[workerbee]

Originally posted by cpac:
Here are mine (for all who care to use them)
what it searches: shortcut destination URL

yahoo search: find@ http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=%@
google search: google@ http://www.google.com/search?q=%@
(snip)

OWs implementation is far better than Safari, IMHO. I reall like the flexibility of it:
php@ http://ch.php.net/manual-lookup.php?...%@&lang=en -> BOOM there's my php keyword (as someone who recently keynoted and BOOMed a lot would say )
It's your own little iSeek.

[BZ]

Tried again this morning... my google and IMDB both have the @ symbol at the end of the search query but when I type:

"imdb hackers" (not in quoted) in my url bar, and it return.. nothing. It just reloads whatever page I am on.

BZ

Originally posted by CharlesS:
Do you end the shortcut name with an '@'? In order for it to take an argument, it has to end with an @.

The beauty of this is that it allows you to have two different shortcuts for the same keyword, depending on whether you add an argument or not.

For example, I have vt set to http://www.versiontracker.com/macosx/ while vt@ is set to http://www.versiontracker.com/mp/new...OSX&search=%@. That way I can type 'vt someapp' to search for some app, or just 'vt' to check today's updates for Mac OS X apps.

This makes Omni's implementation of keywords better than Mozilla/Camino's, IMO.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by BZ:
Tried again this morning... my google and IMDB both have the @ symbol at the end of the search query but when I type:

"imdb hackers" (not in quoted) in my url bar, and it return.. nothing. It just reloads whatever page I am on.

BZ

Are you sure you've got an @ at the end of the name in the left column, not just the search query?

[cpac]

Originally posted by BZ:
Tried again this morning... my google and IMDB both have the @ symbol at the end of the search query but when I type:

"imdb hackers" (not in quoted) in my url bar, and it return.. nothing. It just reloads whatever page I am on.

BZ

and are you sure you got the full URL I quoted, and not just part of it? (it appears truncated in the forum)

Also, are you in the US? I think some of the search strings I posted are US-specific.

[JKT]

Originally posted by BZ:
Tried again this morning... my google and IMDB both have the @ symbol at the end of the search query but when I type:

"imdb hackers" (not in quoted) in my url bar, and it return.. nothing. It just reloads whatever page I am on.

BZ

Try resetting to the defaults (hit Reset in the Shortcuts preferences) and seeing if they work after that.

[OAW]

Originally posted by cpac:
Type ahead allows you to type a few letters of a link on any page to select that link. Like when you're viewing this thread, if you type "news" the news link at the top of the page will be selected, and you can follow the link by hitting return.

I don't use it all that much personally, but some certainly do, and they love it. (hmmm, maybe I'll start trying it a bit more)

Oh, and it differs from safari in that safari doesn't have it.

Thanks for the info!

OAW

[BZ]

That was it... DUH!!!

Maybe OW5.0 will do this for me.

Ok, so I take it back.. I don't need the search query one (and my home page can go back to nothing).

BZ

Originally posted by CharlesS:
Are you sure you've got an @ at the end of the name in the left column, not just the search query?

[pliny]

Cool, OW 5 is aqua and not brushed metal, nice going guys.

p.s. have you let it slip in any talk with apple that brushed metal for friggin everything is just crazy.

5 sounds pretty cool can't wait for the sp's.

[TheIceMan]

Originally posted by wjsomni:
I was allowed by our firm (yet gentle) marketing weasels to "leak" a little bit about OmniWeb 5 on The Mac Night Owl Live, which, because of server problems, wasn't live at all, so the interview will be up this Friday.

-Wil

They seem to have the dates all confused. The date they have is: Sept. 21st, which is a Sunday as when Wil Shipley, head of OmniGroup, will be discussing the next version of OmniWeb. What's the deal?

[Edit:] I think I'm talking to the man himself. Cool.

[workerbee]

Originally posted by pliny:
p.s. have you let it slip in any talk with apple that brushed metal for friggin everything is just crazy.

Maybe it is part of some Apple plan for the future, to integrate iTunes and iPhoto into the Finder (M$ will probably be doing it with Longhorn and Office, using metadata as an excuse). Even then, it is stupid, and ugly as *%!$.

