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• always
• only in response to a link being clicked
• never

OmniWeb for OSX solves this with a checkbox labeled:

"Allow Pop-Up Windows Only When Link is Clicked On" (or something similar)

Which means, it'll only pop up a window if and only if you click on something deliberately.

Nice. Very, very nice.

Here are some screen shots of OmniWeb. Even if you are a Linux user go anyway and admire it! This one is good for showing off MacOSX's interface as well.

Here are some screen shots of OmniWeb. Even if you are a Linux user go anyway and admire it! This one is good for showing off MacOSX's interface as well.

Here are some screen shots of OmniWeb. Even if you are a Linux user go anyway and admire it! This one is good for showing off MacOSX's interface as well.

Now Mac users will never be able to have Mozilla fit in with the rest of their computer. Some Mac users will probably go with IE just for this reason.

and some mac users will probably go with OmniWeb [www.omnigroup.com], and some mac users will probably go with Opera [www.opera.com], or other web browsers.

Mozilla isn't the only alternative to IE, thank god.

-steve

ironic
...
2: characterized by often poignant difference or incongruity between what is expected and what actually is; "madness, an ironic fate for such a clear thinker"; "it was ironical that the well-planned scheme failed so completely" [syn: ironical]

Source: U.S. Gazetteer, brought to me me Omni Dictonary on OS X.

I wonder if anyone of these critics have played Games on a G4? My dual 450 runs just fine with OSX or OS 9.x. I've just recently upgraded it to a GeForce 2MX and it Screams with AvP [and other games] under OSX, and it will even run Rune in OS 9 compatibility layer under OSX, though performance could be better (but hey, it's emulation).

OS10.1 is supposed to bring optimized Nvidia drivers and GL performance of up to +20% and thats literally days away.

http://www.omnigroup.com are currently finishing the port of Giants from a DirectX PC game to an OpenGL version for the Mac. They are claiming that their MP ready, GL version gets the same frame rates on a dual G4 500mhz with a GeForce 2mx as they see on their PC (Athlon 1.3 GHz with GeForce 3). Doesn't sound too bad to me.

Just because mac users have a crappy selection, doesn't automatically mean that the processor can't run current games. Also doesn't mean that Altivec (or vector math in general) can't be useful in games.

Now, this gets me round to something that I've told Apple in the past (which they've certainly ignored).

If Apple want's to really make a dent in PC market share, they need to not only support Game developers from an intellectual standpoint... they need to support the game developers in a very real sense.

Here is my proposal:
*Apple tends to pull a profit of 100-250 Million in profit per quarter over the last few years. Take a relatively small investment, say 20 Million dollars, and set up a Game task force.
*The agenda of the task force would be to increase cross platform development of cutting edge games, and to provide for releases on the Mac ahead of PC versions.
*Step one is to hire and train talented programmers, let's assume that at ~$100,000 per year they can get 30 quality programmers for about 3 mill. Tack on $500,000 for contacts, managers...
*Train these programmers with the inside knowledge available from Apple, turn a few around to train game developer employees at Apple (free of charge of course).
*offer the rest out as hired guns. If Id is short handed, or if they need inside knowledge about OSX, assign 4 programmers to work exclusively with Id (for free!!!) on the next big thing.
*For other vendors, like activision, that often don't release Mac versions of thier software you offer developers to work on the port. The best offer would be give us a few programmers to train, and we'll provide you with some for free... and you get access to free hardware, sneak peaks, and insider info on the OS internals. Plus, you get a port that you can sell with very little or no expense.
*any money not spent on staff, should be spent to ensure that the 'development partners' get equipment grants, training... etc. Smaller developers could demonstrate working demos or proof of concept and apply for training or machine grants, but maybe not free staff.
*Mac Faithful developers should ABSOLUTELY be treated very well also, including development hardware, access to upcomming boxes, and free training and code consultation.
*Finally, a portion of that money should be kept in reserve for bribery. Find a legal way to offer release insentives. If Quake 4 will be ready July 1 of 2002 for cross platform release, offer Id $200,000 to release the Mac version 2 weeks early. It won't hurt their sales overall, and they get an immediate $200,000 at launch... even better, give them 4 checks of $50,000 as they meet development goals. This may not mean much for Id, but for a smaller, promising game house it means that a long development cycle would get VC during production and they wouldn't have to wait till it was done.

