[Mike S.]

I don't foresee myself having any problem with a "tab drawer" and don't personally see what the fuss is about screen real estate, especially considering Expos� is now a permanent part of the Mac experience.

How many people are constantly asking for "full screen" browsing? This is the most wasteful thing ever considering virtually all pages I've ever visited do not require a full screen to render, you just get excessive white space and extra wide paragraphs by doing such a thing.

Anyways, this is neither here nor there.

I still believe that the page mark system can be modified to provide the functionality of tabs in a non-HIG violating way.

It doesn't meet the criteria established in this thread but then I don't know how much of that is really necessary.

To me, the power of tabs lies in it's ability to let you to pre-fetch data without the hassle of multiple window management and both "traditional tabs" and Omni-style "visual tabs" do this.

I posted earlier in the thread about how Page Mark can potentially fit the bill of a traditional tab system.

I tried digging up an old Chimera mailing list thread which discussed a non-HIG violating alternative to tabs, I think they even had a few photoshop mock-ups, but the archives appear to have been taken off-line.

I'd try making a few mock-ups myself except they'd probably look horrible because I have no Photoshop skills.

[Montanan]

Originally posted by Gul Banana:
Now, let's look at the popularity again...

(1) my contention is that in almost any situation the textual feedback is enough
(2) I would further state it to be an a priori truth that most people do not have vast quantities of browser windows open at once. The human brain can only keep track of a few threads of information.
(3) hello I have a laptop like 47% of people that bought Apple computers in 2003

Again, I haven't tried OW5's tab drawer. I HOPE I like it, and I'll be giving it many chances to prove itself. However, the "traditional" implementation of tabs has survived because it works, and works well.

I was going to make one more post in response to this whole thing, but I realized Gul Banana's message said pretty much exactly what I wanted to say ...

[Targon]

I ain't feeling the draw/tab thing either. All the things i don't like about it have been mentioned here so i isnt gonna repeat em.

Just gimme Tab's like Safari. This structure has been working perfectly for me since i started using the app.

Let me select a Style Sheet that is GLOBAL so that EVERY page uses my sheet like Safari.

I HATE pages that Don't use MY FONT type and Size, i HATE pages that DON'T change the color of visited linx to the color i PREFER. HATE is a harsh word but its the only one strong enough to convey my sentiment short of using naughty words

To make it more clear.

A browser aint worth SH!T to me if it don't do what I WANT !!!!

Please provide us with the ability to select a custom style sheet for ALL PAGES !!!!

thanks

[JKT]

Originally posted by alex_kac:
OK so here is how I see it.

I want text tabs like Safari uses when I have 2-50 windows from the same site like MacNN. The way I read MacNN for example is to open the "New Posts" page and then immediately middle click all pages. That's 2-14 pages right there. I then go through each tab and middle-click on the threads I'm interested in. In the end I have anywhere from 2-over 50 threads I'm reading. The OmniWeb drawer would be really bad for that. Tabs would be much better.
<snip>

On the contrary - it seems to me that in list view, the drawer would be far better than tabs for this as you could potentially see, what, 20 or 30 open pages in the drawer as opposed to 10 at the max useful trad tabs?

Edit: Also, the amount of textual information available in the drawer will remain constant no matter how many tabs are opened, as opposed to diminishing to less than negligible usefulness in the trad tab implementation.

Further questions/comments/suggestions:

1. Will we be able to pick font and font size for the display of the titles in the tab drawer? This would be very useful I think (e.g. I would like to use 10 or 11 pt text and I could envisage using a condensed font to be able to fit even more of the title into the display).

2. Is the drawer locatable on the right of the main window and does it auto size windows in the same fashion as the current 4.x bookmarks window? Personally, it makes far more sense to me for it to be on the right as it is then closer to the typical mouse location (over the scrollbar) that I envisage most people use when browsing a site.

3. I've just been watching the Your Mac Life video of the OmniGroup interview and at one point David mentions the iTunes like bookmark display (I assume it is similar to the Safari implementation) when it occurred to me that what would be an awesome new feature to introduce would be "Smart Bookmarks" - that is, any bookmark created for a site at the same domain (e.g. www.apple.com, www.macnn.com, etc) could automatically be placed or aliased into a smart folder created for that domain.