I'm glad at least the Omni boys (and girls?) keep a level head and continue to do some of the nicest and best-designed OS X apps out there.

[flysky]

I already requested this in the Coordinated OmniGroup Feedback thread at ArsTechnica, and I may have emailed feedback about it too, but just in case it got missed:

I would really like to have the Services menu in the OmniWeb contextual menu. I understand, though, that putting it there by default would violate the HIG, and I applaud the OmniFolk for being unwilling to do it on that basis.

That said, would it also violate the HIG if you made it a user-selectable option in the preferences? If not, I'd very much like it if you added that to the preferences for 5.0.

If you can't/won't do that, perhaps you could allow IceCoffee to access OW's contextual menu. (For those who don't know, IceCoffee is a(n APE) utility that allows you to put the Services menu in contextual menus.) IceCoffee works for many apps, but OW is not among them. If there's anyway you could allow such a third-party utility to access the OW contextual menu, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks.

[cpac]

Originally posted by TheIceMan:
They seem to have the dates all confused. The date they have is: Sept. 21st, which is a Sunday as when Wil Shipley, head of OmniGroup, will be discussing the next version of OmniWeb. What's the deal?

[Edit:] I think I'm talking to the man himself. Cool.

Yep. That's 2 extra days of waiting to figure out what Wil let slip...

[Tim2 at Omni]

Originally posted by cpac:
Yep. That's 2 extra days of waiting to figure out what Wil let slip...

Actually, it aired yesterday (Friday) at 6PM Pacific Time.

I don't really think he gave that much away.

[cpac]

Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni:
Actually, it aired yesterday (Friday) at 6PM Pacific Time.

I don't really think he gave that much away.

ah well, it's not archived yet.

Now that it's aired, can you tell us what he said?

[Tim2 at Omni]

Originally posted by cpac:
ah well, it's not archived yet.

Now that it's aired, can you tell us what he said?

I can tell you what I remember. I was doing something else at the time and it was sort of playing in the background.

- Tabs. And not like anyone else's tabs. When you have a dozen or so tabs open in Safari or Camino, it's nearly impossible to tell the difference between them. Especially when they're all pages from the same site. The usage pattern which goes along with this UI for most people is:[list=1][*]Cmd-click a bunch of links to load them into tabs[*]Read the current tab.[*]Close it.[*]Go to the next tab.[/list=1]
We think that's useful in certain circumstances. It's nice, when reading news sites, to have an ordered queue of pages loading in the background, waiting for you to finish reading whatever you're reading.

But there are other situations where you really do want efficient "random access" to your tabs, like on these forums. You want to open a tab for each thread/forum you're interested in, and you want to be able to switch between them efficiently. You want to know which ones you've seen before, and which ones you haven't. You want to copy something stupid somebody said in one thread, so that you can quote it in a reply to another thread. You want to know what tab you're switching to before you actually switch to it, thereby avoiding the "hide and seek" interaction of other browsers' tabs.

These are just some of the things we are hoping to address in our tab implementation.

- Site-specific preferences. You know that "Make Text Bigger" button most browsers have? When you click that button, you could be saying one of three things:[list=1][*]This site's text is too small. Make it bigger.[*]This page's text is too small today. Make it bigger just this once, until I close the window.[*]This browser's text is too small. Make it bigger for all sites.[/list=1]
Which one did you want? This is something we are hoping to solve in an elegant way for 5.0.

And I think that's all he mentioned. But that's not all that's going into 5.0 -- even in the week since the show was recorded, we've made a really huge (read: freaking gigantic) change to a very important part of our UI.

And that's all I'm going to say.

[ratlater]

Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni:
- Site-specific preferences. You know that "Make Text Bigger" button most browsers have? When you click that button, you could be saying one of three things:[list=1][*]This site's text is too small. Make it bigger.[*]This page's text is too small today. Make it bigger just this once, until I close the window.[*]This browser's text is too small. Make it bigger for all sites.[/list=1]
Which one did you want? This is something we are hoping to solve in an elegant way for 5.0.
[/B]

WooHoo! I've been wanting this for soooo long. It would make my life at work much much easier.

-matt

[BZ]

Tim... you are the most cruel person I have ever had the chance to read.

