[Ironfist.cmg]

How's about using tab-completion of addresses stored in the bookmarks and history?

Seems like a good compromise, and oh-so terminal-esque.



------------------

[Mac007]

In the Javascript preferences what does one need to type in the various fields to get Omniweb identified as Netscape Communicator. I tried to do this so I could use Omniweb on the Turbotax web site to do my taxes but it didn't work. (I ended up having to use Netscape in classic)

Thanks for a great browser by the way! Can't wait for the next revision!!

[Ken at Omni]

Originally posted by APC:
first, it happens quite often that if I click on the menu bar while OW is doing something, everything freezes with a spinning rainbow wheel... this happens on OmniWeb 4.0cf3 but also on OmniWeb 4.0sp17.

If this happens again, and you feel up to helping me debug the problem (and are willing to brave some arcane Terminal commands), it would be incredibly helpful to me if you could pull up a Terminal window, type "ps" to find your OmniWeb process id (PID), then type "sample PID 5" (replacing "PID" with the actual process id) to get a 5-second sample of what OmniWeb is doing.

When the sample command finishes, it will say: "Analysis written to file /tmp/OmniWeb_PID.sample.txt". If you mail this file to me at [email protected], I can read through it and determine where OmniWeb is getting stuck.

(Oh, and upgrade to 4.0sp18. )

Thanks!

[Belle]

Thanks once again, aabernathy. I hadn't really played with the shortcuts and autofill stuff until now, but have been busy setting up a few this morning.

I don't have the same hatred of autocomplete, though. It seems to work just fine in IE5, and will only fill to the next /, which alleviates a lot of hassle. I suspect that it doesn't take any longer to select a link from the drop down menu than to do the necessary typing to fill out an address, so it's perhaps just that I'm used to using the autocomplete. I'll learn to live without it.

I'd still like a shortcut key for refreshing the page, though.

[aabernathy]

Originally posted by Belle:
I'd still like a shortcut key for refreshing the page, though.

Command-R (Browser -> Reload)

It's changed some in the past - we used to use command-U as that was the standard for "revert to saved," but Apple has since made command-U the standard for underline. And I think it may not have had a key equivalent briefly due to the conflict, but certainly the current release has command-R.

-andrew

[APC]

Ken: check your mail

btw, what did you do to OmniWeb? 4.0sp18a loads MUCH faster!

6 bounces less than 4.0cf3 on my iMac DV SE 400 MHz/128 MB RAM, on first launch and also on subsequent launches...

cool

[This message has been edited by APC (edited 04-23-2001).]

[Meowth]

Okay, I presume that 4.0sp18a is a beta build given only to testers. If so, do you guys at Omni need any additional beta-testers?


[This message has been edited by Meowth (edited 04-23-2001).]

[genevish]

OK, I was trying to import my IE bookmarks, so I opened the bookmarks window, used File > Open to open the IE Favorites file, I deleted all of the OmniWeb bookmarks, then dragged all the IE Favorites to the (now empty) bookmarks window.

Now, the window that used to be the Bookmarks menu is titled "____OWBookmarkTopBookmakLabel", and only shows the last bookmark in the list. Also many of the IE bookmarks were not imported, or imported as folders, rather than bookmarks. (These seem to have been the ones that were JavaScript bookmarks, like the Google toolbar bookmark that pops up a search window... http://www.google.com/options/toolbar.html )

[Ironfist.cmg]

About cookies:

Some forums are able to successfully write login preferences (such as Ars Technica's and MacCentral's) while MacNN's do not (at least not for me).

My own site had a bit of trouble writing out a layout preferences cookie, but we noticed it wasn't writing the cookie out to /, so we futzed it and it worked after. So maybe MacNN's cookies are writing out to something else, I can't check right now because for some reason no cookies are getting written from here at all.

I honestly don't know if such a matter is the website's responsibility or OmniWeb's, and I'm not about to argue the point one way or the other.

