[Brazuca]

BTW: code freeze 3 is already out (check out Omni's website www.omnigroup.com)
Versiontracker only has the cf2 listed, so get ahead of the pack!!!

[dark3lf]

Wow, OW 4fc3 is great! Fixes that QT bug nicely I can't think of a single thing wrong with it now. Good job Will et al.

[MasonMcD]

GregOmni, try www.cartoonnetwork.com. I was testing flash support (they have a number of flash games there) and it comes up something funky.

Also, the dropdown in the address window doesn't seem to work if something is loading.

Regardless, you guys have gotten this cheapskate to purchase what others (and you) give away. Kudos.

[JB72]

Cf3 seems more stable so far. Still the funky bug with opening IE faves as a bookmark.



------------------
JB71.338x

Dock Pervert? You bet your ascot I am!

[lucylawless]

Someone help, please: I've downloaded cf3, and stuffit expands it to a .dmg file, but when I click on it, disk copy opens, but refuses to touch this file. I got cf1 from my iDisk, and disk copy opened it just fine...Is there something wrong with my download, with my DiskCopy, or with my (lack of) computing prowess?

[Brazuca]

This may help. From one of the OMNI developers about a similar question:

"Please read the download instructions at http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omniweb/download/. Unfortunately, the problem you\'re encountering is caused by StuffIt Expander corrupting the .gnutar.gz distribution. The solution is either to download the .img.sit distribution at http://www.omnigroup.com/ftp/pub/sof...eta-8.img.sit, or to use OpenUp or gnutar to unpack the .gnutar.gz distribution. ��"

[Brazuca]

"Double your pleasure, Double your fun..."

doubly posted

[This message has been edited by Brazuca (edited 03-26-2001).]

[JLL]

Originally posted by lucylawless:
Someone help, please: I've downloaded cf3, and stuffit expands it to a .dmg file, but when I click on it, disk copy opens, but refuses to touch this file. I got cf1 from my iDisk, and disk copy opened it just fine...Is there something wrong with my download, with my DiskCopy, or with my (lack of) computing prowess?

Check the file size of the compressed archive (should be 3MB).

Sometimes when a download stops the unfinished file still decompresses and looks like a .dmg file but it's not complete.

JLL

[sitox]

Just a minor suggestion on the interface:
the 'Favorites Bar' really, really needs to get a minimum of 4 pix. higher or the folder icons a little smaller. The new interface is so beautiful and this is the only part that really hurts in my eyes. It just looks much to 'compressed'!

[macmicke]

The new version hasn't crashed so far!I'm very, VERY pleased with my Omniweb browser. But! (There is always some "but"). My employers java based exchange web is acting up! (I have mailed Omni the error code). It wont open up my mails! Although no crash
Now all i have to do is convince my bank to port their security program so I can use Omniweb when paying my bills..
Keep up the good work....

[gsxrboy]

Is there anyway to stop Stuffit from opening up everything you download right away? Stuffed if I can find any settings. Thx

[t_hah]

OmniWeb is great.
I have been using it since Saturday, and I don't want to go back to IE.

It did crash on me once. It quickly launched crash reporting into my Mail application...I sent Omni, the crash results.
I got an email from Omni today saying that there is an update available on the web to their browser and that they will be placing the next updated on my iDisk. What a service!

Great browser...keep up the good work

[Todd Madson]

The latest version is better. It makes every webpage brought into it
look like a work of art. Even mine. It's freaking amazing.

My gripes would be:
It is still sluggish in the scrollbar area, but I don't know if that's an OmniWeb thing or a X thing. (This is on G4/400 Sawtooth 256 megs X installed on a 5400 rpm 10 gig drive). Using the mouse to scroll down a
forum-style page with a lot of links (www.mtbr.com/passion would be one
to try) bogs when scrolling down the list.

One thing about this app bugs me though:

-Click on a link and there's no obvious visual cues as to if anything is
happening. Sometimes you'll see "building pipeline" at the bottom of the
screen. But not always. Many times that note vanishes quickly and it
will just sit there.

-The circular spinning wheel under the stop button doesn't really give
you a visual indication of progress, rather, that something is happening.
It would be nice if it would have a number or progress bar of some type
to let the user know if it's just spinning for no apparent reason or if
actual progress is being made.

Other than that, it's an amazing browser. I love the fact that the
preferences panel mirrors the look/feel of the system preferences panel.
There are so many options in there that I have yet to check them all out.