Talking about something, that we don't know what will be, when we will get it... is just cruel.



How about paying for a SSP?

(Sneaky Sneaky Peek)

How would, Say $9.99 now, that goes toward the upgrade price? Controlled testing for you? Revenue for OG?

BZ

[cpac]

Ok, well thanks for the summary.

Well at least we know however the tabs work out, they've addressed most of the problems with existing implementations. (Though how that can possibly work is still beyond me)

Here's hoping sps come out sometime around Panther...

[Amorya]

I have a few issues with 4.5, and for want of somewhere better, I'll post them here.

Firstly, when a page is done loading, it jumps to the front. That's BAD. Things should stay where I put them! (This is something I really hate on Windows.)

Forms and text editing is worse than 4.2. Firstly, I can't type in a form field very well until the page is done loading. Either what I type doesn't appear, or the browser interprets it as going to the window instead of the form field.

The stop button doesn't work very well. When I hit stop, I don't mean 'stop after you've done as much as you feel is necessary', I mean stop right now and don't do anything else! Sometimes the stop button is disabled but the loading indicator is still spinning.

The back behaviour was much better in 4.2. There are some sites (AppleInsider, for example) that OW 4.5 refuses to cache. I know forums change often, but you could make that behaviour optional... I know how the refresh button works if I want to see the latest version of a page. Instant back would be great.


Amorya

[TheIceMan]

Tim2 at Omni: Thanks for the info. Now, we have something to DEFINITELY look forward to! Thanks again Tim. Hey ANYTIME, and I mean anytime you feel like sharing more info like this just feel free to do so.

[Catfish_Man]

Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni:
I can tell you what I remember. I was doing something else at the time and it was sort of playing in the background.

- Tabs. And not like anyone else's tabs. When you have a dozen or so tabs open in Safari or Camino, it's nearly impossible to tell the difference between them. Especially when they're all pages from the same site. The usage pattern which goes along with this UI for most people is:[list=1][*]Cmd-click a bunch of links to load them into tabs[*]Read the current tab.[*]Close it.[*]Go to the next tab.[/list=1]
We think that's useful in certain circumstances. It's nice, when reading news sites, to have an ordered queue of pages loading in the background, waiting for you to finish reading whatever you're reading.

But there are other situations where you really do want efficient "random access" to your tabs, like on these forums. You want to open a tab for each thread/forum you're interested in, and you want to be able to switch between them efficiently. You want to know which ones you've seen before, and which ones you haven't. You want to copy something stupid somebody said in one thread, so that you can quote it in a reply to another thread. You want to know what tab you're switching to before you actually switch to it, thereby avoiding the "hide and seek" interaction of other browsers' tabs.

These are just some of the things we are hoping to address in our tab implementation.

- Site-specific preferences. You know that "Make Text Bigger" button most browsers have? When you click that button, you could be saying one of three things:[list=1][*]This site's text is too small. Make it bigger.[*]This page's text is too small today. Make it bigger just this once, until I close the window.[*]This browser's text is too small. Make it bigger for all sites.[/list=1]
Which one did you want? This is something we are hoping to solve in an elegant way for 5.0.

And I think that's all he mentioned. But that's not all that's going into 5.0 -- even in the week since the show was recorded, we've made a really huge (read: freaking gigantic) change to a very important part of our UI.

And that's all I'm going to say.

Very very cool. I read the arstechnica forums a lot, and they don't like ad blocking (and since I like them, I don't want to block ads on their site). With site specific prefs, I imagine I could turn off ad blocking for arstechnica.com (and perhaps for all pages from the arstechnica.com domain?). As for the tabs: I tend to read forums like news sites (with exactly the pattern described), but I'll be very interested to see how you get around the issues mentioned. Keep up the good work

[TheIceMan]

Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni:
...But that's not all that's going into 5.0 -- even in the week since the show was recorded, we've made a really huge (read: freaking gigantic) change to a very important part of our UI...

This is starting to turn into one of those "suspenseful" movies. Man, I can't wait for 5.0!

[ratlater]

The archive of the interview is up now. OW 5 info is what Tim reported and there is also some info on OmniOutliner 3. He also gave us some hints about OW 5's new icon. It's based on an old tv show that somehow relates to what OmniWeb does and version 5.