4. Could bookmarks from the same site be collapsed into a placeholder (e.g. a folder icon with the site's favicon attached) in the tab drawer? When you wanted to view them, clicking the folder would expand them out for full viewing? Or is this something that the workspaces will essentially do?

5. In place of a tooltip for the web page when mousing over the tab, how about a full or half size translucent preview with title displayed across it a la Expos�?

Personally, I'm looking forward to the drawer implementation. I think it has much greater potential for expansion into other functionality than the typical tab implementation.

P.S. MrBS if you watch the YML video, you can see the tab drawer being resized from typical to large to small. I can't say how nice the small drawer looked as the resolution of the .mov isn't that brilliant. Perhaps someone from OG could do a better movie of this for us?

P.P.S. MikeS - there is one area where full screen browsing is necessary and that's when viewing images that are greater than e.g. 800x600 in size. This is why I ask whether the drawer auto-sizes the windows or not as I would make my window full screen, open the drawer (which would cause the main window to resize to fit the drawer on screen) and use it like that until I came across a site that needed fs view. Closing the drawer would then make the window auto-size to fullscreen again, so no need to click the green button.

P.P.P.S. What I find a little funny about this discussion thus far is the way that it seems to be entirely focussed on the one (to me quite minor) feature of tabs when by far and away the best new addition to OW5 is going to be the Workspaces and individual preferences for each domain/site. These sound like the killer features that will put OW in a league of its own when it comes to browsers.

Edit: Direct link to the YML video - about 28MB in size so don't click if you don't have the bandwidth

[Nebagakid]

My thought on the Bookmarks is that it should be very similar to iTunes:

You have a Library of Bookmarks, and from there you put them into Folders. The thing is, they stay in the Library. So, a Bookmark can be in multiple Folders or Smart Folders.

I think this is the thought of many readers here.

[Sven G]

Originally posted by JKT:
[...] there is one area where full screen browsing is necessary and that's when viewing images that are greater than e.g. 800x600 in size. This is why I ask whether the drawer auto-sizes the windows or not as I would make my window full screen, open the drawer (which would cause the main window to resize to fit the drawer on screen) and use it like that until I came across a site that needed fs view. Closing the drawer would then make the window auto-size to fullscreen again, so no need to click the green button.

Full-screen browsing is indeed important, especially for "classic" notebooks (and "old" iMacs), which don't typically go beyond a 1024x768 resolution.

That's one of the reasons why an option for a "classic" (but, IMHO, really more "modern") Mozilla/Explorer-like sidebar would be a rather Good Thing�.

The other reason for being "against" the "drawer-is-a-perfect-solution" irrationality is, of course (as also previously covered, extensively, in these forums), that drawers should really only present non-essential, "transitory" information: not sure that the latest Apple HIG guidelines are on that line of reasoning (and not sure about Apple's HIG overall consistency!!!), but anyway...

[Nebagakid]

What about those drawers for Mail.app? They show the same information for e-mail that OmniWeb's Drabs do for web browsing. Eh? EH?!


OmniGroup: Will there be more buttons that appear in the bottom right corner as releases go on? For many CMS/Blog systems, they show <link rel="">'s for what is Next, or Previous, or Home for that particular site. Maybe there would be little arrows that pop up in the bottom right hand corner to link to those? EH?

[Sven G]

Originally posted by Nebagakid:
What about those drawers for Mail.app? They show the same information for e-mail that OmniWeb's Drabs do for web browsing. Eh? EH?!

Yeah - and, in fact, are an example of a Very Bad Use Of Drawers By The Mothership Itself�!

Apple itself seems to have fscked up its own (previous, but also current) guidelines, not only on this front; we'll have to see what the final result of all this "experimental" (?) inconsistency will be, for OS X 10.4+...

[cpac]

Originally posted by Gul Banana:
I'd say the list is more like this:

thanks for replying to the argument. Just a couple of thoughts in response...

(1) don't need visual feedback, only textual
It's not a matter of specifically not wanting visual feedback, it's just that it's rarely useful enough to be worth it.