So far as auto-completion goes, I'm pretty happy with the drop-down list, but I'm used to it the other way as well. I like my idea of tab-completion, but that actually raises a grousing point with me.

file://localhost/users/someone/Documents/sample.rtf is a path, just as http://www.domain.com/index.html is. Terminal knows what lies ahead, so I can tab-complete paths, because Terminal is tied into the OS which has indexed the local volume.

But..........isn't index.html the index page? While the basic idea is that necessary hyperlinks from inside the index page are displayed in the browser, somehow I think it'd be a neat trick to manage indexing through the address field without relying on browser history.

Look at it this way: iCab has a neat little trick it can turn by supplying special META information in the <head> which will in turn cause the browser to spawn an additional browser toolbar that is site-specific. Server-side as opposed to client-side. I don't know whether it's a good idea overall, might be in the long run, it depends on which way surfing habits go in time.

OTOH, IE has the 'page holder' feature which is really just a trumped-up frameset, but it does offer the utility of laying out all links on a page in list fashion, thereby creating a client-side index of the page, hyperlink-wise.

I'd rather have that available via the address field, in keeping with the way Terminal and others gone before it operates.

Am I smoking crack here, or am I genuinely on to something?



------------------

[Ken at Omni]

Originally posted by APC:
btw, what did you do to OmniWeb? 4.0sp18a loads MUCH faster!

I spent a few days working on load time. It's still not quite where I want it, but I was able to reduce it from taking something like 30 seconds to launch (on my first-generation iBook) to less than 10 seconds.

Originally posted by Meowth:
Okay, I presume that 4.0sp18a is a beta build given only to testers. If so, do you guys at Omni need any additional beta-testers?

If anyone is interested in beta testing our software, please feel free to contact [email protected].

[Ken at Omni]

Originally posted by Ironfist.cmg:
My own site had a bit of trouble writing out a layout preferences cookie, but we noticed it wasn't writing the cookie out to /, so we futzed it and it worked after. So maybe MacNN's cookies are writing out to something else, I can't check right now because for some reason no cookies are getting written from here at all.

Yes, the original Cookie standard indicates that if you don't specify a path the cookie should only apply to the path of the current page, but it appears that some other browsers apply cookies with no path to an entire site (as if the specified path were path=/). We'll make OmniWeb conform to the defacto standard, rather than the actual standard.

So far as auto-completion goes, I'm pretty happy with the drop-down list, but I'm used to it the other way as well. I like my idea of tab-completion, but that actually raises a grousing point with me.

Note that OmniWeb does support "tab" completion, it just doesn't use the tab key (since that's used to tab through input fields): it uses whatever key you have mapped to the complete action (F5 by default, try it in an Open or Save panel in any Cocoa application).

Am I smoking crack here, or am I genuinely on to something?

Are those really exclusive options?

Is the URL field really the best place to implement this? It seems like what one might really want is an easy way to quickly select a link on the page via the keyboard, matching the link label rather than matching the link's target URL. (IE does something like this right now, don't they?)

[wr11]

Web standards...lol...

I think they should be enforced! You know the w3c militia breaks into Microsoft with tear gas and rubber bullets (Whew I think the Quebec Protests has rubbed off of me) or something like that! With all the different implementations of what was supposed to be standard... I have no idea how anyone is supposed to keep up.

Kudos to the OmniPeople� who make it all work smoothly for the rest of us!

-will

------------------

[Ironfist.cmg]

Yes, the original Cookie standard indicates that if you don't specify a path the cookie should only apply to the path of the current page, but it appears that some other browsers apply cookies with no path to an entire site (as if the specified path were path=/). We'll make OmniWeb conform to the defacto standard, rather than the actual standard.

I said I didn't want to argue one way or the other, but I guess I'll pitch in and vote for upholding web standards. I wouldn't advocate applying 'defacto' satndards, unless you want to go ahead and rip into OmniWeb's CSS support code and allow the use of hex colors without the '#' preceding.

