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hoopz · May 7, 2003, 01:57 PM

I am finding sp20 to be remarkably crash free--previously OW would crash at least 4-5 times a day. However, this may be due to something else: I use USB Overdrive and ASM extensively and recently upgraded to the most recent versions of them (10.2.2 and 2.1b4 respectively)--not to mention upgrading to OSX 10.2.6--and have found my system to be generally happier.

If you use either of these shareware apps and find OW really crashy, just for kicks try upgrading to the latest versions (if you haven't yet). I'd be curious to see if this helps anyone.

Though I'm sure the increased stability is more likely due to the efforts of everyone at OmniGroup. Thanks y'all!

Rickster · May 7, 2003, 06:50 PM

Yes, the crash reports do help. Ken and Len just fixed a low-level problem that probably accounts for a large number of different crash reports.

.Mac remains on our radar -- 4.5 implements the core technology needed to make everything work right, now it's just little bugs here and there (working in some sp builds, not in others). Rest assured we'll be making sure all is good before 4.5 final.

cpac · May 7, 2003, 07:40 PM

Originally posted by Rickster:
Yes, the crash reports do help. Ken and Len just fixed a low-level problem that probably accounts for a large number of different crash reports.

hot damn.

sp20 has proven far more stable than any of the last 5 or 6 sp's...

Gul Banana · May 7, 2003, 08:23 PM

It has, yes. However, a couple of strange problems:
in sp20, bold text doesn't seem to be bold
in sp19, the crash reporter was not actually working - it itself would crash. Since I have not yet had a crash in sp20, I don't know if this problem has been fixed.

cpac · May 7, 2003, 09:50 PM

Originally posted by Gul Banana:
It has, yes. However, a couple of strange problems:
in sp20, bold text doesn't seem to be bold
in sp19, the crash reporter was not actually working - it itself would crash. Since I have not yet had a crash in sp20, I don't know if this problem has been fixed.

I'm not seeing either of those problems at all - definitely not the crash catcher one, and at least the text that should appear bold in these forums does...

fitter · May 7, 2003, 11:03 PM

sp21 is up. No release notes yet.

bpsmith · May 7, 2003, 11:16 PM

Still some odd font rendering problems (like the header fonts on www.mindsmith.net) and the bold text on As The Apple Turns (www.appleturns.com).

Brad

Vi0 · May 8, 2003, 04:47 AM

OmniWeb still seems jumpy compared to Safari. Like when you are browsing, the pages seem to jump when they are loading and you sometimes click on a link that wasn't the one you wanted or completely miss the link altogether.

Can't download from the regular SP location...just times out.

JKT · 10:50 AM

Can I just say on the "Fixed a long-standing bug where new windows would open shorter than your saved window size by the height of the toolbar" front - hallelujah! Didn't happen often, but it was one of those small things that was highly annoying so I'm glad to see it gone

Edit: also thanks Rickster for acknowledging that .Mac issues are due to be looked at... I can stop harping on about them now

cpac · May 8, 2003, 11:29 AM

Originally posted by Vi0:
OmniWeb still seems jumpy compared to Safari. Like when you are browsing, the pages seem to jump when they are loading and you sometimes click on a link that wasn't the one you wanted or completely miss the link altogether.

Can't download from the regular SP location...just times out.

Still having download problems? It worked fine for me last night and does now too...

w/r/t jumpiness, I have a question - it seems the display preference for "Start drawing web pages before they are entirely loaded" isn't respected, at least not when the option is *not* checked. The jumpiness for me isn't that bad, but re-implementation of this preferences would be nice - you'd see nothing until it was all ready to go...

ratlater · May 8, 2003, 11:38 AM

Originally posted by cpac:
Still having download problems? It worked fine for me last night and does now too...

I was having issues getting sp21 about 20 minutes ago. The download from extremesims was timing out. I eventually was able to download though.

-matt

Ironfist.cmg · May 8, 2003, 11:54 AM

Download problems are directly associated with ExtremeSims' hosting of the UT23K demo.

He got HAMMERED.