This may well be true, but since no browser has ever offered visual feedback before, it's hard to tell whether you'll end up finding it useful...

(3) when screen real-estate is enough of a premium that you hate a drawer
"refusing to use a menu/gesture/shortcut" and "menus/gestures/shortcuts" are completely irrelevant. The great innovation of tabs over multiple windows is that you can see all open pages quickly - and well-truncated titles DO allow you to do that in a small space.

How long does it take to move the mouse to a corner of the screen? Or to hit F10? Or to hit command-`? Or to open the window menu?Certainly it can't be that much longer than hitting the moving target of a tab... If the pixel space difference between a tab bar and a drawer are super-critical, why not just browse without *either* and use expose or the Window menu which require no screen real-estate at all?

Now, let's look at the popularity again...

(1) my contention is that in almost any situation the textual feedback is enough

Again, this probably is true for the people that have used tabs to date: NOT BECAUSE textual tabs really are enough, but because nobody outside of Omnigroup has ever used a browser with thumbnails.

(2) I would further state it to be an a priori truth that most people do not have vast quantities of browser windows open at once. The human brain can only keep track of a few threads of information.

Ok, ignoring the inappropriate use of a priori (please, I was a philosophy major at dartmouth specializing in Kantian theory), this has been consistently proven to not be the case. There are lots of polls in the software forum archives about how many tabs people browse with - the answers range from 2-3 up to 50 or so. A common case of opening more than three or four tabs, is where people visit these forum pages, and open each thread they'd like to read or participate in into a different tab. One can quite quickly open ten or twenty pages in this way...

(3) hello I have a laptop like 47% of people that bought Apple computers in 2003

Same here (TiBook 500). When I need tabs at all, the few horizontal pixels of a drawer will make little difference to me, and for most situations I'm getting along fine without tabs (expose, command-`, window menu).

However, the "traditional" implementation of tabs has survived because it works, and works well.

Or perhaps just because there's never been any alternative system...

[Tim2 at Omni]

Originally posted by JKT:
Will we be able to pick font and font size for the display of the titles in the tab drawer?

This won't be available in the UIl, since we're trying to not present the user with a billion preferences if it means that the really useful, important ones will get overlooked.

I could probably sneak it in as a hidden default, though

2. Is the drawer locatable on the right of the main window and does it auto size windows in the same fashion as the current 4.x bookmarks window?

Yep!

4. Could bookmarks from the same site be collapsed into a placeholder?

5. ... how about a full or half size translucent preview with title displayed across it a la Expos�?

Interesting ideas. Noted.

[JKT]

Originally posted by Sven G:
The other reason for being "against" the "drawer-is-a-perfect-solution" irrationality is, of course (as also previously covered, extensively, in these forums), that drawers should really only present non-essential, "transitory" information: not sure that the latest Apple HIG guidelines are on that line of reasoning (and not sure about Apple's HIG overall consistency!!!), but anyway...

No one is saying that a drawer is a perfect solution, but I imagine that many/some of us are thinking it can be a better solution. Incidentally, the reasons for the drawer as opposed to a side-pane have already been discussed IIRC - the main reason that it is more suited to this task is that they offer more vertical space than a side-pane can (as they don't abut the toolbars and can therefore use the entire vertical area of the window thus allowing the display of more content). Another good reason to use a drawer is that it leaves slightly more of the desktop exposed (less of an issue since Expos�, admittedly).

I wonder - are those of us who like the idea of the drawer as opposed to the standard tabs implementation the people who typically browse with tens of pages open at once and are thus largely underwhelmed by the usual tab implementation?

Anyway, I think I'll leave this as my last comment on tabs until I've had the chance to use the OW5 beta...

[JKT]

Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni:
I could probably sneak it in as a hidden default, though

Hopefully But what are the default settings going to be?

[Nebagakid]

what is the e-mail to submit suggestions and ideas to?

[BZ]

While this is an interesting discussion, it seems like there are just two sides. The people who have USED OW 5.0 and people who have NOT.

It is great to discuss the use of tabs as links or pictures or whatever, but it until we all get it into our hands it is not much of a useful discussion.