Anyway, my two cents.

-t

[fmalloy]

Still having problems with the Omniweb browser cache. The "Back" button almost always forces a complete reload of the page (I can see the DSL lights blinking), but sometimes clicking on a link I've been to recently is an instantaneous reload. Strange.

My cache settings are the default.

This is really my biggest issue because IE seems to be very fast at cache reload with the "Back" button.

Anyone else see this?

[Belle]

The caching seems fine for me, for the most part. It works fine around the MacNN forums, anyway. I have a few issues, though.

* The width of menus needs to be restricted. This is an issue with Aqua, but it shows up really badly when you have a long page name or bookmark in either menu.

* I can't get used to using Command-1 instead of IE's Command-~ to switch windows.

* Although there's a shortcut key for the download window, I'd also like it to be included when cycling the windows.

* The bookmark importing thing needs to be worked on. I can't be bothered transferring all of them by hand.

It's still pretty wonderful, though, especially with IE's constant freezing.

[fmalloy]

Originally posted by Belle:
The caching seems fine for me, for the most part. It works fine around the MacNN forums, anyway

Does this mean that if you go to a site, hit the "Back" button, you instantly get the page?

If so, I can't get this to work; I have to wait for a reload...

[Belle]

Yeah. If I were to press the back button now, whilst on the new post page, it instantly snaps me back to this thread. I just did it. And pressing forward snaps me back to this editing box.

Another flaw with OmniWeb - whilst browsing an ezboard.com forum, I can click on topics and get the head and body tags showing up as source and nothing else. Hitting refresh usually renders the page properly.

Oh, and another good thing - OmniWeb understands my proxy. If I post here through it, IE will post and bounce me back to the proxy page. OmniWeb returns me to the thread as it should.

[This message has been edited by Belle (edited 03-27-2001).]

[gregomni]

Originally posted by gsxrboy:
Is there anyway to stop Stuffit from opening up everything you download right away? Stuffed if I can find any settings. Thx

OmniWeb interprets just clicking on a link as a request to view that link (so if it is something it doesn't know how to deal with itself, it downloads it and then opens it in whatever app you have that can deal with it.) If you want to do just a download without opening up the result, then you can either right-click or control-click to get the context menu and choose "Save Link To..." or you can command-click to have the link be downloaded to your default download folder (usually your desktop unless you've changed it). Either way, OmniWeb won't open it afterwards.

[gregomni]

Originally posted by Belle:
Another flaw with OmniWeb - whilst browsing an ezboard.com forum, I can click on topics and get the head and body tags showing up as source and nothing else. Hitting refresh usually renders the page properly.

This one is very frustrating. :-) Not only do we have to work around bad HTML, we have to work around bad servers. Ezboard uses their own custom web server that says it can handle multiple requests on the same socket, and then LIES about how much data it is going to return for each request. It is always short by about 15 bytes. So we read one page, and we stop about 15 bytes before the end (because the server said it would be done at that point...) And then when we send another request and start reading again for the response, we get those last 15 bytes of the previous page "</BODY></HTML>" and figuratively roll our eyes and give up, because it doesn't look like a valid HTTP response.

So yeah, more recovery handling from bad servers needed there.

[Belle]

Always an education, gregomni, thank you.

Another little thing - I'm happy you've used the little widget for hiding the toolbar, as full window browsing is a useful feature of IE. It's useful to have shortcut keys for navigation in this mode, and while OmniWeb has most, it's lacking one for refresh.

[Brazuca]

gregomni,
Thanks for listening...this is the kind of attention that makes me a solid customer (now, if only Apple would follow suit...but I digress).

I have to second the previous posts about the caching of past pages and the lack of a tool to see network throughput. Whenever waiting I would like to know what is going on and how fast its doing it. Not necessarily a progress bar, but something simple showing k/sec maybe???

And how optimized is OmniWeb? I ask this to try to find out it the GUI slowness is due to apps or the OS itself. Is it up to you to improve the GUI speed in your browser? If so, what priority does it have for Omni?

Thanks in advance.

[gregomni]

Originally posted by Brazuca:
I have to second the previous posts about the caching of past pages and the lack of a tool to see network throughput. Whenever waiting I would like to know what is going on and how fast its doing it. Not necessarily a progress bar, but something simple showing k/sec maybe???

Caching of past pages is somewhat better in cf3, but there's still work to be done there. Having more feedback on the browser window itself would be good. (Could be another widget you could put on the toolbar maybe?) You can also cmd-shift-A for "Tools > Network Activity" which will show everything that OmniWeb is up to at any given moment.

