[TheIceMan]

OW 4.5 final is now available.

[Mrjinglesusa]

Originally posted by TheIceMan:
OW 4.5 final is now available.

Thanks, I'll stick to my FREE browser with TABS: Safari.

[gorickey]

So now the total re-write (OW 5.0) can get started, right? Or is it already in the works??

[Art Vandelay]

Originally posted by gorickey:
So now the total re-write (OW 5.0) can get started, right? Or is it already in the works??

Last I heard, the total rewrite of the browser is not set in stone. They may just stick with WebCore and just add all the long-planned, new features to OW 5.

[Angus_D]

Yeah, they decided against a total rewrite because they think they'll be able to do pretty well with WebCore. The idea is that 4.5 was functionally identical to 4.2 except built on WebCore. In 5 they'll add some nice new features and things, but they won't rewrite the rendering engine. That's been pushed back to 6 or later.

I'm sure you can dig out Tim's post somewhere in the archives if you can be bothered. I know I can't

[ratlater]

Congrats on getting OW 4.5 finished up OG guys. This is easily the nicest browser on the market today. Now I just need to patiently wait for those 5.0 sps

-matt

[ambush]

Yeah, it's cool... even if it still crashes..

good job omni

[MrBS]

Very nice browser. Almost seems wrong not having to pay for the upgrade. I guess 5 will be out soon enough though...

My only question:
Where's the "Pretty spiffy in OW 4.5" badge or something like that?
~BS

[gorgonzola]

This is one thing that still really confuses me. OW 4.5 is using WebCore, but why does it render some stuff worse than Safari does? For example, these forums when they're not antialiased:



That's -terrible-. WebCore in general seems to have issues with Geneva 10 (squashing it together), but Safari does Geneva 9 fine on my end. It's fine if some people like antialiasing on absolutely everything, but I don't, and given that it's a preference, it seems like it should work properly...

If I'm doing something wrong, corrections would be welcome.

Also...question...what's the point of this Forms Editor thing? There's this + button at the top of this textarea that just opens a new window with the same text in it. Is there any point to this?

[gregpins]

No tabs. How...quaint.

Seriously, I've never understood the hype about this browser. In my opinion, it's vaunted rendering is more than canceled out by its inability to render all sorts of pages properly. I also find it substantially slower than Safari and Camino. And I think that's unfortunate because competition is a good thing. I don't believe OmniWeb is serious competition for Safari until it gets tabs and gets faster.

[Kenneth]

gorgonzola

No problem here.. all default setting.
Lucida Grande Regular 14.0
Courier Regular 14.0

[Rickster]

Also...question...what's the point of this Forms Editor thing? There's this + button at the top of this textarea that just opens a new window with the same text in it.

Ever come across a page where the area you're supposed to type something in is way too small to be comfortably usable? (Say, bugreport.apple.com.) Or one where you'd like to refer to or quote from other parts of the page without having to do a lot of scrolling? (Like these forums.) That's what we use it for... and I'm sure our customers have found a few other uses, too.

Art Vandelay et al are correct: currently, we plan for 5.0 to still use the same WebCore-based rendering engine as 4.5 (with a few bugfixes and enhancements). The priority for 5.0 is new features. It's possible, though too early to speculate on, that a future major release after 5.0 may return to an engine that's entirely of our design.

[oVeRmInD911]

Originally posted by Rickster:
Ever come across a page where the area you're supposed to type something in is way too small to be comfortably usable? (Say, bugreport.apple.com.) Or one where you'd like to refer to or quote from other parts of the page without having to do a lot of scrolling? (Like these forums.) That's what we use it for... and I'm sure our customers have found a few other uses, too.

Art Vandelay et al are correct: currently, we plan for 5.0 to still use the same WebCore-based rendering engine as 4.5 (with a few bugfixes and enhancements). The priority for 5.0 is new features. It's possible, though too early to speculate on, that a future major release after 5.0 may return to an engine that's entirely of our design.