A program like this a year ago might have keep Bungee out of Microsoft's hands and we might have gotten the Mac version of Halo before the xbox version. At the very least, if Apple could add the next 10 or even 20 best of class games (in addition to what they normally get developed) over the next year it would make a huge difference in their market acceptance. Getting key games early, even if only by a few weeks would only help more. [when Q3 test came out for Mac first, my G3 lab was packed every night... some students even said they used a Mac for the first time to play that game and they really liked it]
Once it started, the movement would hopefully gain momentium... game companies with staff trained on OSX porting would be more likely to release Mac versions since the staff is there already (and Apple would help...). More games would spurn more Home purchases of Apple hardware which would in turn urge even more game manufacturers to look at mac versions of their games.

Apple should also note that the 'geek factor' can be swung over to them. Geeks play games, geeks use linux, geeks keep a win98se partition only to play games and run Word on the ocassions that they really need it. Unfortunately the Linux game market does not look good, especially with the exit of Loki. Make the games, release the G5, open OSX even more and the geeks will come... and they will tell their families and friends that OSX is the place to be (because then they won't waste their time fixing the family windoze boxes like I do).

Just my humble ideas, what cha think? Steven.

I've been happily using Omniweb under MacOS X for some time, and there is a very nice near-equivalent feature you guys should know about. Hidden in OmniWeb -> Preferences -> Javascript, there is the following dialog:

Scripts are allowed to open new Windows:

* Always
* Only in response to a link being clicked
* never

The second choice of course, is the preferred choice. I'm glad that I'll be able to use Mozilla soon for the sites where Omniweb's javascript doesn't work, as the SMP bug under MacOS X now has an uncommitted patch! Too bad Omniweb will still look better for now ;)

Much props to the Mozilla crew. Keep it coming

This may be technically true, there are some very nice Mac OSX only apps that although not 'big name' are none the less quite nice. The products at Omnigroup are all nice. Stone Studios products are nice but they could use a nice how to book.

On the near horizon, Adobe Illustrator 10 and Quark 5 are nearing release (both demonstrated at MWNY in July) and they are both, to the best of my knowledge, Cocoa native. They both look VERY, VERY cool.

Office for OSX will also be Cocoa native... not that MS will want to empower Linux, but I believe that MS departments will go for profit where ever it is found... Just look at the Mac market back around 96 when every was SURE that the Mac was dead... MS releases a PPC native Office, mainly because Office was pulling in about 400 Million a year on the Mac way back then.

I think the could only be good for Linux... it will hopefully be good for the Mac OSX community. Tools written here will be very portable to the Mac.

Now if Apple was REALLY smart (hey, they could be once or twice a decade), they would support this project in a big way and they would fund the porting of their _very_ nice free development enviornment to Linux... perhaps built on this foundation.

Apple, you could gain HUGE amounts of respect in the linux community by doing this. You will also gain access to more industrial strength Linux tools for OSX, an OS that will be sound at release 10.1 but which will still be in desperate need of diverse apps.

Steven (stupid Ffakr)

On the topic of pop-ups, I've read through the page you cited, but I still have one more question: does Mozilla have the ability to enable pop-ups only from clicking on a link? Disabling pop-ups entirely is irritating as many genuinly useful sites use pop-ups when a link is clicked. It seems that the Mozilla solution is to add each legitimate site by hand; hardly an optimal solution.

FWIW, OmniWeb has this feature.

- j

A number of people are suggesting disabling javascript as a solution. The problem of course is that many sites use javascript for the forces of good rather than evil.

One solution is for browsers to have an option to disable javascript's ability to open new windows. I use OmniWeb on Mac OS X and it has exactly this option. In fact your choices are to allow javascript to open windows always, only in response to a link being clicked, or never. A very useful feature and one reason I will ultimately hand money over for this software.

I might lose out, I don't play a lot of games at all. But I bet we'd have a good time discussing why I prefer OmniWeb to both Netscape and IE.

No.

Maybe I'm missing something here but how is MSOffice going to be on OSX if it's based on BSD and Microsoft's apparently not developing Office tools for UNIX.