Expose is an example of something that there was a lot of arguments over how stupid it was until it came out.

Feb 2nd is soon... Maybe OmniWeb is doing a SuperBowl commercial on the Feb 1st!

BZ

[Nebagakid]

Yeah, OmniGroup has Mikon (see how I did that?) doing a picture/slide-show ad....

[ratlater]

Originally posted by Nebagakid:
what is the e-mail to submit suggestions and ideas to?

I believe [email protected] is the correct address.

-matt

[cpac]

Originally posted by JKT:
I wonder - are those of us who like the idea of the drawer as opposed to the standard tabs implementation the people who typically browse with tens of pages open at once and are thus largely underwhelmed by the usual tab implementation?

Anyway, I think I'll leave this as my last comment on tabs until I've had the chance to use the OW5 beta...

No, at least not me.

I use OW 4.5 as my default and browse with several (up to about 6 or so at most) windows open using expose and command-` to switch between windows.

I personally think the workspaces offer some of the most attractive aspects of tabs (i.e. bookmarking a tab set) for me, and so I'm looking forward to OW 5.0 more because of that feature than the tabs themselves...

[ratlater]

Originally posted by cpac:
No, at least not me.

I use OW 4.5 as my default and browse with several (up to about 6 or so at most) windows open using expose and command-` to switch between windows.

I personally think the workspaces offer some of the most attractive aspects of tabs (i.e. bookmarking a tab set) for me, and so I'm looking forward to OW 5.0 more because of that feature than the tabs themselves...

Same thing here, workspaces are my most wanted new feature in OW 5. My top 5 is, workspaces, site specific prefs, tabs, new bookmarks, new shortcut mechanism.

-matt

[Nebagakid]

The problem with Workspaces is that for people with small size screens, they can take up precious space.

Normally, on my 1024x768, I have iChat on the far right and it is about 1/6th of the screen width, and my browser window is filling up the rest of the screen, overlapping a little. I don't know where I would put the drawers and the Workspace utility window.

of course, I will be upgrading to a 15"PB as my next computer, but until then, this screen space is starting to feel a..bit... cramped?

I just hope there be some kick ass shortcuts..

I set my Expos� ALL WINDOWS to F1 so i just have to stretch out my fingers to access it. what is not helpful is the option-esc word completion shortcut.

Customizable! Customizable!!!! I want to use my F13 for something, it is so big and easily hitable!

[ratlater]

Originally posted by Nebagakid:
The problem with Workspaces is that for people with small size screens, they can take up precious space.

Normally, on my 1024x768, I have iChat on the far right and it is about 1/6th of the screen width, and my browser window is filling up the rest of the screen, overlapping a little. I don't know where I would put the drawers and the Workspace utility window.

of course, I will be upgrading to a 15"PB as my next computer, but until then, this screen space is starting to feel a..bit... cramped?

I just hope there be some kick ass shortcuts..

I set my Expos� ALL WINDOWS to F1 so i just have to stretch out my fingers to access it. what is not helpful is the option-esc word completion shortcut.

Customizable! Customizable!!!! I want to use my F13 for something, it is so big and easily hitable!

You do know that you can change or set new keyboard shortcuts for any app in 10.3, right? Check out the Keyboard pref panel.

-matt

[Tim2 at Omni]

Originally posted by Nebagakid:
The problem with Workspaces is that for people with small size screens, they can take up precious space.

I just hope there be some kick ass shortcuts..

It isn't very obvious from the screenshots, but your first several workspaces are assigned F-key combos (i.e., F1 for the first workspace). This might conflict with your Expose setting, though.

There are also shortcuts for cycling through workspaces -- Command-Control-Left to go the previous workspace, Command-Control-Right to go to the next one.

[Nebagakid]

Can it be switched to option-number or option- fkey

[Tim2 at Omni]

Originally posted by Nebagakid:
Can it be switched to option-number or option- fkey

Nope. Maybe in a later release.

[MrBS]

Workspaces are just going to rock. Just thought that needed to be said.

~BS

[Nebagakid]

Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni:
Nope. Maybe in a later release.