Oh yea, my dad LOVES that feature. He's a big message boards poster and he's always making the text box its own window, and dragging and dropping quotes from a bunch of sites into it. Very useful, and very ingenious, I must say.

[Scotttheking]

Originally posted by oVeRmInD911:
Oh yea, my dad LOVES that feature. He's a big message boards poster and he's always making the text box its own window, and dragging and dropping quotes from a bunch of sites into it. Very useful, and very ingenious, I must say.

Aye, same here.
My mom uses it a ton. She can submit forms online for her job, but some things require 1 page documents, and they give 5 lines for it.

To the OG folks: If I have some pages that won't work in OW, but they are password protected and only accessible if you are a registered medical provider in the state of AZ, is there anything I can do about it?

[wil]

I'm extremely close to purchasing OmniWeb. The speed is, for the first time, divine. I'm very impressed. The feature set is so lovely. I haven't run into many bugs. The only one, in fact, is the alpha transparency surrounding this input field (the one I'm typing in right now) is screwed up half way down. The alpha mask is ignored.

I never thought I'd consider purchasing a web browser since so many free ones are available. But...I'm certainly impressed. Great job!

[hunkhuang]

i still prefer Safari ... love it ... but where can i find my cache files from safari ??

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by gregpins:
No tabs. How...quaint.

Seriously, I've never understood the hype about this browser. In my opinion, it's vaunted rendering is more than canceled out by its inability to render all sorts of pages properly. I also find it substantially slower than Safari and Camino. And I think that's unfortunate because competition is a good thing. I don't believe OmniWeb is serious competition for Safari until it gets tabs and gets faster.

Seriously, have you tried version 4.5? It sounds like you're using 4.2. There is a world of difference.

[BZ]

OmniWeb rocks....

4.5 is great... use it all the time barely go back to Safari for anything.

5.0 with tabs, favicons, syncable bookmarks and other things I have not even thought of will get my upgrade money.

For those of you who don't get why it is such a great browser, I suggest trying it and really digging into the features (privacy, bookmarks, control) and you will see.

BZ

[BZ]

Oh... and I just noticed the the new OmniGroup.com is up... Nice job guys!

BZ

[Jim Paradise]

www.joecartoon.com still won't load for me.... ~_~
Other than that, I'll still be sticking to Camino as my default but there are some very nice things about OmniWeb 4.5, and I'm glad that it's around.

[Mrjinglesusa]

Originally posted by gregpins:
No tabs. How...quaint.

Seriously, I've never understood the hype about this browser. In my opinion, it's vaunted rendering is more than canceled out by its inability to render all sorts of pages properly. I also find it substantially slower than Safari and Camino. And I think that's unfortunate because competition is a good thing. I don't believe OmniWeb is serious competition for Safari until it gets tabs and gets faster.

And gets FREE. Let's not forget this is the ONLY OS X browser that you have to PAY to use. In fact, correct me if I'm wrong, but this may be the only browser (PC or Mac) that you have to pay to use.

[BZ]

Nope.

Opera. $39.

OW is free, it is just shareware, so pay when you want to, if you want to.

Again, some people pay for things they use and need because it is a *good* thing to do to help develop more software.

BZ

Originally posted by Mrjinglesusa:
And gets FREE. Let's not forget this is the ONLY OS X browser that you have to PAY to use. In fact, correct me if I'm wrong, but this may be the only browser (PC or Mac) that you have to pay to use.

[Jan Van Boghout]

Originally posted by Mrjinglesusa:
And gets FREE. Let's not forget this is the ONLY OS X browser that you have to PAY to use. In fact, correct me if I'm wrong, but this may be the only browser (PC or Mac) that you have to pay to use.