As I've heard, it will be offered in both Carbon (legacy MacCrap [tm] API) and Cocoa (spiffy-keen NeXT OO API) versions. Of course, the Cocoa version might compile with some tweaking under GNUstep. But I'm not expecting MS to do something like that. Hell, we can't even get *OMNI* to do it with OmniWeb.

Just press cmd-Q and choose skip.

as seen here: http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/archive/macosx-ta lk/2001-July/016608.html

Another alternative web browser for Mac OS X, OmniWeb handles this extremely well.

While it doesn't allow you to block JavaScript on a site-by-site basis, or turn on and off individual JavaScript actions, or have kickass image filters (all of which iCab does have)it does have one excellent feature:

Scripts are allowed to open windows only in response to a link being clicked.

Some (poorly designed) sites, require javascript popups for navigation, or an image thumbnail will often appear in a JS popup (like in many game screenshot galleries). Turning off JS completely makes it quite annoying to try and get around these sites. This feature works extremely well. No advertising Popups get through, yet JS can still create new windows when you explicitly click on the link, allowing you to navigate 95% of these sites.

Omniweb kicks ass anyway. I love how it spellchecks while I'm typing in a webform.
------
James Hromadka

• My family was forced to buy a pc laptop-- and consequently, buy a microsoft product-- because they had software they could not run by any other means. In my father's case, it was software for work. In my brother's case, it was games (starcraft and civII being the main examples). While this is a poor example, because they both *could* have found alternate things-- my father could, had he for some reason had violent anti-microsoft principles, found another job; my brother could have gone outside and played basketball, or something. At any rate, they came into the decision to buy the product through normal capitalistic contractual means, I do not believe that the fact of incompatible APIs between microsoft and apple operating systems is a form of anticompetitive action punishable under law; however it does demonstrate that Microsoft has effective monopoly power over most people, and that people are forced to buy microsoft's operating systems despite not wanting the operating systems themselves. Illegal monopoly power is not determined based on what it makes *literally* impossible for the consumer, but based what it makes effectively impossible or impractical, and based upon the damage it causes to consumers by leading them to use functionally inferior products for reasons not related to the quality of the product itself.
  Moreover, were it not for the distorting influence of microsoft's monopoly position, normal capitalistic market forces would persuade software vendors to adopt or create cross-platform libraries that would allow them to develop for one API and distribute for multiple operating systems-- in which case, we would not have been forced to buy microsoft windows so that my father could communicate with his work computer and my brother could play Starcraft.
• I, personally, was forced to use a microsoft product-- Microsoft Internet Explorer for Macintosh-- as a direct result of Microsoft's anticompetitive actions. I was forced to use it because of a lack of viable alternatives, and the lack of viable alternatives was as a direct result of Microsoft's successful attempts to choke off the revenue stream of any possible competitors to MSIE. Were it not for these anticompetitive actions-- which the appeals court affirmed were illegally anticompetitive-- multiple competing web browsers could have existed which i could have chosen between, and *all* of them-- including MSIE-- would have been higher quality products because of the beneficial effects of capitalistic competition. While i did not *pay* for this web browser, the fact that i have no alternatives means that if some point were microsoft to have demanded money for MSIE i would have had no choice but to accept.
  (Note: As of now, there is a mac os x only competitor to MSIE. It is called omniweb. I am using it right now. Government involvement is never desirable. However, by nature, because monopolies destroy the power of the invisible hand of capitalism, government involvement is the *only* remaining means by which the populace can be removed from control by monopoly powers. Remember: corporations exist for the good of the people. Not for the good of the corporations. Government involvement is not necessarily good for the people by and of itself, but sometimes it is needed. This is why the government exists, to provide services that only it can.

  I wish to apologise to the general slashdot population for the encouragement i am providing this troll.

One person on the panel indicated a lack of support for color syncronization.

I think this post on the OmniGroup MacOS X Dev mailing list (a great source for Cocoa application development) sums it up.

Beleive it or not, IE 5 beta for OS X can also handle some cookie filtering on a site-by-site basis.

yeah, the article is well and good but can i play quake3 on a OSX box?

yes
----

Of course Mac OS X kicks Win2k's butt. With a fat core of pure UNIX (ask the Open Group)at its base, GNU/Mac OS X (as RMS would call it) has rock solid stability, great multitasking and all the GNU goodies Linux users have grown to love. On top of that is an interface that is so sexy members of the Mormon Faith have to get a waiver to use.