And how optimized is OmniWeb? I ask this to try to find out it the GUI slowness is due to apps or the OS itself. Is it up to you to improve the GUI speed in your browser? If so, what priority does it have for Omni?

I guess I'd characterize OmniWeb as "clean" but not optimized. There's been effort put in to keep from doing anything stupid, slow, or unscalable in the fundamental algorithms, but there has not been much effort put in recently in identifying the current areas that are slow or feel slow and optimizing those special cases.

It's hard to say what the proportion of GUI slowness is between the app and the OS. At least some things are definitely areas where we should put in optimizations. For instance, window resizing is slow in OmniWeb because we are recalculating table cell sizes, layout, where the text should break on each line, et cetera for every single redraw you are getting there. I think we're doing a decent job of the algorithms to calculate all this stuff, but is it really necessary to see which word is going to be on the end of each line as you are dragging the resize widget around? This probably should be special cased to continue to update the scrollbar sizes and positions and so on but not actually recalculate the layout of the content until you have finished the resize.

[Ken at Omni]

Originally posted by gregomni:
For instance, window resizing is slow in OmniWeb because we are recalculating table cell sizes, layout, where the text should break on each line, et cetera for every single redraw you are getting there. I think we're doing a decent job of the algorithms to calculate all this stuff, but is it really necessary to see which word is going to be on the end of each line as you are dragging the resize widget around? This probably should be special cased to continue to update the scrollbar sizes and positions and so on but not actually recalculate the layout of the content until you have finished the resize.

Actually, I profiled window resizing recently and in my tests it looked like we were spending less than 5% of our time doing layout (since that part of our code is highly optimized) and most of the rest of the time doing drawing. We're not drawing things terribly inefficiently, so I think this is simply a case of not having good enough bandwidth to the screen. (Sometimes I miss programming on Pentiums, which have write combining to the framebuffer.)

That said, I think we could probably do less drawing by caching an image of the page and compositing it rather than redrawing each layer of the page (e.g. page background, table background, cell background, table background, cell background, lay background, lay foreground) as we resize, but that sort of optimization will have to be done post-4.0.

[Ken at Omni]

Originally posted by fmalloy:
Still having problems with the Omniweb browser cache. The "Back" button almost always forces a complete reload of the page (I can see the DSL lights blinking), but sometimes clicking on a link I've been to recently is an instantaneous reload. Strange.

We do try to cache the final representation of a page and use it when you return (and are often successful at this), but sometimes we're not allowed to because of the site design: in some cases, the web server or HTML code specifically disables caching (there are several ways to do this, such as by using "pragma: no-cache" or by setting the expiration date for the page to some time in the past), in other cases they include JavaScript onunload events which fire when you leave a page and may leave the page in an unusable state (thus forcing us to reload it when we return).

If you're visiting a site that behaves this way, I find it easy to just create two windows and drag links from one to the other so you never have to go back to a page that is forced to reload.

[Ken at Omni]

Originally posted by aleph_null:
(Hey, it thinks spiffy isn't a word. Hmmm. Maybe it's not so cool afterall )

You can teach OmniWeb new words (like "spiffy", or "OmniWeb") by bringing up the Spelling panel (shortcut "Command-:"), finding (or entering) the word in question, and clicking the "Learn" button.


[This message has been edited by Ken at Omni (edited 03-28-2001).]

[dindaex]

I just wanted to say thanks to the Omni guys for the great software and for following the forums. I am hoping OmniWeb will allow me to get rid of the last vestiges of M$ software from my system!

That said, I would like to offer some feedback. You know, as a good user. :-)

I would also like to see a better feedback on when the program is actively loading pages or busy for some other reason. And better (more complete) standards support.

I have had a couple of strange problems crop up with cf3:
1) sometimes I do not get the "finger" pointer and it seems to refuse to notice me clicking on a link (sometimes 5-7 times in a row).
2) it seemed to hog my entire CPU or at least take up all that was available. OmniWeb was basically sitting idle in the background, but my CPU meter stayed pegged for a couple of hours, precisely until I quit it. (On the bright side, the system kept working and was usable, if a bit slower than usual.)

Keep up the good work.



------------------
dindaex
http://www.darkproductions.com

[Brazuca]

Originally posted by Ken at Omni:
That said, I think we could probably do less drawing by caching an image of the page and compositing it rather than redrawing each layer of the page (e.g. page background, table background, cell background, table background, cell background, lay background, lay foreground) as we resize, but that sort of optimization will have to be done post-4.0.