Let's see.
- Safari: apple pays employees to make the browser, so the Mac is a better overall package.
- IE : Same as above, but from Microsoft and with more focus on world wide web domination
- Mozilla, Chimera, etc: Huge open source contribution, till recently there were also AOL employees working in Gecko (correct me if I'm wrong)
- Opera : they make a browser, but since they don't have a mother company that funds or a huge open source base also non-free software

So OmniWeb is the same as Opera, only so much better quality. In the end, it's all about being rewarded for your work. Writing a decent web browser isn't something you do in 5 minutes

[edit: forgot to complete opera sentence ]

[gregpins]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
Seriously, have you tried version 4.5? It sounds like you're using 4.2. There is a world of difference.

Yes, I am using 4.5. Yes, it is slower.

Comparing Safari and Omniweb, I cached ESPN.com, switched to CNN.com and then ran a stopwatch on how long it took to get back to ESPN.com, from the point of clicking the link to completion of rendering the home page.

Safari: 5.8 seconds.
Omniweb: 7.1 seconds.

By no means a perfect measure, but it comports with how it feels. Slower.

Omniweb was once innovative and interesting, but it just doesn't measure up anymore, which is a shame. I'd happily pay for a browser that blew the doors off Safari.

[cpac]

Originally posted by gregpins:
Yes, I am using 4.5. Yes, it is slower.

In your original post you said

it's vaunted rendering is more than canceled out by its inability to render all sorts of pages properly.

THIS is why we might have thought you were using 4.2 - 4.5 has site compatability roughly equivalent to Safari. There aren't many pages that it can't render properly anymore, and of those it can't, chances are Safari has the same problem.

Your speed test is silly, you might try fooling around with OW's settings - you can basically have an "instant" back button for up to X number of sites. By instant, I mean it just appears, no rendering time or anything.

[milhouse]

If it had tabs I'd likely buy it.

It's much more cumbersome to browse without them. I always disliked having to move through so many open windows when browsing in the days before tabs....

/me uses "quivering old voice"

I remember when....

[OptimusG4]

Originally posted by hunkhuang:
i still prefer Safari ... love it ... but where can i find my cache files from safari ??

~/Library/Caches/Safari

[gorgonzola]

Originally posted by Rickster:
Ever come across a page where the area you're supposed to type something in is way too small to be comfortably usable? (Say, bugreport.apple.com.) Or one where you'd like to refer to or quote from other parts of the page without having to do a lot of scrolling? (Like these forums.) That's what we use it for... and I'm sure our customers have found a few other uses, too.

Ah, good call. That's rather useful. It's also neat how you got the window to genie out of the textarea.

[gorgonzola]

Originally posted by Kenneth:
gorgonzola

No problem here.. all default setting.
Lucida Grande Regular 14.0
Courier Regular 14.0

Yes, there is a problem there. All that text is antialiased. I hate antialiased Geneva 9/10, because they just become blurry and impossible to read; they were designed to be aliased. It doesn't matter whether or not you agree...the question is why Geneva 9 *aliased* is squashed in OW but not Safari. Geneva 10 is unfortunately squashed in both so I have to keep it antialiased in Safari. =\

So one is obviously a WebCore bug, but the other doesn't seem to be.

[jbelch3]

Originally posted by Mrjinglesusa:
Thanks, I'll stick to my FREE browser with TABS: Safari.

I totally agree...I have no time for a shareware browser without tabs.

[cpac]

Originally posted by jbelch3:
I have no time for a shareware browser without tabs.

Just time to post about one?

[jbelch3]

Originally posted by cpac:
Just time to post about one?

Let me rephrase...I have no patience for a SHAREware browser without tabs!

I have plenty of time...I'm at work

[ratlater]

Originally posted by gorgonzola:
Yes, there is a problem there. All that text is antialiased. I hate antialiased Geneva 9/10, because they just become blurry and impossible to read; they were designed to be aliased. It doesn't matter whether or not you agree...the question is why Geneva 9 *aliased* is squashed in OW but not Safari. Geneva 10 is unfortunately squashed in both so I have to keep it antialiased in Safari. =\

So one is obviously a WebCore bug, but the other doesn't seem to be.

OmniWeb uses it's own text rendering engine if I remember correctly, so that would explain the differences between Safari and OmniWeb on the aliased forum fonts in question.