Want to talk about serving? Sure you do! Check out the $999 Server version of Mac OS X. Unlike Windows 2000, for $999 you get the whole shooting match -- no need for the those pesky client licenses that Microsoft lawyers love to sue over.

Worried that Mac OS X has no software available? Don't let your heart be troubled. Like X Windows with Enlightenment and Gnome? Mac OS X has got that. Need a good web server? How about Apache and Zeus. Want a browser that doesn't suck? We got those in spades, IE 5.1.1 (well it does suck a little), OmniWeb, Fizilla, iCab and Lynx. Need a word processor? We have Nisus Writer, BBEdit, Microsoft Office and every Macintosh users favorite, Appleworks. Need a rapid application development platform? Got those two, the free Project Builder from Apple and RealBasic. Need graphic apps? How about GIMP and Photoshop. I could go on and on, but I use Macs to make a livin' and not wastin' time on Slashdot.

Sure Mac OS X 1.0 is not the perfect OS. It has some bugs and some features are a little slow. But it is an amazing first step in the journey of putting UNIX on the consumer desktop. Linux developers can learn about an consumer OS by taking a long gander at this amazing first shot.

There is actually a carbonized version of Mozilla. It is called Fizzilla

Another web browser for Mac OS X is Omniweb

There is an effort to make Mozzilla more Cocoa native here

If they'd just done a simple, Windows-only, WWW-only program, what incentive would there be for people to use it, when IE is already there?

Because it is a better WWW-only program?

No, the true value of Mozilla (and the Communicator suite which preceded it)

Value?!?! Communicator sucked because of all its "features". You would think they would have learned from their mistake.

Netscape knows that trying to compete with Microsoft on the Windows platform is suicide due to Microsoft's bundle-opoly.

So Mozilla decided to create their own "bundle-opoly" by making you use only the internal Mozilla tools for accessing the web.

Microsoft had no bundle-opoly on the Mac Platform. How come Microsoft defeated Netscape there?

The Mozilla project is still meaningful, and I believe it is one of perhaps three or four programs whose continued existence are absolutely crucial to the preservation of a world in which Microsoft does not have 100 percent market share of all three major sectors (desktop, server, and embedded).

Mozilla existence will do nothing to preventing Microsoft from taking 100 percent of the market as long and it insists on being bloatware. Browsers like kmeleon(0.4 is out) and Opera will.

This message has been proudly posted using OmniWeb on Mac OS X

Hrm, well IE 5 for Mac isn't nearly as bad as IE for Windows. Hell, I wouldn't ever use any other browser for Mac but IE.

If you use OSX at all, try OmniWeb. It's free and it's darn good. Doesn't lock up when downloading like IE5.1 on OSX.

All clear, wail the sirens!

Well, just drag it out, realease it, see the 'poof' and it's gone. Oh, and delete /Applications/Internet Explorer to really get rid of it
Uninstalling IE just became easier :)

2 Important points come up from this, for those looking to understand the Mac and MacOS X.

First: Internet Explorer 5 for Mac is an incredible product in every respect. This product symbolizes what Microsoft could have been had they not become such a Monopoly. It's very fast, renders everything perfectly, and (to my knowledge) is one of the most standards compliant browsers out there (yes, this IS a microsoft product!). Internet Explorer 5 Mac is my prefered browser under the Classic MacOS, although I prefer OmniWeb under MacOS X.

And about the uninstalling part, yes, it's true.

With MacOS X, Apple is bring Bundles to the table. Bundles are folders that appear to be single application icons to the user. This folder contains the application executable (perhaps several executables, each optimized for a different CPU or something), all of the resources, help files, images, frameworks, shared libraries, etc. And yet, to the user, it's just a single icon.

Apple is pushing this concept very hard, becase for 95% of apps, it removes the need for an installer. Just Drag&Drop to install the app. Just drag the app to the trash, and it's deleted, along with all of it's support files. Drag the single icon to move it. If you haven't figured it out yet, I really love this feature. =)

This isn't quite the same thing as Webster.app -- it uses the network instead of consulting a local dictionary. Personally, I like it better.

