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Opera 7 to be Released for Mac OS X
hoist2k writes "CNET is reporting that Opera 7 is going to be released for Mac OS X. I might have to take advantage of their discount for buying the Mac, Linux, and Windows versions all at once!" Opera 6.02 is slated for release on Thursday (the download page currently has Opera 6.0 for Mac OS and Mac OS X, though it erroneously says it is only for Mac OS). Opera 7 is expected "soon," with no word given in the CNET articles for whether it will be for Mac OS X only.
There are actually only five other native graphical browser rendering engines for OS X in wide use, even if there are many browsers. There is the Mozilla family: Camino/Chimera, Mozilla, Phoenix/Firebird - lots of different UIs, but the same rendering engine, Gecko. Next there's IE, based on Tasman - a giant load of crap that is only better than the Windows version if you prefer eyecandy to standards (the OS X version can only handle a few text encodings, for instance). Safari, another promising browser, based on KHTML/WebCore. And there is OmniWeb (and there's talk that OmniWeb might switch to WebCore, which would bring us down to three other rendering engines). Finally, there's iCab, which is dropping behind it seems.
The more competition there is in the browser market on all platforms, the bigger the win for standards. The further that standards pull ahead of non-standard (i.e., IE) rendering, the bigger the win for developers. The bigger the win for developers, the more time developers can spend on what really makes the net worthwhile, innovative content and presentation, and the bigger the win for consumers.
Let a thousand browsers bloom!
OmniWeb has all these great features and more.
On your advice, I downloaded OmniWeb and gave it a try for about ten minutes. From what I can tell, OmniWeb cannot do half of what I listed in my original post.
These comments are what I was able to find after playing around for ten minutes. I migh tbe wrong on some of these, but I was not able to figure out where to change some of these.
Want to identify to your bank as Netscape 7.0 and all other sites as iCab 2.9? Done.
OmniWeb only seems capable of changing the value globally. You are not able to set it on a domain by domain basis.
Want to always save cookies from Slashdot, refuse cookies from Doubleclick.net, and expire others at the end of the session? Done.
Am I only able to do this when the server tries to save a cookie? I would rather be able to set these up (and edit the filters) in a seperate window. OmniWeb seems to allow me to edit and delete cookies, but not work with the cookie filters themselves.
Want to filter out images coming from a server named *.ads.*, or images that link to *.sponsor.*? Done.
OmniWeb does seem to be able to do this. I do like iCab's ability to filter an image from the contextual menu, though. Right click "Image:Filter..." and set it up right there. OmniWeb also apparently only has default ad image sizes, where iCab will filter based on any size you want.
In addition, OmniWeb seems to only be able to filter based on the server the image is coming from, and not the server the image is pointing at.
Want to allow your favorite anime site to open new windows on opening, allow a pictures site to open pictures in new windows on clicking, and refuse pop-ups from everyone else? Done.
Once again, this only seems to be a global setting, and not changable based on the site you are looking at.
OmniWeb also does not seem to support tabs.
In all, OmniWeb's filtering power is pretty weak compared to iCab's. I suggest you download a copy of iCab and see aht I am talking about.
[Note to everyone else who is responding to my original post - I am not saying everyone should use iCab. It is slow, and not compatible. I mention these two problems in my original post. Instead, I was writing to suggest that other browsers would come a long way if they were to copy some of the features found in iCab.]
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
I'm sorry but OmniWeb cannot even come close to matching the control power that iCab provides.
iCab is a control freak's dream. iCab is the benchmark that all others must follow when it come to features.
I personally love it for its comprehensive contextual menu options and its compressed web archives but there is so much more in the thing.
There is still a fair way to go but for a one man show, it's a miracle it got this far in such great shape.
I happen to be a registered user and as such have access to the Betas, and believe me they come thick and fast. There may be a perceived delay on the Preview releases but that doesn't mean development is not forging ahead at a rapid pace.
The latest betas have some much wanted ('trendy') features in them. Version 3 promises a lot more on the compliance front but I don't know when that is planned for release.
If your requirements put features over near100% compliance then iCab may be what some people are looking for. I'm perfectly happy to see some wonky sites (because of iCab's CSS shortcomings) in return for its productivity boosting features.
That of course is if the sites you visit regularly work well enough in iCab (around 95% of mine do).