IF.cmg

cpac · May 8, 2003, 07:05 PM

well no crashes at all with sp 21 - excellent!

NeXTLoop · May 8, 2003, 07:10 PM

I had pretty much given up on OmniWeb back during version 4.1. It was falling too far behind in an extremely competitive browsing market. Sneaky Peak 21 is the first build of 4.5 that I have tried.

Not only has it restored my confidence in OmniWeb's future, it has become my default browser over both Mozilla and Safari. It's OS X native like Safari, but seems to be as stable as Mozilla. So far, I haven't gotten it to crash once, and haven't even noticed any major bugs.

Can't wait for the final.

ratlater · May 8, 2003, 08:37 PM

Originally posted by cpac:
well no crashes at all with sp 21 - excellent!

I've only gotten crashes related to the stop button bug that Omni has already fixed for sp22. Be sure not to hit stop in sp21, or you'll be sorry

-matt

ratlater · May 8, 2003, 11:05 PM

sp22 is up at the usual place. No release notes yet...

-matt

cpac · May 9, 2003, 03:27 AM

release notes are up now (and were a while ago I think)

Anyway - the bold font bug at AtAT is gone...

ratlater · May 9, 2003, 03:34 AM

sp22 has been the best sneakypeek for me so far. No crashes and fast under fairly heavy load. Nice work OG.

-matt

juanvaldes · May 9, 2003, 03:39 AM

Originally posted by ratlater:
sp22 has been the best sneakypeek for me so far. No crashes and fast under fairly heavy load. Nice work OG.

-matt

how long have you been pushing it?

ratlater · May 9, 2003, 03:55 AM

Originally posted by juanvaldes:
how long have you been pushing it?

Pretty much since I downloaded it at 7:30 PDT, so 4 hours of good use. No crashes, and no beach balls. I hope they can polish off 4.5 real soon so they can start work on 5, that's what I'm really excited about.

-matt

oVeRmInD911 · May 9, 2003, 05:18 AM

I've been using SP 22 for a while now too with no crashes. It's very VERY nice. I love the text edit zoom feature. Mmmmm OmniWeb.

BZ · May 9, 2003, 05:37 AM

Moving along at high speed with SP22.

No problems yet.

BZ

nickm · May 9, 2003, 07:48 AM

SP22 is the bomb!

Er..um..Or not the bomb.

I mean, it works really well and hasn't crashed.

Sharky K. · May 9, 2003, 11:02 AM

special css for printing makes OmniWeb turn the page

pliny · May 9, 2003, 11:35 AM

22 seems to have brought the snap back. pretty stable so far. altho can i still complain about text as compared to 4.2? how likely is it we'll see 4.2 type text rendering in 4.5? or picture dragging?

fitter · May 9, 2003, 11:47 AM

sp22 has lost my bookmarks, though the file exists in ~/Library/Application Support/OmniWeb. There are no bookmarks in the Bookmarks menu or in the favorites bar. When I launched sp22 last night, the bookmarks were there and were usable. When I launched it this morning, they were gone. I had not done anything to modify them bookmarks between then and now.

Additionally, if I try to view any page that's not on my computer, I get the spinning beachball. The crash is never caught. Anyone having a similar problem?

oVeRmInD911 · May 9, 2003, 01:39 PM

got this at the IGN boards, I'm thinking something went wrong with the stylesheets:
http://overmind911.homeip.net/~overmind/cssproblem.jpg

I'm using sp22, and I have it set to never underline links.

pliny · May 9, 2003, 02:05 PM

Originally posted by fitter:
sp22 has lost my bookmarks, though the file exists in ~/Library/Application Support/OmniWeb. There are no bookmarks in the Bookmarks menu or in the favorites bar. When I launched sp22 last night, the bookmarks were there and were usable. When I launched it this morning, they were gone. I had not done anything to modify them bookmarks between then and now.