-matt

[gorgonzola]

Originally posted by ratlater:
OmniWeb uses it's own text rendering engine if I remember correctly, so that would explain the differences between Safari and OmniWeb on the aliased forum fonts in question.

-matt

Not anymore. OmniWeb 4.5 uses WebCore.

[ratlater]

Originally posted by gorgonzola:
Not anymore. OmniWeb 4.5 uses WebCore.

They use WebCore for page rendering, but they do their own text and image rendering. Basically WebCore gives them the text, then they render it how they want. An OG employee should be able to confirm this.

-matt

[parsec]

Has anyone else had any trouble loading up ssl pages? I can't get any of my normal bank pages to go past the login screen.. it just sort of sits there like it's loading but the page never loads.

edit: nevermind. TLS isn't enabled by default, checking the box fixed it.

[Tim2 at Omni]

Originally posted by ratlater:
They use WebCore for page rendering, but they do their own text and image rendering. Basically WebCore gives them the text, then they render it how they want. An OG employee should be able to confirm this.

Yup.

gorgonzola: Wow, that looks really terrible. I'll see if we can address that text rendering bug for 5.0.

Meanwhile, you can do the following to make the forum pages look a little bit better:

Code:
defaults write com.omnigroup.OmniWeb OAFontFamilySubstitutions -dict "Geneva" "Times"

or

defaults write com.omnigroup.OmniWeb OAFontFamilySubstitutions -dict "Geneva" "Lucida Grande"

This will force all text rendered in Geneva so it's rendered in Times or Lucida Grande (two fonts I found which seem to look better when anti-aliasing is disabled).

Also, you might want to go into OmniWeb's Font and Color preferences and increase the minimum font size ("Limit page fonts to a minimum of [ ] points") to something like 12. It's kind of almost acceptable looking now!

HTH,

[Tim2 at Omni]

Over the years (well, the three years in which I have worked on OmniWeb), I have noticed a very common complaint
among people who are new to OmniWeb:

"Why would I use a browser I have to pay for, when there are free alternatives?"

My answer to that question: I don't know. Why would you pay for it?

OmniWeb is basically free. You can literally use it for as long as you like in unlicensed mode. And there are only two
differences between licensed and unlicensed mode:[list=1][*]You cannot change your start page preference without a license. This is probably the most minor feature we could
have possibly chosen to disable. And the "unlicensed" start page is hardly anything to complain about -- there's a
freaking Google search box on it! It's useful![*]You get a warm fuzzy feeling when you pay for shareware.[/list=1]
OmniWeb is not $30. It's free. It's only $30 if you feel like we've done a good enough job to deserve your money.

...Or if you really, really want to change your start page and can't figure out how to hack around that limitation.

Anyway. I just felt like ranting.

[ctt1wbw]

I bought it. I felt like Omnigroup deserved my money. Right now, it's my default browser. I don't really understand what the fuss is over tabs. I never used them anyway. But Omniweb is great and I look forward to the next version. Hopefully it will use a cache...

[ambush]

Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni:
Over the years (well, the three years in which I have worked on OmniWeb), I have noticed a very common complaint
among people who are new to OmniWeb:

"Why would I use a browser I have to pay for, when there are free alternatives?"

My answer to that question: I don't know. Why would you pay for it?

OmniWeb is basically free. You can literally use it for as long as you like in unlicensed mode. And there are only two
differences between licensed and unlicensed mode:[list=1][*]You cannot change your start page preference without a license. This is probably the most minor feature we could
have possibly chosen to disable. And the "unlicensed" start page is hardly anything to complain about -- there's a
freaking Google search box on it! It's useful![*]You get a warm fuzzy feeling when you pay for shareware.[/list=1]
OmniWeb is not $30. It's free. It's only $30 if you feel like we've done a good enough job to deserve your money.

...Or if you really, really want to change your start page and can't figure out how to hack around that limitation.

Anyway. I just felt like ranting.

