OmniWeb Announces 5.0 Browser

wcbrown writes "OmniGroup, makers of the popular Mac OS X browser OmniWeb have announced the upcoming beta of their next-generation browser. There's going to be tabs and they're not like any other browser out there. There's going to be a way to save and share your browsing state so you can restore your window locations and the URLs in them. There's going to be some cool nice-to-haves like integrated RSS reading, per-site preferences, and search shortcuts. The beta will be available February 2, 2004."

Comments

OmniWeb Tabs

[ike6116]

They look quite weak from that video. They aren't nearly as useful as regular tabs (a la Mozilla, Safari et. al), as a matter of fact Omni's take on "tabs" reminds me of a glorified "Page Holder" from IE 5 for Mac OS 9. My real question is what does OmniWeb have to offer? It's using Apple's WebKit last time I checked, so it's not a new rendering engine that they have to give, no *REAL* tabbed browsing (which is what I want) so no dice there. I understand more choices are good yadda yadda yadda and all that jazz, but my question still stands, what does OmniWeb have to offer the end user?

Re:OmniWeb Tabs

[FosterKanig]

Actually, some of the implementation looks pretty good. I spend most of my online time on my laptop, which means for "Open in a new tab" I have to do the Control-Click contortion, while this seems to allow me to drag and drop for the same effect.
BUT, I don't want to have the damn drawer open all the time reducing screen space. So, I guess I have no point. But I will at least try out the beta. It'll take a lot for me to pay, but I am willing to give them a chance.

Re:OmniWeb Tabs

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have to ask that question, you've obviously never used Omniweb. I can search google for x by typing in 'google x'. If I want it in Japanese, it's 'googlej x'. I can search amazon.com by searching 'az x'. Etc. It cuts down on browsing time by at least 50%, since my hands never have to keyboard, ever (I have memorized all of the useful keyboard shortcuts, and even added some of my own).

If that doesn't entice you, OW has ridiculously customizable popup/ad blocking capabilities, a downloads window that behaves intelligently, and precisely enough preferences to be useful--no more, no less.

OW is such a great browser that it's fun just to use, and I frequently find myself wasting time on the internet just to use OmniWeb. It's a dang good piece of software.

ServiceHolder was first !

[siyavash]

heh, ServiceHolder ( http://www.serviceholder.com ) did it first. Funny.

A lesson for the non-khtml world.

[fm6]

Omniweb 4.5 uses the WebCore and JavaScriptCore frameworks from Apple - the same technology used in Safari for rendering web pages.

Cool! It appears that Apple has decided to repay the KHTML community in kind, by promoting the general use of the KHTML component on their platform, not just in Safari. Good for them. Though the Webcore web page seems to say that OmniWeb has jumped the gun by using the current version of Webcore, which still lacks a stable public API.

Apple does seem to have gotten sloppy with terminology once again. They can't call a component "JavaScriptCore" -- technically and legally, "JavaScript" can only describe the Netscape implementation of the language. The generic term is ECMAScript. Anyone taking bets on how long before Time-Warner's lawyers notice the trademark infringment?

There's a lesson here for those of us stuck with Gecko, Opera, or the mysterious combination of undocumented engines that is Internet Explorer. You want standardization, you gotta have open-source components. W3C puts a lot of work in defining standards for HTML, CSS, and SVG. These standards have a lot of unbelievably cool features, with much more in the pipe. But nobody can use most of them, because they're not widely implemented. What's the point of working so hard to create good standards if nobody uses them?

We need a reference web engine that will drive standards-based web development, just as the reference implementation of Java, with all its flaws, drove the adoption of the Java platform. Microsoft probably wouldn't use it, but it would provide some small pressure for them to be more standards compliant. W3C could develop such a comonent from scratch, or they could use Gecko; but KHTML seems to have the code base that's closest to a real tipping point.

Re:A lesson for the non-khtml world.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool! It appears that Apple has decided to repay the KHTML community in kind, by promoting the general use of the KHTML component on their platform, not just in Safari. Good for them. Though the Webcore web page seems to say that OmniWeb has jumped the gun by using the current version of Webcore, which still lacks a stable public API.

Where have you been? This is exceedingly old news. Apple's been promoting it in that fashion from the start. The developer tools even include a 'simple browser' example.

The mention you refer to on the Webcore page is outdated, too. Omni did jump the gun, as they released OmniWeb 4.5 using a pre-1.0 version of Webcore. (Because they were desparate for a better rendering engine). But now things have stabalized. Probably best to lookup "WebKit" rather than WebCore now.

Re:Obligatory Opera comment

[dr.badass]

Sharing bookmarks on a LAN is both great and troublesome. How do you implement this easily and quickly in a Windows environment without Rendezvous?

That's easy. Port it.

block partial conent?