Hmm...Apple is really tying your hands it looks like. Does that also mean that window redraw will be something to live with for a while?
I hope that the update that is rumored to have been completed-but-not-released-for-marketing-reasons fixes some of this.
Actually, here ( http://www.applelinks.com/cgi-app/bo...ype=&number=14 ) you can read something about it, with a grain of salt of course...

------------------
Do I get a Senior Member Discount?

[Belle]

I'm loving CF3. It's pretty stable. I guess I'm getting the bomb every hour or so, though it's usually when I've got three or four windows open and am clicking through on all of them. I'll have to send some mail to the feedback address with some suggestions and missing features rather than just post them here.

And I'll have to get round to paying that license fee. Up until now, I've used IE5, both under OS9 where it's pretty good, and OS X where it's diabolical. I've always kept an up to date version of OmniWeb around to play with, but it's not been practical as a full time browser until now.

I'll be sorely tempted to put it on our Macs at work when they switch over to OS X later in the year.

It's a pretty good sign that the majority of the issues I have with it are missing features like bookmark handling and shortcut keys. I'll leave the stability to the little bomb.

[Gee4orce]

Omni Guys - maybe you can tell me what that little 'image well'-like thing is in the bottom right corner of the downloads window ? It looks like it's supposed to display the icon of the file that's being downloaded, or something ? At the moment, it's just empty.

[aabernathy]

Originally posted by Gee4orce:
Omni Guys - maybe you can tell me what that little 'image well'-like thing is in the bottom right corner of the downloads window ? It looks like it's supposed to display the icon of the file that's being downloaded, or something ? At the moment, it's just empty.

Ummm... I think it's supposed to show the icon of the selected file, and let you drag the file out of the image well into wherever you might want. (Similar to the image well in the Get Info panel, although that one doesn't allow dragging out of the image well because you can easily simply drag the zap out to wherever you want it (or click on the Save As button).

I suspect we're not going to get that working for final 4.0 release - we're too focused on other details.

Oh, and Belle: we consider crashing once an hour completely unacceptable. (I've not crashed all day, although I'm obviously not hitting it as hard as you are.) If there's a noticeable pattern to your crashes, that's of course useful info for us, especially if you can isolate patterns that we can easily duplicate.

-andrew

[ShortcutToMoncton]

For the last day I've been having problems with OmniWeb "not responding".

I have about 8 windows (!!) open with my 56k connection, and oftentimes when I click on a link I get the "spinning wheel". Well, Omniweb seems not to have crashed, but it's just thrashing.

This can suddenly disappear, or can go on almost endlessly. Last night, it happened and I finally launched Explorer, because I didn't want to force-quit Omniweb. I wanted to see what would happen. After so long, something I'd done while the thrashing was going on would update (eg. a window would maximise, a menu would pull down), but I never did get control of the app before I force-quit for the night.

greg

------------------
Though the day's been
really long
I still feel I'm close to
nowhere....

[CraigC]

How does one set up Omniweb to use protocol helpers?

I get this message (substitute various protocols for 'xxxx'):

"OmniWeb doesn't natively understand "xxxx" URLs, and has no plug-in currently loaded to deal with them."

[Belle]

Oh, and Belle: we consider crashing once an hour completely unacceptable. (I've not crashed all day, although I'm obviously not hitting it as hard as you are.) If there's a noticeable pattern to your crashes, that's of course useful info for us, especially if you can isolate patterns that we can easily duplicate.

I was really pushing it. Seven or eight browsers open, flipping between them, clicking links before pages finished loading. This is how I go through these forums. And it's all through a proxy. The "every hour or so" is perhaps misleading, because my use isn't continuous. I always have OmniWeb running, and use it once in a while to refer to stuff on our internal servers, but every hour or so I go through a few news sites, these forums, some other forums, and a couple of internal message boards. I'm impatient and tend to have them all going at once and flip between them as they load. Most times I do this, I see the little bomb. It's going to be quite difficult to work out what is causing the crashes, other than it's triggered by clicking a link. I'll try to see if there is something in common.

It's good to know that Omni is genuinely interested in feedback. *Cough* shortcutkeyforrefresh *cough*.