OmniDictionary

It still uses command-= though. ;-)

--

Also the great people at OmniWeb ported Q3A to Mac OS X. Here it is. This port is a 20% improvement over the MacOS 9 port. I love it! Enjoy.

It's that they willfully decided they were going to break IE compatibility by not supporting document.all in favor of (the correct) document.getElementById().

I haven't really followed all the details of these "standards", but I'll take your word for it -- you sure make Mozilla's position sound wrong. A solution just occurred to me: I agree that they should add support for this (and, I assume, other analogous things), but if they want to do it "with attitude", they could do like OmniWeb, which has a Preferences panel with a label reading "Features" with the quotes included in the label beneath an icon that is a picture of a bug (a fruit fly, it looks like). In this panel, they give checkbox options to turn on the various "nonstandard features", but the label and the icon (especially in combination) never let you forget the old programmers' joke about "feature" being a euphemism for "bug". Programmers, at least, would get it, as well as almost anyone who has spent any time around them.

It lets them keep a "holier-than-thou" attitude about standards-compliance without impacting their functionality. They could turn them off by default in the "Mozilla" builds and on in the "Netscape" releases or even, if they have the balls, leave them off in the "Netscape" releases too, but with a prominent help message to make people aware of the issues (with the proper spin) by explaining that "For viewing sites designed with certain non-standards-compliant practices, you may wish to select options to support these practices in the 'Features' Preferences panel."

David Gould

Don't forget OmniWeb. It's definitely not a port from the Windows world...it's a port from the NeXT world!

I believe fat binaries are still supported as part of Darwin, and thus are also part of MacOS X. If Apple can convince vendors to ship PowerPC/x86 fat binaries when they first start shipping MacOS X, it would allow Apple to start selling x86 hardware with a large installed base of software right from the start.

I found this old post by Paul Marcos

If you want to compile something manually on the command line fat, then just pass the -arch flag with whatever architectures. For example,

cc -arch i386 -arch ppc foo.m -o foo

will compile foo 2-way fat.

It still does. The main Problem with JSP's (& ASP's and CFM's) are that they are all the same. It is *possible* to design a good app using them, but the default paradim encourages lazy coding and mashing all of the Code & HTML & Data Store logic into one file. A gauranteed recipe for non-reuse, non-OO encapsulation, and headaches down the road.

Model-View-Controler (MVC) is the core of most good design patterns. It seperates out the display logic, from the business logic, from the data store issues. WebObjects has this design pattern in its DNA, they've been doing it since way back. Multi-tier logical seperation of functionality is a GOOD THING.

No matter what tool you are using, read Design Patters by the "Gang of Four" (tm) and Refactoring by Fowler. It will allow you to make a good design using any technology. Design Patterns was written and based on several peices of old NeXTStep technology (Foundation). And, they've been improving WebObjects constantly over the years. Check out the OmniGroup mailing list on WebObjects, a lot of Apple developers subscribe to it.

I think people should use the right tool for the job. I happen to use WO because it lets me be more productive than any other middle ware technology I've used (and I've used all the major ones). BTW: re Java - WebObjects supports pure Java (and will support Linux in the next version due out RSN).

-POIU

---

Mac OS X being essentially the latest incarnation of OpenStep (with MacOS emulation being the single most significant addition, IMHO), it's got far and away the most productive environment (tools + object libraries) for GUI app development I've ever had the privilege of working with... It's amazing how little coding it takes to put a good app together once you've wired up the UI in InterfaceBuilder... (Back when I was working at a game company, I used OpenStep Enterprise 4.2 on NT to put together a very helpful in-house GUI tool for PSX texture VRAM layout that I'd just never have had the time to build with any other tool set.) OpenStep (now "Cocoa" [cringe]) truly enables one (or a few) developer(s) to to the work of many.

I'm burning my own savings right now working solo on an open source project, and have been doing the prototyping on Mac OS X Server because the productivity benefits are just so great. (I've also just joined ADC, taking advantage of the $400 special, and am eagerly awaiting DP4 and the Beta...) I can't imagine being able to accomplish what I'm working on in a reasonable amount of time any other way...

For more development info, I heartily suggest you check StepWise -- in particular their nice archive of back articles, including numerous pieces on development topics.

Also, be sure to check out the Mac OS X mailing-lists (archives available) maintained by Omni Development (a longtime OpenStep consulting & development house -- try OmniWeb, it's great!). In particular: macosx-dev is where development stuff gets discussed.

