-era developer has some interesting concepts by way of gaming. For instance, more games that use time as an effect. Or, Dragon flight simulators. Interesting. It's a new perspective.
Then, we have the legendary game of Myst. What's popular about it? There was no killing. There was, originally, no 3-D. It almost could be done in HTML, these days. Minus some transition effects. Yet, aside from the Sims, Myst was the greatest selling game of all time.

The answer is hinted at, in the title. Myst-ery. Yes. It made players wonder. Human beings can't resist a good question. Myst's question was "Who is innocent, and why would the other destroy these ages?" In the end, one got a twist. I don't think there's been any equivalent to Myst. Not even the sequels. It's a brilliant idea. Worlds contained within books. Entire worlds that one creates.
If only a next generation game could allow one to "write" an age and live in it. That'd own. Combine this with the technology as seen at Reuter's. (Search for "Scientists Shake Hands over the Internet"). I don't have the URL, as I saved the file as PDF, so I can watch for when this technology comes out into the public.

in obj-c memory mgmt is much better handled. when you make an object a "reserve" is put on it. when yr done with the object, you "release" it. you can add as many reserves as you want and release them when you wish. when the reserve count finally reaches zero, the object is deallocated. brilliant!

the skinny on obj-c and memory is here

if you find you have objects deallocating prematurely and are losing track of yr reference counting, get the object meter from omni group (makers of omniweb). there's a free demo license that works quite well for the budget-challenged.

Not quite. This one doesn't & happens to be the one that I use, so there goes that theory. My alternatives include IE and Lynx, so go take yer pick ....

Actually, it was my understanding that the previous OmniWeb icon looked too much like the icon for the 'Internet' pane under System Preferences, not the 'Network' icon. And, comparing them, they do look pretty similar, especially at the small size at which the 'Internet' icon is usually viewed in the System Preferences window. Too bad, though: I really preferred the old OmniWeb icon to the current blue-and-green one.

This case doesn't seem to be the classic one of Apple getting tough on third parties over UI issues. I could be wrong, but it looks like Apple simply asked the Omni Group to change their icon, and the Omni people granted their request. It would make sense that these two companies would want to remain on good terms, as the Omni Group, as far as I'm concerned, is setting the standards for how OS X applications should look and behave--in some cases, even more so than Apple is.

And how could you not love a software company who states that their mission is to "make software that is useful and fun?"

That's probably OmniWeb, by the Omni Group.

That's probably OmniWeb, by the Omni Group.

All the "mac gui things" are also processes. You may want to subscribe to a mailing list (such as macosx-admin) and actually mention what the problem is that you are having, it might help.

Internet Explorer is -- bar none -- the best browser today.

Nope! OmniWeb beats it IMHO.

Office is so capable that even LaTeX can't compare anymore, and Office has more functionality than Corel and any of the open-source efforts combined!

i.e, it's obfuscated, it's over-featured, it's bloated.

The Visual Studio IDE integrates everything wonderfully, integrating a really slick editor, a world-class debugger, and a high-quality compiler.

ProjectBuilder works a whole lot better. It's free (beer) and is based around a world-class debugger (gdb 5.1) and a high-quality compiler (gcc 3.1). InterfaceBuilder's UI & layout beats anything VS has to offer, etc, etc

And these are all availble at reasonable prices.

And these are all available .... free! ;-)

If you've got Mac OS X, try using OmniWeb. It can block ads and off-site cookies, and you can block all images from any site matching a regular expression (VERY cool).
How is DoubleClick going to cause any problems if their ads don't load and their cookies don't take?

Using it right now, best browser I've ever used.

The site and all of its user selectable themes have been Tested in Netscape, Mozilla, Opera, Konquerer and IE. What browser are you using?

Remember: don't just check with favorite browsers. You also need to validate to standards.

if there's such a nice API and software development tools, why was nothing ever developed with it.