Note that OmniWeb does support "tab" completion, it just doesn't use the tab key (since that's used to tab through input fields): it uses whatever key you have mapped to the complete action (F5 by default, try it in an Open or Save panel in any Cocoa application).

Is the URL field really the best place to implement this? It seems like what one might really want is an easy way to quickly select a link on the page via the keyboard, matching the link label rather than matching the link's target URL. (IE does something like this right now, don't they?)

I'm in 9.1 right now, so I'll have to experiment with the F5 key later, and yes I know about tabbing through links in IE. I don't like it. Tabbing through text and form fields is an accepted HID standard, keyboarding through hyperlinks might give an advantage towards universal access and/or laptop use, but as long as OmniWeb is using the address field to preview URL's of links within a document, it would make sense to me to use it for a more robust solution to presenting *all* the information a website has to offer, whether it gets displayed in a usable manner on the actual pages or not.

So were you saying that the F5 key already takes indexing information into account, or is it based on bookmarks and history? (sorry, it's still early for me and I'm blurry)

------------------


[This message has been edited by Ironfist.cmg (edited 04-24-2001).]

[Ken at Omni]

Originally posted by Ironfist.cmg:
I wouldn't advocate applying 'defacto' satndards, unless you want to go ahead and rip into OmniWeb's CSS support code and allow the use of hex colors without the '#' preceding.

Oh, we're definitely doing that too, it's just that that change will have to wait for 4.1.

I'm in 9.1 right now, so I'll have to experiment with the F5 key later, and yes I know about tabbing through links in IE.

No, I'm not talking about tabbing through links. (OmniWeb does that now with Command-Up Arrow and Command-Down Arrow.) I'm talking about selecting a link by typing the first few letters of the link.

So were you saying that the F5 key already takes indexing information into account, or is it based on bookmarks and history?

It's just based on bookmarks and history. I never use it, to be honest: I usually type a few letters, then press the arrow keys to select my preferred match and hit return. (I usually add a shortcut or bookmark to ensure that my completion list always contains the things I want. Which reminds me, bookmarks matches should really be listed before history matches in our completion list...)

[genevish]

Well, I was perfectly happy with IE in OS9, but with it's problems in OSX, I decided to check out OW. I'm pretty happy with it. I'd say it's about even with IE rightnow, and they seem very responsive to problems/suggestions. I am having a few problems that I haven't seen posted elsewhere, and since the OmniGroup seem to be reading these forums, I thought I'd post them here, rather than subscribing to another mailing list.[list=1][*]When accessing a page that requires authentication and I try to save the passwords, I get:
"OmniWeb was unable to store the password in your keychain. The keychain manager provided this cryptic error code: '-25299'"[*]I have a favorite on my toolbar that has this link:

Code:
javascript:void(q=prompt('Enter%20text%20to%20search%20using%20Google.',''));if(q)void(location.href='http://www.google.com/search?client=googlet&q='+escape(q))

This allows me to easily search Google. Try it on OW though, and you'll see the (display) problem.[*]One primary task I use my web browser for is administering a Cobalt RaQ server at work. It's web-based interface uses JavaScript links for navigating. These don't work on OW.

Code:
<A HREF="javascript: top.selectMainMenu( 0 );" onMouseOver="status=''; top.showInfo( 'Click here to create, edit and manage virtual server (i.e., site) settings, user accounts, and backups.' ); return true;">

[/list=a]

Well, thanks for listening!

------------------
Scott Genevish
[email protected]
------------------

[pmcd]

1-Is there any way of stopping that Recent Downloads window from opening in
OW?

2-When loading a page you get the circle moving which is ok (I actually preferred the green stuff) but it doesn't give you any idea of how much has loaded, how much more, etc...Maybe that's hard to predict but then what's the point of the circle?

Philip

[Belle]

I've had the Eternally Revolving Mr. Rainbow Cursor problem described above a few times, too. If pages are rendering, and you click the menu bar, it jams up, though the pages keep loading, the cursor keeps spinning and won't respond to clicks. Sometimes menus stick open and don't respond. I've had this problem in OmniOutliner also.

