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OmniWeb Announces WebCore-Based Browser

Posted by pudge on from the one-engine-to-rule-them-all dept.

mwelty writes "OmniWeb 4.5sp1 (sneaky peek one) was announced today, and as far as I know this is the first major browser application for Mac OS X that is embedding Apple's Open Source WebCore and JavaScriptCore. As many /. readers might recall, Apple released Safari in January at MWSF, which it based on the KHTML codebase, and has since been releasing their WebCore and JavaScriptCore to developers regularly."

5 of 65 comments (clear)

  1. Unmistakeably good news by CodeBitch · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I'll be publishing an analysis of how well they've done, and updating the MacEdition guide to CSS2 support in Mac-only browsers in the next few days.

    Suffice to say for now that this is unmistakeably good news

    --CodeBitch

    --
    Cracking the whip on your naughty HTML since 2000
  2. what's MS gonna do? by BortQ · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The way I see it Microsoft has three options:
    1. Ditch the mac IE
    2. Put out a cocoa IE using WebCore.
    3. Put out a cocoa IE using their own kick ass renderer
    If they go with 1 it would be a real shame, as IE for macintosh was actually a fine browser (it blows away all competition in classic-land). For some reason I just can't see them going with option 2, it isn't the MS way. So I vote for option 3. This would really rev up the browser war, with three separate rendering engines and a multitude of GUIs around them.

    I'm doubtful that MS can out-render Apple on their own turf though...

    --

    A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
    1. Re:what's MS gonna do? by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · · Score: 2, Interesting

      IE for macintosh was actually a fine browser (it blows away all competition in classic-land).

      I think you're confused. IE 5 for Mac OS 9 was a great browser that blew away all competition everywhere, at the time. It was the most standards-compliant browser available when it debuted, and it was rock-solid stable to boot.

      But IE 5 for Mac OS X is just crap. It's unbelievably slow, and unbelievably buggy. It fails to load pages for apparently no reason at what seems to be random. It goes catatonic when faced with a proxy server that works fine with other browsers. And, of course, it still uses old-school font rendering, which just adds insult to injury.

      I fired up IE for OS X just a few days ago to visit a web site that stauchly refused to work with anything else. It was the first time I'd run it in at least a year. I've been using Safari full-time since the day it came out, and before that it was OmniWeb. First thing I saw? After the oh-so-1993 splash screen, I mean? A giant alert box that said, "The file could not be found." Faced with little choice, I clicked "OK," but I had to ask myself, "What file? Was it an important file? Who was looking for the file, exactly?" I did what I had to do and got the hell out of IE-land as fast as I could.

      (Turns out it was an error in my preferences. I had IE pointed to a home page that didn't exist any more. Why it ignored the system-wide preference in favor of its own is a mystery that I shall save for another day.)

      Long story short: whichever of the three options Microsoft might choose, I doubt most Mac OS X users will ever even hear about it.

      --

      I write in my journal
  3. only works if you've paid by Enrico+Pulatzo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    in other words, you can't try it unless you've used their older versions. bummer

  4. First of its kind by absurdhero · · Score: 3, Interesting

    To my knowledge, this is the first non-free(as in beer) commercial browser derived in any way from khtml. Omni must be pretty confident that webcore is a solid and advantagous choice for the future of omniweb. This says something about the maturity of khtml.