-matt

[MrBS]

If only there were a stream w/o the host and the co-host... we just need a streaming Wil conference call instead of this interview.

Anyway... my guess is Hawaii Five-O.

...surfing... ...five... and I'm sure it will get quite a few pleased 'Ohhhh!'s.

~BS

[Tim2 at Omni]

Originally posted by MrBS:
Anyway... my guess is Hawaii Five-Oh.

...surfing... ...five... and I'm sure it will get quite a few pleased 'Ohhhh!'s.

~BS

Bookmark 'em, Danno!

Lord.

AFAIK the "popular 60s/70s television show" theme is just something we have going on internally so that we can tell the difference between 4.5 and 5.0 on the Dock. I'm not sure that it will stay like that when we release it publicly.

[ratlater]

Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni:
Bookmark 'em, Danno!

Lord.

AFAIK the "popular 60s/70s television show" theme is just something we have going on internally so that we can tell the difference between 4.5 and 5.0 on the Dock. I'm not sure that it will stay like that when we release it publicly.

Haha...at least use it as a SP icon, or have Rickster slap it on icons.cx...I've gotta see the Hawaii Five-Oh OW icon.

-matt

[Rickster]

when a page is done loading, it jumps to the front. That's BAD.

Well, y'all wanted better JavaScript support -- we now support the functions for bringing focus to a window, and we didn't in 4.2. Unfortunately, more and more sites like to put that in their onload handler...

We're not too keen on this either, so expect to see an option to override it (like you can with popups) in a future release. (4.5.x or 5.0, dunno which it'll end up being.)

The back behaviour was much better in 4.2. There are some sites (AppleInsider, for example) that OW 4.5 refuses to cache.

The "instant-back" caching mechanism had to change a lot for WebCore... in particular, we weren't able to get a caching scheme for framesets working within the schedule for 4.5. (You'll find that most of the sites for which instant-back doesn't work are FRAMESET pages or pages containing IFRAMES. Lots of sites are putting their ads in IFRAMES lately.) Again, this is something we'd like to get into our next release.

Possible workaround: use a CSS stylesheet to block IFRAME'd ads. (See this macosxhints article for help with the stylesheet, and the "Complete Defaults List" in OmniWeb's help for how to enable it.)

[Tim2 at Omni]

Originally posted by Rickster:
Possible workaround: use a CSS stylesheet to block IFRAME'd ads.

That might make things a little bit faster, but it will not restore "instant back" functionality to pages with inline frames. WebCore's instant-back works by saving off the constructed DOM tree, JavaScript state, and style information into a "page cache" object, which it can then swap in instead of having to parse the page all over again. Unfortunately, WebCore refuses to create these page caches for documents with children (i.e., frames), so going back to those documents will always be a little slower than if they were loaded via the instant-back feature.

We might work around this for an update to 4.5, or we might just wait until 5.0.

[JKT]

Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni:
- Site-specific preferences. You know that "Make Text Bigger" button most browsers have? When you click that button, you could be saying one of three things:[list=1][*]This site's text is too small. Make it bigger.[*]This page's text is too small today. Make it bigger just this once, until I close the window.[*]This browser's text is too small. Make it bigger for all sites.[/list=1]
Which one did you want? This is something we are hoping to solve in an elegant way for 5.0.

Cool, will that include the compatibility preferences as this would be highly beneficial for that particular setting.

[Rickster]

Our aim is to make any setting that you'd want to change on a per-site basis be available as a site-specific preference. So, yeah, that includes user-agent spoofing, javascript behaviors and other things relating to website compatibity, as well as matters of taste which may vary from webpage to webpage, like font size and color.

That's our aim -- the actual set of which prefs can be site-specific and which can't is yet to be finalized, so we can't promise anything yet. (But again, if it makes sense foe something to be site-specific, there's a good chance it will be.)

[ratlater]

Originally posted by Rickster:
Our aim is to make any setting that you'd want to change on a per-site basis be available as a site-specific preference. So, yeah, that includes user-agent spoofing, javascript behaviors and other things relating to website compatibity, as well as matters of taste which may vary from webpage to webpage, like font size and color.