Additionally, if I try to view any page that's not on my computer, I get the spinning beachball. The crash is never caught. Anyone having a similar problem?

sounds like they're borken. have you tried to export them and then bring them back in. haven't had the second prob you're experiencing either.

fitter · May 9, 2003, 04:42 PM

It was my fault after all. I changed the default encoding to UTF-16, and OmniWeb really didn't like that at all. Once I changed it back to UTF-8, everything was fine.

fitter · May 10, 2003, 12:40 AM

sp23 is up.

We now load and process images in background threads using our image processing framework from 4.2.

Fixes a crasher with bad image data.

Fixes bug #8694: Not honoring embedded animation instructions in GIFs for number of times to loop. (Note: We still have some issues with starting animations when swapping in roll-overs.)

Fixes some instances of bug #8696: stopped animations restart upon scroll/redraw. (This will still be problematic if the same image is used multiple times on the page.)

Added a JavaScript debugging console, accessible via the "Tools" menu.

Removed the "Show debugging console" preference, as the JavaScript debugger is now available via the "Tools" menu.

Removed the "Do security checks" and "Show panel for JavaScript errors" preferences because they're no longer supported. (Security checks are now always performed.)

Fixed the crash accessing menu items (or their keyboard shortcuts) while on an empty page.

Catfish_Man · May 10, 2003, 12:55 AM

sp23 feels faster to me. Probably because I've got a dually and they're doing images on a separate thread now. Yay threads!

oVeRmInD911 · May 10, 2003, 04:45 AM

Woah was that "Get Info" always available there under Tools? That's one of the best features I've seen added to a web browser, since the Text Box Zoom thing.

I'm going to use that all the time now!

Gul Banana · May 10, 2003, 05:42 AM

The images thing provides a really noticeable speedup on some pages - good idea and well implemented.

Producer · May 10, 2003, 09:52 AM

so how is omni web now comparing in speed to safari and camino?

I haven't used any version of omniweb in a long time ... mainly because it was the one app that was able to crash my computer really hard and bring it down... one thing I did like about it is that it rendered the page all at the same time instead of how safari and camino seem to just throw the page at you... I believe this is because of better multithreading than safari and camino... so could this mean that omniweb will be faster on dualies than the competition?

Gul Banana · May 10, 2003, 10:00 AM

Originally posted by Producer:
so how is omni web now comparing in speed to safari and camino?

I haven't used any version of omniweb in a long time ... mainly because it was the one app that was able to crash my computer really hard and bring it down... one thing I did like about it is that it rendered the page all at the same time instead of how safari and camino seem to just throw the page at you... I believe this is because of better multithreading than safari and camino... so could this mean that omniweb will be faster on dualies than the competition?

The speed's pretty damn good now. It's pretty much equal with Safari on a G4 400, and on a dual G4 1000, it's the fastest browser there is.

kovacs · May 10, 2003, 10:26 AM

I would like to see support for PithHelmet in Omniweb, it does a better job of filtering ads ( makes the box transparent instead of drawing a grey box in place of the ad, more powerful rules,... ) than the built in ad filtering in Omniweb...

ratlater · May 10, 2003, 12:57 PM

Originally posted by Producer:
so how is omni web now comparing in speed to safari and camino?

I haven't used any version of omniweb in a long time ... mainly because it was the one app that was able to crash my computer really hard and bring it down... one thing I did like about it is that it rendered the page all at the same time instead of how safari and camino seem to just throw the page at you... I believe this is because of better multithreading than safari and camino... so could this mean that omniweb will be faster on dualies than the competition?

On my dual 500 G4 and iBook 600 OmniWeb is very comparable to Safari/Camino. Sometimes it is faster and sometimes a little slower. SP23 is the fastest version for me so far, and also the most stable. No crashes yet. With all of OW's great GUI features and it's new fast/accurate rendering it is easily my favorite browser.