Because plenty of stuff *has* been developed with it. You're just ignorant of them. For example, it has been heavily used in the intelligence industry and on Wall Street. And I'm sure you've probably heard of Mac OS X, right? Guess what the primary development platform is. You should check out Softrak and the peanuts FTP archive some time too. And maybe the OMNI Group and some others. Is there as much software as there is for Windows? No. Is that because MFC is a superior development platform? Pffffft. It's because Microsoft has the marketing muscle and lock-in advantage (and an awful lot of luck thrown in for good measure).

And why is every application that was developed as part of it so primitive and un-user friendly.

You've never used any of this stuff, have you? There are some quite attractive and usable applications out there. GNUmail is very nice, for instance, and was developed primarily by one author in a very short period of time. Are there poorly designed UIs as well? Of course. But that's the fault of those who design. And that happens everywhere--UNIX, Windows, Mac OS, BeOS, etc.

Is it just a coincidence that it was a brilliant platformed developed by people with no design sense.

I find it to be quite elegant looking. But at any rate, I was talking about the API. Y'know, stuff like Array and String classes and responder chains. Stuff you don't actually "see". How it actually looks is not set in stone. That's why Mac OS X looks completely different but is built on the same basic classes as OPENSTEP or GNUstep.

Or, gee whiz, you could just use a browser that lets you block popups easily without addons.

being shipped out in the past few days have begun arriving to their new owners with OS X 10.2 CDs included -- clearly indicating that Apple has completed development on Jaguar and that build 6C115 is indeed the final version of the new OS.

/.*\.*\.*/*\.swf

/graphics4\.nytimes\.com/RealMedia/
/graphics4\.nytimes\.com/ads/
/.*\.bfast\.com/
/.*\.doubleclick\.net/
/ads\..*\.com/
/ads\..*\.net/

So far, no one's metioned Omniweb, a Cocoa browser which is fast, stable and good-looking. It has a few minor faults, but a lot of its major flaws were fixed in the last release. I should also note that those of you still on modems will appreciate the minimal download time. Good stuff.

1. I have "Open Unrequested Windows" unchecked
2. I visit http://www.nytimes.com/
3. I am greeted with this
4. A quick check reveals that Mozilla's highly-touted anti-popup feature was easily defeated by this line of HTML:

   <img src="http://graphics7.nytimes.com/ads/usga/blank.g if" onLoad="window.open('http://ad.doubleclick.net/adi /N2870.ny/B961809;sz=720x300;ord=2002.07.30.11.41. 57','MyWindow','toolbar=no,directories=no,status=y es,menubar=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,width=7 20,height=300, top=0');window.focus();" BORDER=0">

Just have to wave the flag here for OmniWeb. I've been using it for almost a year, and I've found it to be superior in every way to Mozilla. Only for Mac OS X, of course.

Yep. I've noted the trend, too. Ironically, IE5.2 for Mac OS X isn't recognized by many sites that handle its Windows counterpart.

That's when I load up OmniWeb, which has an option in its preferences to proclaim itself as any popular Windows or Mac browser type, and can be customized as well.

This doesn't guarantee that OmniWeb will actually be compatible with the site, but at least it lets you in the door.

This is a nasty issue. Computers of all types need standards to communicate. While the W3C community has a standard, it's the effect of the mostly self-crafted and barely compatible coding of one company, Microsoft, that undoes that, and creates disharmony and incompatibility.

When my wife and I are online shopping and run into an incompatible site, we vote with our browser. If the business doesn't understand or care that the world does not revolve around Windows, fuck 'em. We take our money to a site that does. I may have to fight incompatibility at work, but I don't have to live with it at home.

Still, I now have to fight with getting my online banking to work in any Mac browser. I had to get my PC game box up to make a simple transaction. My PC box is for fragging chix, not for fragging checks!

You can install IE without quitting your apps *or* restarting. Just run this AppleScript:

tell application "Install Internet Explorer"
DoAutoInstall
end tell

It will make you authenticate and agree to the license, but then it will just run the install. Afterwards, it will the take you back to the main page of the installer where you can just click "Quit".