[macmicke]

Since updating to cf3 i have yet to experience a crash or a bomb. What i can't get to work are viewing my mail from exchange webserver, it worked in cf1.
It works much better than IE in handling of the security certs, (doesn't get a new dialog every second). And i also would like to be able to enter the Maconomy java based pages that my company uses for time reports. I get a square with a coffee cup (java) which turns black when clicked upon.
And I would like to set Omniweb as my default browser, anyone know where I can do that in X?

[King Kong]

I like Omniweb...think it is the most beautiful browser around (using Optima as the default font it is just amazing). I also love being able to customize the toolbar, although I wish we had an option for small icons (the current ones like everything in OS X are too big).

But Omniweb feels sluggish. I often click on links and get no feeback whatsover. Scrolling, resizing, and changing the font size take forever to update. And I see that spinning rainbow way too much... Also if i turn off anit-aliasing, fonts look terrible. (I know this is a cocoa problem, but some of the sites I frequent need smaller unaliased fonts to look normal)...


So I systematically went through all the other browsers on my HDs, (Opera, iCab, IE 5X, IE5classic, Netscape 6 classic, Netscape 4x classic, and the winner hands down was Netscape 4x classic. It's responsive fast, and pages look as they should. If you don't believe me just take it on a spin yourself!!!!

[pmcd]

Well cf3 of OW is really nice. There is one web pages that crashes it every time for some reason. It's www.thewb.com . It seemed to work before which is odd. Any ideas as to why?

Philip

[Brazuca]

Wow! I've been using it pretty heavily, and I can't complain about stability. Very nice so far.
The more I use it, the more I want a widget or status telling me my current (recent) throughput. This would be nice to see if data is coming through and how fast (don't you guys wanna see how slow macnn/forums loads?).

Scroll could also be much smoother, though it is better when pages have no graphics...

Omni peeps, when can we expect cf4???

------------------
Do I get a Senior Member Discount?

I think omniweb seems slower than it actually is because it gives so little feedback. other browsers often show you when a link is pressed by highlighting or some other method...this happens even when images are linked. This feedback is super important...lets you know something is happening. Explorer is very good about hilighting buttons when pressed. Omniweb is not. I've tried Omniweb side by side with other browsers and speedwise they are not much different...Omniweb just feels slower and a big portion of that is the way it handles mouse downs.

I find OW is working much better after setting the preference for downloading images to maintain a placeholder while the page is downloading.
(Seems much faster since the text comes quicker, also this has problems on pages that simply were not loading correctly.)

Also, setting the PPP preference to establish a connection only thru Internet Connection (rather than on demand from apps) seems to reduce the occasions of OW freezing or otherwise loosing the connection.

Art

[Brazuca]

I'm anxious for the next revision of OW.....

[Brazuca]

BTW Omni Peeps,

2 bugs...

1)I am not able to register at the NYtimes.com website. "Browser sent the server a message it could not understand"

2) Some images (such as the Mac OS X on the top right of this page) show up with the half all scrambled. This happens in many pages but I haven't seen it before. I woke the cpu from sleep earlier and also tested the Maya screensaver. I'll try to reproduce it.

Where do I send bug reports to?


------------------
Do I get a Senior Member Discount?

Originally posted by King Kong:
I like Omniweb...think it is the most beautiful browser around (using Optima as the default font it is just amazing). I also love being able to customize the toolbar, although I wish we had an option for small icons (the current ones like everything in OS X are too big).

. . .

So I systematically went through all the other browsers on my HDs, (Opera, iCab, IE 5X, IE5classic, Netscape 6 classic, Netscape 4x classic, and the winner hands down was Netscape 4x classic. It's responsive fast, and pages look as they should. If you don't believe me just take it on a spin yourself!!!!

Yeah, I'm a fan of Netscape 4 myself. Still, I have to say that Omni is the nicest replacement for it on X that I have tried. My solution for the large icons was to increase the resolution of the monitor until the menubar matched the size of the classic menubar! After that, of course, the icon sizes were smaller as well -- and as a bonus I can fit more Aqua on the screen!

(Yeah, I disappeared for a while . . . my copy was delivered on Saturday while I was in back mowing the lawn -- and as I didn't hear the fed ex guy at the door he took my delivery _away_, the bum. So I get it on Monday, install it (runs like a charm, and I don't have a problem with slowness) and then spend two days trying to get a mail program -- any mail program -- to get my email from work. It finally turns out that the directions for doing this were for people on a different server . . . Shee! Now that's fixed I have some time to play!)

------------------
Marienbad
http://www.appassionato.org