Yo TIm, can you tell us if OW5 is going to have a new icon?? The current one is a bit... less beautiful than the old one.. (I know Apple asked you to change it)...

Please

[Tim2 at Omni]

Originally posted by ambush:
Yo TIm, can you tell us if OW5 is going to have a new icon??

Please

Hah!

I can pretty much guarantee it.

[Phoenix1701]

Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni:
OmniWeb is not $30. It's free. It's only $30 if you feel like we've done a good enough job to deserve your money.

...Or if you really, really want to change your start page and can't figure out how to hack around that limitation.

Ooh, does that mean you don't mind? The funny part is, the unlicensed page is so pretty I'd probably just add more to it rather than remove anything... even the nag bar is amusing.

Have I mentioned I love you guys? Can I come work for you?

[gorgonzola]

Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni:
Yup.

gorgonzola: Wow, that looks really terrible. I'll see if we can address that text rendering bug for 5.0.

Meanwhile, you can do the following to make the forum pages look a little bit better:

[snip]

This will force all text rendered in Geneva so it's rendered in Times or Lucida Grande (two fonts I found which seem to look better when anti-aliasing is disabled).

Also, you might want to go into OmniWeb's Font and Color preferences and increase the minimum font size ("Limit page fonts to a minimum of [ ] points") to something like 12. It's kind of almost acceptable looking now!

HTH,

ratlater - thanks, I didn't know OW did its own text rendering. My mistake.

Tim2 - yeah, it does look terrible. Thanks for the prompt input, though, and I'll be first in line to try out OW 5.

I'll give those defaults workarounds a try too.

[JKT]

Originally posted by Rickster:
Ever come across a page where the area you're supposed to type something in is way too small to be comfortably usable? (Say, bugreport.apple.com.) Or one where you'd like to refer to or quote from other parts of the page without having to do a lot of scrolling? (Like these forums.) That's what we use it for... and I'm sure our customers have found a few other uses, too.

To add to this, you can also select your own font and font size for the text in the input sheet instead of being forced to use the miniscule fonts that the web designer foists upon you for their input boxes... very handy for anyone with poor(er) vision or a distaste for boring font selections.

[workerbee]

Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni:
Hah!
I can pretty much guarantee it.

Yesssss!
You have my money. I don't care what you program around the icon! Hah!

[flysky]

For those who prefered the old OW icon or would like some options: Rick's OmniWeb Replacements.

It includes instructions for replacing the icon and all similar resources so that you get a consistent look.

[waffffffle]

Originally posted by gorgonzola:
I hate antialiased Geneva 9/10, because they just become blurry and impossible to read; they were designed to be aliased. It doesn't matter whether or not you agree...the question is why Geneva 9 *aliased* is squashed in OW but not Safari. Geneva 10 is unfortunately squashed in both so I have to keep it antialiased in Safari. =\

So why don't you fix your vBulletin skin so that it doesn't look like a 6 year old version of UBB?

[Pierre B.]

Actually, OW 4.5 is a step back in unicode support. Just browse some greek pages (for example www.mpa.gr) with OW 4.5 and 4.2 and see the difference. It is really strange.

[Gee4orce]

My 0.2p:

I think OmniWeb is a great application - nobody should underestimate the amount of work required to write a web browser (even Microsoft haven't got it right yet). However....

Safari is good. Very good in fact. Unless OmniWeb 5 is going to be so blow-me-out-of-the-water revolutionary, I don't personally see the point in OG persuing it any further. Personally, I'd rather see them concentrate on some of the other fantastic apps they have in the stable - OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner - or perhaps re-cast OmniWeb as a web editor.

Of course, this is just my opinion as a (paying) Omni customer. Their apps are just so great that I want more, more, more !! It's not based on any financial information - who knows, maybe OmniWeb is rakeing in the cach for them ?

[entrox]

I don't know, but Safari is just too minimalist for my tastes (and let's not go about the brushed metal...). The only thing Safari does really good is the bookmark management, IMHO.