Great, huh? Heard about it on the Mac OS X talk list.

OmniWeb is not of beta quality.

OmniWeb 4.1 has been out for several weeks.

I don't think you use a cell phone in the US,
OK, I can't give you my phone numbers here, sorry, but if you are curious, I have 2 cellphones which I can use here - a 3-band 7389P with a sim@ctiva prepaid - which has 0 monthly fee and allows me to send/receive email through SMS gateways, only what I use on it gets charged on a credit card - no bills etc. And the cheapest GSM combo in the USA - A VoiceStream $20 plan with the Nokia 5190, for local calls etc. So I know what I am talking about: I travel quite a bit around the world ...and about GSM in the USA, I can tell you all you want to know about the annoying unusable AT&T GSM signal which is interfering with VoiceStream's one, problem about which neither company claims to be able to do much at the moment, and is extremely annoying expecially for people who'd roam on either network anyway.

but rather are just spouting BS you read in some European paper (especially when you spell "Myths" as "Mythes."
Sorry, I am not a native English speaker, and I had posted that msg from my PBG4 using Omniweb, which gives me spell checking for free, and it suggested it that way - try it out for yourself if you don't believe me. BTW, how much do you know about cellphone access/prices/plans/coverage etc. outside the USA, kid?

Damn near everyone in the country already has a land line and most people have access to a computer online (if they don't already one at least one or two.)

Damn or not, I don't see what this has to do with the cellphone use. I have landline, home and work fast internet access, and GSM, in both countries/continents. So?

I forgot the 4th reason (IMHO again) why the cellphone market is so much behind here (USA is my here at the moment): in the USA people tend to be either indoors or in a car most of the time: and much less time spent outdoors/socializing/etc than in other countries (in my own personal statistic which includes only about 30 countries in the 4 continents where I've been sofar).

You are talking about GNUstep. For many years, the OpenStep API and development tools have been far superior to *anything* else in the Windows or UNIX world. The GNUstep project has already got usable alpha clones of the NeXT development tools that are a joy to work with. Take a look at this mail client developed quickly with GNUstep tools. It runs on GNUstep platforms and Mac OS X.

The GNUstep project is actively tracking the additions made to Cocoa (what Apple decided to call OpenStep after buying NeXT).

GNUstep frameworks and applications will build on most UNIXes, on Mac OS X (obviously), and win32 platforms. Support for the GUI backend is Alpha on win32 but is progressing.

GNUstep has a database framework much like NeXT's Enterprise Object Framework and a web development system much like WebObjects. Also available is a 3D framework, music and sound frameworks, a networking framework, an email framework, and others.

Like Apple, you can write your applications in Objective C or Java. Unlike Apple, the GNUstep project provides several other language options: Ruby, Guile, and other scripting languages by way of StepTalk.

You've mentioned that it's a bit more difficult to learn, and it's probably not as well designed (my guess), but how's the performance under OS X? I hear AppleScript Studio allows you to compile your scripts into apps. Is this true? What's the Python support like in OS X?

Basically, what I'm asking is: Should I pick up the O'Reilly AppleScript book now, or just stick with Python and Tkinter? Anything you can tell me would be great.

If you currently program in Python, I would only bother with AppleScript for stuff that is difficult to do in Python (or rather, would take more coding). AppleScript is great for writing more-advanced macros -- for instance, an idea I've been toying around with is writing an AppleScript that calls a Perl script to parse a MySQL database dump and create an object in OmniGraffle to represent that in a database diagram. But you can see, even from this example, I would use another language (Perl) to parse the data and then use that to tell the AppleScript how to interact with OmniGraffle and draw the object. If the Perl OSA becomes more mature, I can bypass AppleScript altogether.

Basically, I think it can be useful, esp with AS Studio, to create a "wrapper" script that calls a more advanced script that is written in Perl or Python, unless all you want to do is some basic system stuff. There are AppleScript gurus who will disagree with this, and they are probably geniuses who can make AS do what they want -- but I prefer the more pithy (hah a pun) syntax of Python to the sentences of AppleScript.