For general OpenStep info, you might want to look on the GNUstep site (bearing in mind that Cocoa is a growing superset of OpenStep).

Hope this helps!

Mac OS X being essentially the latest incarnation of OpenStep (with MacOS emulation being the single most significant addition, IMHO), it's got far and away the most productive environment (tools + object libraries) for GUI app development I've ever had the privilege of working with... It's amazing how little coding it takes to put a good app together once you've wired up the UI in InterfaceBuilder... (Back when I was working at a game company, I used OpenStep Enterprise 4.2 on NT to put together a very helpful in-house GUI tool for PSX texture VRAM layout that I'd just never have had the time to build with any other tool set.) OpenStep (now "Cocoa" [cringe]) truly enables one (or a few) developer(s) to to the work of many.

I'm burning my own savings right now working solo on an open source project, and have been doing the prototyping on Mac OS X Server because the productivity benefits are just so great. (I've also just joined ADC, taking advantage of the $400 special, and am eagerly awaiting DP4 and the Beta...) I can't imagine being able to accomplish what I'm working on in a reasonable amount of time any other way...

For more development info, I heartily suggest you check StepWise -- in particular their nice archive of back articles, including numerous pieces on development topics.

Also, be sure to check out the Mac OS X mailing-lists (archives available) maintained by Omni Development (a longtime OpenStep consulting & development house -- try OmniWeb, it's great!). In particular: macosx-dev is where development stuff gets discussed.

For general OpenStep info, you might want to look on the GNUstep site (bearing in mind that Cocoa is a growing superset of OpenStep).

Hope this helps!

Mac OS X being essentially the latest incarnation of OpenStep (with MacOS emulation being the single most significant addition, IMHO), it's got far and away the most productive environment (tools + object libraries) for GUI app development I've ever had the privilege of working with... It's amazing how little coding it takes to put a good app together once you've wired up the UI in InterfaceBuilder... (Back when I was working at a game company, I used OpenStep Enterprise 4.2 on NT to put together a very helpful in-house GUI tool for PSX texture VRAM layout that I'd just never have had the time to build with any other tool set.) OpenStep (now "Cocoa" [cringe]) truly enables one (or a few) developer(s) to to the work of many.

I'm burning my own savings right now working solo on an open source project, and have been doing the prototyping on Mac OS X Server because the productivity benefits are just so great. (I've also just joined ADC, taking advantage of the $400 special, and am eagerly awaiting DP4 and the Beta...) I can't imagine being able to accomplish what I'm working on in a reasonable amount of time any other way...

For more development info, I heartily suggest you check StepWise -- in particular their nice archive of back articles, including numerous pieces on development topics.

Also, be sure to check out the Mac OS X mailing-lists (archives available) maintained by Omni Development (a longtime OpenStep consulting & development house -- try OmniWeb, it's great!). In particular: macosx-dev is where development stuff gets discussed.

For general OpenStep info, you might want to look on the GNUstep site (bearing in mind that Cocoa is a growing superset of OpenStep).

Hope this helps!

Mac OS X being essentially the latest incarnation of OpenStep (with MacOS emulation being the single most significant addition, IMHO), it's got far and away the most productive environment (tools + object libraries) for GUI app development I've ever had the privilege of working with... It's amazing how little coding it takes to put a good app together once you've wired up the UI in InterfaceBuilder... (Back when I was working at a game company, I used OpenStep Enterprise 4.2 on NT to put together a very helpful in-house GUI tool for PSX texture VRAM layout that I'd just never have had the time to build with any other tool set.) OpenStep (now "Cocoa" [cringe]) truly enables one (or a few) developer(s) to to the work of many.

I'm burning my own savings right now working solo on an open source project, and have been doing the prototyping on Mac OS X Server because the productivity benefits are just so great. (I've also just joined ADC, taking advantage of the $400 special, and am eagerly awaiting DP4 and the Beta...) I can't imagine being able to accomplish what I'm working on in a reasonable amount of time any other way...

For more development info, I heartily suggest you check StepWise -- in particular their nice archive of back articles, including numerous pieces on development topics.