-matt

Sharky K. · May 10, 2003, 01:55 PM

Originally posted by kovacs:
I would like to see support for PithHelmet in Omniweb, it does a better job of filtering ads ( makes the box transparent instead of drawing a grey box in place of the ad, more powerful rules,... ) than the built in ad filtering in Omniweb...

you can do that easily with css

and yes OmniWeb's gray filtered-ads-box is very very ugly

OmniWeb has to have better (smoother) scrolling... and then it is also my favorite

Thinine · May 11, 2003, 06:09 PM

If Omni can multithread the hell out of OW, I just might switch when I get a dual 970 machine. I'm also interested in seeing what new features Omni thinks a modern web browser needs that we currently don't have.

ambush · May 11, 2003, 07:33 PM

Originally posted by Thinine:
If Omni can multithread the hell out of OW, I just might switch when I get a dual 970 machine. I'm also interested in seeing what new features Omni thinks a modern web browser needs that we currently don't have.

Yeah well threads can slow down older machines, so it's kind of touchy.

Also, multithreaded apps are very very very very hard to debug no matter what you do. Some multithreading issues are pretty hard to spot (e.g. Deadlocks). So, it's a lot more work.

BZ · May 12, 2003, 05:42 AM

One thing that has always bugged me about OmniWeb is when I have 5 windows open, and the bookmark window open, and I am trying to close some of the windows, OmniWeb will focus on the bookmark window when I cycle through them.

Maybe it is just my use, but it would be nice if the bookmark window was the last thing to be focused on when cycling through windows.

BZ

JKT · May 12, 2003, 07:37 AM

Originally posted by oVeRmInD911:
Woah was that "Get Info" always available there under Tools? That's one of the best features I've seen added to a web browser, since the Text Box Zoom thing.

I'm going to use that all the time now!

That's been a feature of OW for as long as I can remember.

sp23 is proving much, much more stable for me. Is the aim now to progress onto tackling the rendering problems that WebCore still struggles with?

fitter · May 12, 2003, 11:08 AM

Has anyone noticed how poorly OmniWeb handles spacing of international, non-Roman characters? Compare Safari's rendering of http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/russian/news/default.stm with OmniWeb's. Even if you can't read Russian, the difference will be obvious.

cpac · May 12, 2003, 06:34 PM

Originally posted by Thinine:
If Omni can multithread the hell out of OW, I just might switch when I get a dual 970 machine. I'm also interested in seeing what new features Omni thinks a modern web browser needs that we currently don't have.

I believe it was *more* multi-threaded in 4.2 and prior versions. The switch to WebCore has forced their rendering all into a single thread...

cpac · May 12, 2003, 11:20 PM

ps. sp24 is up, but no release notes yet.

oVeRmInD911 · May 13, 2003, 12:50 AM

Originally posted by cpac:
ps. sp24 is up, but no release notes yet.

Now the release notes are up for sp25, but no DMG. I guess OmniGroup got bored of you saying that.

ratlater · 01:16 AM

Originally posted by oVeRmInD911:
Now the release notes are up for sp25, but no DMG. I guess OmniGroup got bored of you saying that.

After using sp24 for half an hour I'm glad 25 is coming soon. 24 is wild and crazy.

edit: sp25 is up now

-matt

pliny · May 13, 2003, 07:14 AM

sp25 is good so far--yay dragging images to the desktop now saves them as images, yay Omni! I love that function.

Scrolling is good and loading is fast. Nice.

BZ · May 13, 2003, 08:30 AM

What am I going to do.... I am going on vacation for like 2 weeks and I will not be able to download SPs!

I wonder if Rickster would respond to postcards?

BZ

BTW: SP25 seems fine. OW is back to 90% of all surfing. I miss tabs and favicons a little, but everything else is so much better.

JKT · May 13, 2003, 11:00 AM

sp23 and sp25 (I missed 24) have both been very stable for me thus far... looks like the major crashers I was experiencing have been tackled. Ditto the Yay! for the return of drag and drop images.

Still seeing the occasional rendering issue with text with certain fonts (e.g. at MacGamer.com). Mostly with v's. I wonder if this was also a problem with 4.2 and earlier and I just didn't notice or bother about it? (Sorry, can't be arsed to check it for myself at the moment, hehe,

)

Edit: Speaking of kerning issues... "major" is looking very funky right now - a huge gap between the j and o