Python support in OS X -- well, OS X is Unix, so you just grab the source and compile it (it's a piece of cake) and now you have Python. Since OS X does not have the Tk or certain other windowing toolkits built-in, you should probably use Fink to install X11 onto your Mac and then you can use the Tk toolkits (and other graphical toolkits like Gtk and that TrollTech one I forget what it's called) to build GUI apps. Of course, I think that it's supposed to be relatively easy to build a Cocoa wrapper around a Perl script in the next version of OS X (10.2), so perhaps a Python one will be forthcoming as well.

To answer your final question, I purchased that book but it was written in OS X's infancy (10.0.x) and barely covers OS X. I'd wait for a new edition for that one, since really AS is not very different between OS9 and OS X. But that book has a lot more content for applications that exist in OS 9.

OmniWeb is the browser that finally let me quit using IE. Mozilla, in its latest incarnations, is great but it still has little things that bug me. O.W. 4eva, yo.

No-one I know uses IE on OS X.

We all use the real OS X browser. The one made for it.

This is bad news by any reasonable definition. Note that the official FAQ still says "we are planning a simultaneous PC/Macintosh/Linux release for Neverwinter Nights, with all three versions to be included in a single box."

Also note that Macsoft expects it will take them two months to finish the Mac version, not including the toolset. No clue how long the toolset would take if they decide to port it at all. Third, note that Bioware has never released a single Mac (or Linux) demo appliction, or even a screenshot of a partial prototype.

For comparison, other porting houses like OmniGroup and Westlake can plow through an entire port, starting from raw Windows-only DirectX-based source code, and turn out a complete Mac game in the same amount of time.

The obvious conclusion is that Bioware has spent the past three years working solely on the Windows version, and their claims about parallel simultaneous development were a crock.

From OmniGroup:

• "This is the only version of Giants that can use multiple processors. We actually added multi-processing support while we were doing the port, as well as doing various optimizations on the graphics routines (and changing the graphics library from Direct3D to OpenGL). The end result is we're getting the same framerates on our Macintosh dual 500 MHz G4s with a GeForce 2 on an AGP 2x bus as we do on a brand-new, top of the line Wintel AMD 1.3 GHz Ahtlon with a GeForce 3 on an AGP 4x bus and DDR RAM."

blakespot

Most Linux apps will compile under OS X with the addition of a rootles X-server to OS X. And there're resources that make the download/build/install of many commonly-used apps completely trivial (pick from a menu in the terminal and...here comes the app). Unless you're playing OpenGL games in Linux that you can't part with, I think you're mistaken here. And besides, you'd do much better playing the games built for OS X. Far higher in performance... Quote from OmniGroup re: port to OS X of Giants:

This is the only version of Giants that can use multiple processors. We actually added multi-processing support while we were doing the port, as well as doing various optimizations on the graphics routines (and changing the graphics library from Direct3D to OpenGL). The end result is we're getting the same framerates on our Macintosh dual 500 MHz G4s with a GeForce 2 on an AGP 2x bus as we do on a brand-new, top of the line Wintel AMD 1.3 GHz Ahtlon with a GeForce 3 on an AGP 4x bus and DDR RAM.

blakespot

Really? Surely Chimera should be your dad.

Nope, sorry. OmniWeb 4.1 beta is faster than Chimera. It launches faster (2 bounces as opposed to about 8 for Chimera) and it renders a lot faster. It's also rock-solid stable-- I haven't used Chimera enough to speak for its stability.

But OmniWeb has this one tiny feature that I simply will not live without: you can filter web addresses based on regular expressions. For instance, I have images2.slashdot.org filtered; no more banners or... uh... whatever you call those big square things that I see in the middle of an article when I'm not using OmniWeb.

No, sorry, OmniWeb is truly my dad.