Tim2 at Home:

"Hey, can you take out the trash?"

"Eh,,, maybe in a later release."

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by Nebagakid:
Tim2 at Home:

"Hey, can you take out the trash?"

"Eh,,, maybe in a later release."

LOL...

[Gul Banana]

Originally posted by cpac:
How long does it take to move the mouse to a corner of the screen? Or to hit F10? Or to hit command-`? Or to open the window menu?Certainly it can't be that much longer than hitting the moving target of a tab... If the pixel space difference between a tab bar and a drawer are super-critical, why not just browse without *either* and use expose or the Window menu which require no screen real-estate at all?

This is repeating myself, but: this is completely irrelevant. The innovation of tabs is not that you can switch between pages faster, but that you can SEE all your open pages without ANY extra action.

I'm sorry about the 'a priori' exaggeration, though I obviously don't have a source for that belief, but I bet you can't find an opposing one offhand.

And: I'm also on a 12" laptop getting along fine without tabs, but when I use other browsers on occasion I always find myself thinking "this is nice, I hope OW5 has this," so until I get to actually use the drawer, I'm going to continue believing that it's not necessarily a better solution.

[Rickster]

A reminder: Omni engineers generally read these forums in their off time. While our interactions with you here can and often do influence our thinking and our development directions, we may not catch everything. Your feedback is guaranteed to be noticed and funneled into the official engineering to-do (or to-consider-doing) list if you mail it to [email protected].

Also, Rick - can you confirm or deny whether OmniWeb 5.0 still respects the "graphite" system preference?

Very much so. More of the icons and images in 5.0's interface will switch blue/graphite than did in 4.5.

P.S. is there an official name for your tabs as they aren't strictly speaking tabs?

There's been much discussion of this subject internally. As yet, nobody's come up with a name that sounds good. (And there are some who fear that calling them something else will cause people to not realize they're our version of what other browsers call "tabs".) We're also considering minor appearance changes that make them look more like tabs.


cpac beat me to it with a lucky guess: our workspaces palette is almost exactly what Montanan describes as an alternative to the tab drawer. OW5 includes several ways to accomplish what other browsers offer via "tabs"... we just don't use that name for all of them.

an awesome new feature to introduce would be "Smart Bookmarks"

Smart Bookmark Folders -- that is, bookmark folders whose contents are automatically populated according to a user-defined filter -- were originally on the feature list for 5.0, but got scaled back due to schedule constraints. They'll very likely resurface in a later release, and in the meantime we have a few Not-So-Dumb bookmark collections for a few common types of searches.

The problem with Workspaces is that for people with small size screens, they can take up precious space.

The palette is but one way to interact with Workspaces... our most avid workspace users at the office use the menu and shortcut keys a lot.

Feb 2nd is soon... Maybe OmniWeb is doing a SuperBowl commercial on the Feb 1st!

Negotiations with Ridley Scott have yet to be finalized, but Wil's been training with the sledgehammer.

That's a wrap for now. Again: please send feedback to [email protected] to make sure it gets in the queue.

[Nebagakid]

DON'T CHANGE THE LOOK OF THE VIZTABS

PLEASE!!!!!

OK: here are some suggestions:

Drabs
VizTabs
OmniTabs
OmniViz
Trabs
MegaTabs
MaxiTabs
rTabs
dTabs
vTabs
Something to do with tentacles or a water creature

[bpsmith]

I have to agree. I love the look of the current "tabs." Don't change them!

[alex_kac]

Originally posted by JKT:
On the contrary - it seems to me that in list view, the drawer would be far better than tabs for this as you could potentially see, what, 20 or 30 open pages in the drawer as opposed to 10 at the max useful trad tabs?

Potentially except that as I said - I DO want thumbnails in some sites. I really want a mix of the two - thumbnails for all pages NOT of the same site, and tabs/lists for all pages of the same site. The other thing crucial to me is the ability to switch "tabs" or pages via a command key (which I'm sure there will be) that I can assign to my mouse as I use that a lot since I'll browse with just a mouse and no keyboard anywhere near at times.