[AssFace]

My three reasons for sticking with Safari are:
1) The Google Toolbar (although not implemented in the same full and correct way as the real thing on Windows).

2) Ad blocking

3) Pith Helmet - it allows ad content (or really any content) in a web page to be blocked. So banners and images can be stopped and not downloaded - saving my slow connection from having to bother with them, as well as not even seeing the ads.

I also like the bookmark bar, but I suppose many of the browsers have that now.

I know little to nothing about OmniWeb, will have to check it out more.

Re:block partial conent?

[larkost]

1) OmniWeb has had this for a long time... it just doesn't proclaim itself (and is a lot more configurable). Just type "google this and that" and it will return the results page of a google search for "this and that". You can make your own queries for any site you would like. In 4.5 this can only be a get query, but in 5 it can be a POST one as well. From the screenshots 5 will also have the option of having a separate field for this.

2) OmniWeb has had this since version 3. By size, not from same domain, or by a regular expression. I am not sure if Omni or iCab was the first to have it, but it was one of those two.

3) see 2...

Bookmark management has been one of OmniWeb's strengths, and it looks like they are running that ball again in 5. Having bookmarks check themselves at user definable intervals is really nice.

Cookie management is also a strong point, and the per-site preference mechanism will make this easier to use.

Take a look at OmniWeb. You can use it for free without restriction. It just asks you to register it on startup, and if you leave a window untouched for long enough it gets an "unregistered" banner cross it until you touch it again. And if you are really interested, check out the OmniWeb-l list, the developers are really responsive.

I just don't know

[rixstep]

I just don't know. Omni have been around for ages, and in the NeXT camp, but their browser has been around for ages too, and crashing for ages, and was totally eclipsed there for a while until they came up with the idea of using the same code as Safari to rejuvenate and refurbish their own product. And yes, that is the essence of the GPL, but what irks me is that prior to the introduction of Safari, Omni could not get a stable browser out the door.

There is no doubt in my mind that D Hyatt and Co could make this Omni browser if they wanted - but they ostensibly opt not to, and for reasons which are not that hard to fathom. A lot of people like - even prefer - Safari for its simplicity - and for its relative stability.

I prefer good coding. I don't care much what great new UI gizmos a company dreams up. I want dependability and stability, and without disparaging anyone unnecessarily, it seems that these two virtues have been difficult to achieve for the Omni Group, and I see no indication they're suddenly going to get any better.

Re:I just don't know

[psleonar]

At least in early versions, OmniWeb tried using a 'pure' object-oriented approach to render web pages. They wrote an object that converted HTML into SGML, then another one to convert SGML into RTF -- which was a native format for NextStep to display. Although elegant in architecture, these many conversions delayed the display of the web page quite a bit.

To make matters worse, until OS4.2, the low-level Next-supplied Text Object was not multi-threaded. (No real reason for it to be, until web browsers came along opening up multiple http connections and wanting their pages rendered ASAP.)

I believe if you get just the right combination of OpenStep 4.2 on a Turbo Cube, some rare EOF patch, and the right beta of OmniWeb, the whole rube goldberg contraption works just dandy. Otherwise, it's probably a good thing they are just outsourcing HTML rendering to WebCore nowadays.

There's some more info in an old post of mine here.

Re:Tabbing system

[pudge]

My impression is that usually the opposite is true, since screens are wider than they are tall, especially with the proliferation of widescreen aspect ratios.

It's a side effect of having a wide screen. Because my (PowerBook 15") screen is wider than it is tall, on average, each individual window takes up all the vertical space (or at least, enough so that I can't have another usable window in the same x coordinates). There is additional space above and below the window, but not enough for another usable window.

So, if I need to use two windows at once, I need to put them next to each other (or change their size, which is too time-consuming). If I keep my browser windows the same size as I normally do, OmniWeb windows will take up a lot more of my usable space, not just because they take up more space (they do) but because they take up the space I am actually using for something else, whereas adding a horizontal bar takes up more vertical space, which wasn't being used for anything anyway. Maybe I shrink the height of my browser windows a dozen or so pixels, but that is insignificant compared to having two windows side-by-side.

And while I am sure I can close the Tabs drawer, I don't want to. I like leaving my list of tabs open. Opening and closing it when going back and forth between windows would be annoying, too. ... I'm still looking forward to giving it a try.

Me too!

Drawer vs. Panel

[rthille]

I really don't like the inflexibility of the drawer model. A drawer is nicely associated with it's window, but always takes up the screen space whether the window is 'key' or not. I much perfer the the 'panel' approach of NeXTStep. In NeXTStep, you'd have one or a few panels per application, they could hide (or not depending on implementation) when the application wasn't 'front'. The content of the panel would change to track the 'key' window. and the panel could be moved where ever you'd like on the workspace. Given a multi monitor setup, that flexibility can be very very useful.