Also, be sure to check out the Mac OS X mailing-lists (archives available) maintained by Omni Development (a longtime OpenStep consulting & development house -- try OmniWeb, it's great!). In particular: macosx-dev is where development stuff gets discussed.

For general OpenStep info, you might want to look on the GNUstep site (bearing in mind that Cocoa is a growing superset of OpenStep).

Hope this helps!

With the advent of Mac OSX we should begin to see a few new developers in the Mac arena.For example, the Omni Group has come out with a few applications such as a web browser, a pdf viewer and some utilities. It looks like they are NeXT developers now riding the mac wave.

Too bad their web site is such a clunky Aqua rip-off.

- Sam

Just wanted to avoid being left out, especially since we were one of the early supporters: OmniWeb also has full support for PNG, including alpha, and has for quite some time, like back in the 2.x days (I guess maybe we didn't support alpha early on, but we've supported it for a long time now.)

OmniWeb 4 is a fully native web browser for Mac OS X, written in Objective-C against the Cocoa APIs. (Prior versions supported NeXTstep/OPENSTEP/Rhapsody.)

http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omniweb

With Mac OS X and more and faster Power Mac G4s in the wings, I really hope ATI looks forward when developing Mac drivers. The Rage II, RagePro, and Rage128 drivers for the MacOS in the past have left a bad taste in my mouth and at this point I wouldn't be too heartbroken if they were to develop their next set of drivers for G4/Altivec and Mac OS X only. Perhaps they outta consult with some Linux and NEXTSTEP/OpenStep/MacOS X experts for help with their non-Windows drivers. Omni has done miracles with NEXTSTEP and OpenGL in the past for Carmack and id, perhaps someone outta give them a call.

Rant, Rant, Rant

Omniweb is the web browser you want! 4.0b2 was just released, and fixes a lot of problems with 4.0b1. It's Objective-C/Cocoa, not Carbon, so takes advantage of some of the really cool features like Services. http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omniweb/

Omniweb's damned fast even on my 233MHz Powerbook G3, and by far the prettiest damned browser anywhere :)

If you want a screenshot of it running on my machine (the screenshots on OmniGroup's site are pre-Aqua) check out http://www.tufts.edu/~ndanie01/images/Desktop.tiff .

I know of at least three other browsers that support JavaScript. OmniWeb for Mac OS X, iCab pre1.9 (Mac Only), and Opera which is cross-platform. There are probably others too.

D'oh. Bad link. Sorry about that.

Try this instead.

http://www.omnigroup.c om/community/mailinglists/macosx-talk/

- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)

Probably the best place to talk to knowledgeable users is here:

http://www.omnigroup.c om/community/mailinglists/macosx-talk/

...it has a pretty distinct OpenStep/NeXTStep focus, but there are some classic MacOS users there as well. Overall there are a lot of good ideas being floated around there, as well as a few bad ones, but the people are generally intelligent enough to avoid 'MacOS X rulez/sucks' messages.

Much better than Apple Insider, which appears to be more or less frequented by bored 14 year olds (the site itself is pretty decent though).

- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)

You can see an announcement of a secure-HTTP plugin for OmniWeb at http://www.omnigroup. com/MailArchive/OmniWeb-l/1999/0185.html.

And the keyboard commands might seem weird, but you can certainly do everything from the keyboard - because the keyboard commands are exactly the same as Lynx. :-)

(Or at least a very early version of Lynx from several years ago - I don't think we've checked to make sure it still corresponds any time lately.)

(so I hope you'll forgive me.)

People interested in working on this might want to look at OmniNetworking and OWF available from our website. It's free software but not Open Source - we had that argument here on Slashdot a couple months ago. :-)

The former framework is a BSD socket abstraction, and the latter is a set of generic stream / pipeline abstractions that does a lot of what this project sounds like it is aiming at. The basic idea is that you start with a source content, which can be stream-oriented or something simpler like a URL, and the framework constructs a series of translation steps to get from your source-stream to a target-stream in whatever format you ask for. Each translation step can be run in a separate thread - all the stream objects and processors are thread-safe. It provides functionality for treating files, http, ftp, etc as generic sources of streaming content.

It's all Objective-C code for OpenStep / MacOSX Server, so I doubt you'll be directly taking any of the source, but I think it has some good ideas about useful abstractions and ways to provide this functionality in a generic and powerful way. It might help for design ideas.