That's our aim -- the actual set of which prefs can be site-specific and which can't is yet to be finalized, so we can't promise anything yet. (But again, if it makes sense foe something to be site-specific, there's a good chance it will be.)

Woohoo!!!!!!

-matt

[workerbee]

Originally posted by Rickster:
Our aim is to make any setting that you'd want to change on a per-site basis be available as a site-specific preference.

Brilliant! Simply... brilliant!

[cpac]

I finally got a chance to listen to Wil's interview, and I must say I'm [even] more excited about the tab/history/bookmark changes coming in 5.0.

Specifically, there was a lot of discussion about how bookmarks, tabs, and history were all just way to remember and navigate information quickly, and how whatever metaphor OW 5.0 uses, works for all three of these together.

very excited.

The other nice thing were the various hints about release time frame:
-sp as soon as it's stable enough internally to allow others to test it
-"in time for the holidays" (with the caveat that there are *always* upcoming holidays)
-that release/development time should on par with, or perhaps even faster than 4.5 development was.

These hints suggest to me a release by the end of the year, maybe a sp even sooner.

(please don't dash my dreams omnifolks)

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Rickster:
Our aim is to make any setting that you'd want to change on a per-site basis be available as a site-specific preference. So, yeah, that includes user-agent spoofing, javascript behaviors and other things relating to website compatibity, as well as matters of taste which may vary from webpage to webpage, like font size and color.

That's our aim -- the actual set of which prefs can be site-specific and which can't is yet to be finalized, so we can't promise anything yet. (But again, if it makes sense foe something to be site-specific, there's a good chance it will be.)

This sounds like a great idea to me. Can't wait to see it!

[TheIceMan]

Originally posted by cpac:
I finally got a chance to listen to Wil's interview, and I must say I'm [even] more excited about the tab/history/bookmark changes coming in 5.0...

The other nice thing were the various hints about release time frame:
-sp as soon as it's stable enough internally to allow others to test it
-"in time for the holidays" (with the caveat that there are *always* upcoming holidays)
-that release/development time should on par with, or perhaps even faster than 4.5 development was.

These hints suggest to me a release by the end of the year, maybe a sp even sooner...

Thanks for the summary of the interview cpac. Wow, NOW I'm excited!

*sp, sp, sp*

[BZ]

Is it just me or do others like SPs better than the final release?

There is nothing I "used" to like better than seeing my SP bookmark turn green in the morning (meaning update) and downloading the newest one, opening it up to see all the new features/fixes.

Personally I don't care if OW 5.0 final is release till June of 04 as long as the SPs start coming soon.

I am sure (and happy) that OG will do the "you can use SPs if you are a current owner of OW".

BZ

[workerbee]

Originally posted by BZ:
There is nothing I "used" to like better than seeing my SP bookmark turn green in the morning (meaning update) and downloading the newest one, opening it up to see all the new features/fixes.

Geek!
No-one else here present would ever, ever even remotely be able to relate to what you wrote

[ratlater]

Originally posted by BZ:
Is it just me or do others like SPs better than the final release?

There is nothing I "used" to like better than seeing my SP bookmark turn green in the morning (meaning update) and downloading the newest one, opening it up to see all the new features/fixes.

Personally I don't care if OW 5.0 final is release till June of 04 as long as the SPs start coming soon.

I am sure (and happy) that OG will do the "you can use SPs if you are a current owner of OW".

BZ

You waited until morning! After 8 or 9 pm I'd start compulsively checking the SP site for the update

-matt

[BZ]

Sure... set my bookmark update frequency to once an hour and in the morning.. BINGO! New SP ready to go.

As for being a geek... eat/breath/sleep it.

BZ

Originally posted by ratlater:
You waited until morning! After 8 or 9 pm I'd start compulsively checking the SP site for the update

-matt

[BZ]

A few questions for the guys at OmniGroup since we are now letting "some" cats out of the bags on OW5.0.

- Favicon support (url/bookmark)?
- Disk cache?
- Multiple bookmark select and "mark viewed"?
- Bookmark syncing? (.Mac/iSync)
- Safari Bookmark support?
- Speed?


