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

Tabbing system

[xyrw]

When I first saw the way Omni had implemented tabs in OW, I thought they were trying to be different for its own sake.

On this thread, Tim2, who's on the team at Omni, explains the reasoning behind their tabs implementation (vertical tabbing, drawer as opposed to hotlist a la Mozilla). I reproduce it here:

So, there have been some people wondering why we chose to use a drawer instead of just doing the more traditional Safari/Mozila thing. Here's the deal with the drawer:

• I've found that thumbnails generally convey much more useful information than page titles. Most page titles are junk anyway (go to eBay and you'll see what I mean). I can switch between tabs much more accurately when I can actually see the page I'm switching to. And in those cases where the thumbnail really is not a distinguishing factor, such as when multiple tabs are open to these forums, then the page title is usually enough supplimentary information for me to figure it out.
• The tabs were put vertically in a drawer for a number of reasons:
• First, you can get more vertical space in a drawer than in an in-window sidebar. This is because the drawer overlaps the main window's toolbar, while a view inside the window could only stretch from the bottom of the toolbar to the bottom of the window. That's like 50 extra pixels.
• Second, they are oriented vertically instead of horizontally so that you don't have to deal with truncated page titles if you don't want to. If you load fifty tabs in Safari, they will have incomprehensibly short titles and will run off the end of the window. OmniWeb does not have this problem. It's also easier on your eyes to scan a list of items that are arranged in rows (as opposed to Safari's single row, multiple column implementation). On top of all that, you can view more tabs at once than you can with Safari -- In OmniWeb's list mode, I can create 20 tabs in a single window before a scroll bar appears (this is on my dinky 12" PowerBook). In Safari, however, I can only fit 11 tabs in a window before they start running off the screen into that annoying menu thing.
• And finally, you can hide and show a drawer without having to resize the content area of the window. If we put the tabs in an in-window side bar, then we would have to resize the page every time the tab sidebar was hidden or shown. This can have detrimental effects on page layout and can make the user feel cramped, especially when reading pages which lay out best when the window is wide.

Essentially, the Omni implementation scales better with a large number of tabs. This is the first great improvement to tabbed browsing that I have seen in a long time. I can definitely see myself $30 for this thing.

Re:Tabbing system

[bnenning]

My horizontal space is more valuable than my vertical space.

Really? 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. You may have a point since Omniweb's drawer will take up more horizontal space than normal tabs take vertical space, but I'm still looking forward to giving it a try.

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!

Obligatory Opera comment

[cgenman]

I must say I am impressed... I had never thought Opera would be eclipsed in cool features, but there it is. Many of these things Opera should be doing right now.

Workspaces, for example. Opera has an integrated system for easily saving and restoring web sessions, and even features an undo for closing windows (yay!). But this feature is buried in a menu somewhere, requires an open / save dialog box, and generally could be a lot more intuitive. Despite having been in several iterations of the browser, few people have found it.

Site-specific preferences. People have wanted this for a long time now, and I'm glad to see someone is implementing it. Pity it wasn't Opera. Opera supports preference sets, and many of them contain site-specific information, but in no way can all preferences be set on a site-specific basis. From the description it sounds like you could, for example, set your Slashdot home page to be your user page. I may be reading this wrong... only February will tell.

Adding searches... This is just plain cool. While opera allows you to use one of many pre-defined searches through a variety of means (including typing "g " + subject into the address bar), adding any search would be a powerful and useful ability. Of course, Opera's more flexible interface would have to find ways to deal with this (an individual search bar? the agregate search bar? the address search method?), but it shouldn't be too difficult.

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

Tabs aren't as big of a deal, honestly. Usually either you have few enough pages open that you can keep track of them by name, or you have so many open that thumbnails would be too cumbersome to use.

I've always been envious of OmniWeb's History Search ability, website update notifications, and inline spell checker. That latter is being addressed in opera 7.5, along with a few nifty other features. While I will continue to use Opera, not the least of which because I have a PC, OmniWeb appears to be shaping up to quite the must-have app. OmniWeb was originally slated to ship as the default browers for OSX. Now it looks like that was a great idea.

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.

[shawnce]

Apple made Web Kit a public framework as of Mac OS X 10.2.7/8 (around Oct. 2003).

This page covers how to use it.

As of Panther you can even create a functional web browser in Cocoa without writing a single line of code, this includes backwards/forwards navigation controls, other common controls, etc. To do this you simply drag and drop elements into a window/view in Interface Builder and wire up a few things graphically... you don't even need to compile it to use it. (I tried it myself for the fun of it, it takes less then 5 mins)

Apple is also using Web Kit for various things other then Safari in Panther, like the help viewer, Xcode, etc. Third parties are also quickly starting to use it for imbedded HTML display.

Rather cool.

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.

Re:I just don't know

[Graff]

what irks me is that prior to the introduction of Safari, Omni could not get a stable browser out the door.

OmniWeb 4 was actually pretty stable and rendered fairly well even before they switched to using WebCore. The only thing that was really missing was some of the CSS support and some of the JavaScript stuff. The main problem the Omni Group had was that they were spending a lot of time chasing sloppy coding that worked in Internet Explorer because people only checked their code in Internet Explorer or they coded to some of the quirks in IE and that broke the rendering in other browers.