I also made a sad discovery this morning - IE5 is going to have to stay for just now. While it copes fine with my internet banking service, OmniWeb throws up errors, relating to JavaServer pages.

[frawgz]

Originally posted by pmcd:
When loading a page you get the circle moving which is ok (I actually preferred the green stuff) but it doesn't give you any idea of how much has loaded, how much more, etc...Maybe that's hard to predict but then what's the point of the circle?

I like the circly thing.. it's a lot more elegant than the green circles piling all over each other and creating a mess of things. Occasionally, though, I get a message in my status bar (on the bottom) that says something to the effect of "Loading 1 of 2 items." I'd say the point of the rotating circle is to tell you that something is actually happening network-wise as opposed to sitting there wondering if something is downloading or attempting to at all.

[Gee4orce]

Omni guys - please, please make OmniWeb stopp downloading the current page as soon as I click on a link on that page !! At the very least, add a preference to set this behaviour.

Why? Well, it's as annoying as hell when you are using a modem, and you see the link you want on the page, click on it, and OmniWeb sends the request, but keeps downloading the current page, leaving no bandwith for the new one.

Of course, this only applies to links within the same window. Links that open a new window shouldn't stop the current page loading.

Making this small change will greatly improve the perceived speed of OmniWeb for modem users.

[Spheric Harlot]

posted by genevish:
"OmniWeb was unable to store the password in your keychain. The keychain manager provided this cryptic error code: '-25299'"

One thing, Omni Group: I *love* your dialog messages!

"Human" Interface Design, indeed!

Please leave these little touches in there - it gives me the feeling I'm not alone in my struggles....

-chris.

------------------
...the original Genie Junkie�

I just wanted to register my appreciation to all the guys at OmniGroup for visiting these fora, replying honestly and constructively to just about all the points raised, for having laudable principles and for making a browser that makes browsing the Web a real pleasure (apart from those things over which Omni have no control, like my modem!).

That's it.

[Mr Scruff]

Originally posted by Ken at Omni:
I spent a few days working on load time. It's still not quite where I want it, but I was able to reduce it from taking something like 30 seconds to launch (on my first-generation iBook) to less than 10 seconds.

Out of interest, what was involved in achieving this impressive speed up?

[wjsomni]

Originally posted by ctt1wbw:
Use Omniweb to view these sites:
www.msnbc.com [...]
Then get back to me and tell me how great it is.

Great news, everybody!

I spent the whole night fixing problems with MSNBC, and we're nigh-perfect. I say nigh because in Cocoa fonts have an extra pixel line-height that Carbon doesn't, and so two of the tables have very small tears because they depend on line heights being exactly the same as the IE default. You can check this yourself by going to the site in IE and then making the font bigger -- suddenly the table tears up.

Anyhow, there were actually quite a few bugs and limitations in our CSS support that I had to fix, plus the color bug I mentioned earlier that was their fault. But I have to be honest -- most of the problems were mine, including not parsing @media {} correctly, not understanding vertical-align, and not understanding text-indent.

So, now OmniWeb is better, thanks to the power of MSNBC! Go, Microsoft! Go, NBC! Go, to bed!

-Wil

[Moonray]

Another thing why I don't prefer Omniweb is that each time I open a new window I have to adjust its position and size.
Handling this does cost me too much time to have fun with it.

-

[gregomni]

Originally posted by Moonray:
Another thing why I don't prefer Omniweb is that each time I open a new window I have to adjust its position and size.
Handling this does cost me too much time to have fun with it.

Choose the menu "Help | OmniWeb Help", and pick the first FAQ question "How do I make OmniWeb remember its window size?" :-)

[frawgz]

As long as we're on window size, there seems to be a bug in OW where new windows sometimes appear truncated so that they're "shorter" than the saved window size. It's not a matter of lost window size preference because closing that window and spawning another new one will almost certainly create a window of the right size. The truncation problem happens maybe one out of 5 to 10 new windows.