BZ

[TheIceMan]

Originally posted by ratlater:
You waited until morning! After 8 or 9 pm I'd start compulsively checking the SP site for the update

-matt

Yup, that's me! I check at least 2-3 times a day!!

[SYN]

Omni guys, any work going on making WebCore thread-safe? AFAIK it doesn't play well with threads, and you guys are probably the best threaders out there, so are you giving Apple a hand?

And if so, would you mind helping them out with the Finder too?

[Tim2 at Omni]

Originally posted by SYN:
Omni guys, any work going on making WebCore thread-safe?

We gave up on that very early on. There's just too much code in there, and we didn't want to diverge too much from Apple's (or KDE's) code.

[Rickster]

- Multiple bookmark select and "mark viewed"?

You can do this in 4.5, you just have to use the menu bar (Bookmarks > Edit Bookmarks > Mark as Read) instead of the context menu due to a bug in our customized outline view. Said bug will be "fixed" in 5.0.

- Favicon support (url/bookmark)?
- Disk cache?

Yes, I believe it's been said already that we intend to include these features.

- Safari Bookmark support?

I'm not sure what you're asking; you can already import Safari bookmarks in 4.5.

- Bookmark syncing? (.Mac/iSync)

It's still up in the air, but we'll probably be sticking with our WebDAV bookmarks implementation (and making it an easily accessible and fully supported feature).

- Speed?

No, we plan to make it as slow as possible. What do you think?

[Catfish_Man]

Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni:
We gave up on that very early on. There's just too much code in there, and we didn't want to diverge too much from Apple's (or KDE's) code.

Oh well... maybe Apple will get around to it sometime. I guess I don't really care how much webcore is threaded as long as the interface is well threaded (I love Camino, but the lag switching tabs while loading multiple pages is much worse than Safari).

[ambush]

Can't wait

[BZ]

Very cool about bookmarks, favicons and speed (very slow is just what I was hoping for).

What I meant about Safari bookmarks is the ability to read/write to the same bookmark file. For me it would solved the iSync issue and the issue of having two sets of bookmarks (importing/exporting only works once).

The other item that I really like in Mozilla that I think you guys could do much better with would be the "Open in Tabs" (replace tabs with whatever you guys are doing that is "tab-like").

It would be nice to have a "set" of bookmarks that I could easily pop open either as the browser starts up, with a key command or by clicking on the set. I know it is a power user feature, but OW is a power user browser.

Keep up the great work and get those SPs going before I set my bookmark check to happen every 2 seconds!

BZ

Originally posted by Rickster:
You can do this in 4.5, you just have to use the menu bar (Bookmarks > Edit Bookmarks > Mark as Read) instead of the context menu due to a bug in our customized outline view. Said bug will be "fixed" in 5.0.
Yes, I believe it's been said already that we intend to include these features.
I'm not sure what you're asking; you can already import Safari bookmarks in 4.5.
It's still up in the air, but we'll probably be sticking with our WebDAV bookmarks implementation (and making it an easily accessible and fully supported feature).
No, we plan to make it as slow as possible. What do you think?

[Rickster]

Yes, we're definitely doing something about "tabs" and "sets"... sounds like it'll do what you're looking for, BZ.

As for read/write access to Safari's bookmarks... I can't comment on whether we eventually will or won't try to do it, but I can say that it's difficult and thus unlikely. While it's an easy-to-parse XML format, it's also a private, undocumented format, so Apple could change it out from under us at any time. Plus there's the issues of what happens when you have both OmniWeb and Safari open and trying to access the file at the same time -- one is likely to clobber the other's changes. The likewise private, undocumented scheme for iSync bookmarks only further complicates matters.

If you need your bookmarks to be fully shared among multiple browsers, I recommend Bookit or similar products.

[milhouse]

Originally posted by Rickster:
... I recommend Bookit or similar products.

Me too. Bookit is great.

[nickm]

No, we plan to make it as slow as possible.

If I recall, speed was distinctly not on the menu for OW 4.0. You only have so much time, and features may take precedence over speed.

In the case of Safari, though, speed was the primary focus. I heard that Safari developers were not allowed to check in new code if it made the system slower. So, they either had to optimize their code, or find some other area to optimize.