The Omni Group finally realized that they were trying to master too many disciplines and they were spending time re-inventing the wheel. They made a smart choice and decided to let someone else worry about rendering web content while they concentrated on solid UI and application design. The merging of the Omni Group's great UI-sense and KHTML's excellent rendering is a dream and they combine to make a wonderful product that is well-worth throwing a few bucks at. Not to mention that you can use the product indefinitely for free and all you'll see a single funny nag message out of a series of a dozen or so every few days.

Re:Stingy Location Bar

[hysterion]

it's not honest the way they're going at it, IMHO.

Safari is not playing leap frog or riding on the tails of anyone else's efforts. Omni should first attempt to get their own browser out the door without crashing all over the place; when they've demonstrated they too can write solid code, then they can do what they want.

You're so right. How dare they build on open code, implementing open standards?!? These guys are hijacking the web, pure and simple!!!

Omni should first attempt to design their own markup language and transfer protocol. Once they've demonstrated they too can write a good network stack and lay their own backbone fiber, then they can do what they want.

Anything short (including their sickening use of public roads to drive to work!!!) is just sheer piracy on their part.

Re:Stingy Location Bar

[doughmein_dot_net]

and Safari is not playing leap frog or riding on the tails of anyone else's efforts.

But doesn't Safari do just that? Apple didn't write Safari's rendering engine from scratch. Apple chose to use WebCore, which was derived from KDE's KHTML code. They've been very good citizens by contributing code back to the KDE project, but they're still utilizing code that was developed by another group.

So why is it okay for Safari to "leap frog" and build upon the efforts of the KHTML development team, but not OmniWeb? What makes Safari an "honest effort" when they re-use code in the same way as Apple? Why should OmniWeb have to re-invent the wheel when there is already a stable rendering engine available for them to utilize?

If you want a web browser with a "niche market" that uses a proprietary rendering engine, look no further than Opera or Internet Explorer. But the re-use of WebCore makes OmniWeb a credible product, and frees up their developers' time to do other worthwhile things, such as fixing bugs and working on the stability of their program. Why should they have to waste time writing their own rendering engine?

I can understand your dislike for OmniWeb for their past track record of stability, but if you're going to critique their re-use of open source code, you'll need to come up with some far more convincing arguments.

Re:Stingy Location Bar

[EricHsu]

And all the Omni PR people have had to say about that is: 'a lot of our users don't experience crashes'. So wow - that's how you deal with crashes at Omni Group support?

If you have a crash, a Crashcatcher app opens and mails a crash log to Omni. What more do you expect, a handwritten certificate of apology? (This happens for registered versions... your unregistered mileage may vary.)

No thanks. I got Safari if I want, and Safari is an honest effort, and Safari is not playing leap frog or riding on the tails of anyone else's efforts. Omni should first attempt to get their own browser out the door without crashing all over the place; when they've demonstrated they too can write solid code, then they can do what they want.

Are you serious? Safari is 'riding on the tails' of the entire KHTML team and indirectly the efforts of many other open source developers. This is how it should be.

And we shouldn't forget. Omniweb was there first. Back when OS X was just out, there was only the hideous hideous IE5 (tragic since IE5/OS9 was the best browser of its time) and a nightmarish Netscape. OW was gorgeous and fast and showed everyone what a browser really should be like. Yeah, it had occasional crashes, but it was the best of the bunch. Except for the sick task of reverse-engineering all of IE's bugs. Leading to...

Creating a souped-up version of Safari might give them back a market niche, but it's not honest the way they're going at it, IMHO. Show you can write a browser first - then worry about the doodads.

That's right, why use a standards-compliant free Apple standard Toolkit, when you can completely reinvent the wheel for no good reason other than to impress about ten people in the world who probably won't even register your product and will complain about how your URL field isn't adjusted right in your demo movie. While their at it, they should have written their own compilers, the cheating bastards.

This isn't macho CS major dueling here. This is about creating useful software. Most of us are delighted they are using Webkit for rendering and thinking about other interface issues instead of wasting their time on rendering (which incidentally was killing their development efforts).

If you don't like it, don't use, or don't try it. But please don't try to say it's somehow dishonest or wimpy to use system toolkits.

Re:block partial conent?

[jcr]

2) Ad blocking

Omni led the way on this. Years ago, I asked Ken Case to give me a way to block all URL's that matched a given regex, and they put it in.

They then took the extra step and implemented blocking of any URLs that didn't come from the same host as the page, URLs for images that matched the standard ad sizes, etc.

One other thing I love about OW is its ability to set cookie handling preferences per site. By default, I take the cookies and toss them out every time I quit the app. There are just a few sites I'll keep cookies for across sessions (/., my bank, and my employer's internal pages), but all the rest of them get pitched.

-jcr

Re:Mac MSIE?

[phatsharpie]

MS had dropped development of IE for Mac OS X since June of 2003.

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,111158 ,0 0.asp

-B