So I'm not against the list, but I don't like having to switch between the list/thumbnails myself. I'd want a way to do it in the way above.

Edit: Also, the amount of textual information available in the drawer will remain constant no matter how many tabs are opened, as opposed to diminishing to less than negligible usefulness in the trad tab implementation.

Well, no. You still have to scroll. And I'd probably keep my drawer real narrow as I don't care for drawers at all. I just don't know why....I visually and UI wise hate drawers. I much prefer a PANE over drawers. I hate the Mail drawer. So that's another thing that's hard for me to imagine liking.

The fact is - I really love all the other things about OW5 that's been announced and always like OW period...but tabs are a necessity to me. Or at least some way to work with multiple pages easily. Workspaces will be a godsend in many ways and may answer my questions above, but until I can see it in action - these are my questions and comments.

[MrBS]

I'll try this question once more... are workspaces exclusive? Can you open more than on at a time? I would like to have a mix and match ability to them. Sometimes I want my work and my news one open. Or my news and my play one open. Or have a streaming concert playing on the second monitor (from the 'play' workspace) while doing work (from the 'work' workspace) on the first.

I hope I don't need to make a new workspace for every permutation.

And a new question, about bookmark management: Is there a way to go to a bookmark (not to the site, but to the bookmark) once you're at a site, or from the auto-complete addy? I'm sure the bookmark management is much improved, but it would be nice to be able to hop to the bookmark for *this* site and change how often you check for updates.

Also it would be nice if there was a subtle differentiation between bookmarks/history in the auto-complete addys. It would be really sweet if there were a little button on the drop down auto-complete addresses where you could do a couple simple actions like 'delete from history' (like if you typo a site, or forget to put in the first part of your google shortcut... annoying to have the pop up for the next day or two) and then throw in some things like 'bookmark site', 'inspect bookmark' or 'go to root site'... if you could figure a way to get that all accessible from the keyboard more power to you, but a little drop down button would suffice.

I'm going to ramble on...
~BS

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni:
It isn't very obvious from the screenshots, but your first several workspaces are assigned F-key combos (i.e., F1 for the first workspace). This might conflict with your Expose setting, though.

Can this be turned off?

[cpac]

Originally posted by Rickster:
More of the icons and images in 5.0's interface will switch blue/graphite than did in 4.5.

[jonhicks]

Quick question on the tabs - apologies if this has already been covered (I've looked and not found so far)

Does the tab drawer only open on the left? I would find it logical to be on the right with the scrollbar, and assumed it would work like all other OS X drawers. However, all the videos and screenshots I've seen show it only on the left.

[ratlater]

Originally posted by jonhicks:
Quick question on the tabs - apologies if this has already been covered (I've looked and not found so far)

Does the tab drawer only open on the left? I would find it logical to be on the right with the scrollbar, and assumed it would work like all other OS X drawers. However, all the videos and screenshots I've seen show it only on the left.

It can open on either side and should function just like current bookmark or history drawer in OW 4.5.

-matt

[ratlater]

Originally posted by MrBS:
I'll try this question once more... are workspaces exclusive? Can you open more than on at a time? I would like to have a mix and match ability to them. Sometimes I want my work and my news one open. Or my news and my play one open. Or have a streaming concert playing on the second monitor (from the 'play' workspace) while doing work (from the 'work' workspace) on the first.

I hope I don't need to make a new workspace for every permutation.

I'll second this feature request. Workspaces won't be nearly as useful if you can't have multiple workspaces open at the same time.

And a new question, about bookmark management: Is there a way to go to a bookmark (not to the site, but to the bookmark) once you're at a site, or from the auto-complete addy? I'm sure the bookmark management is much improved, but it would be nice to be able to hop to the bookmark for *this* site and change how often you check for updates.

This is another great idea. I nice key combo like 'shift+apple+b' could open the bookmark page for the current site. You could also set it up so that if a site doesn't have a bookmark the key combo will create a new one, and if the site is bookmarked it jumps to that site's bookmark page.

Also it would be nice if there was a subtle differentiation between bookmarks/history in the auto-complete addys. It would be really sweet if there were a little button on the drop down auto-complete addresses where you could do a couple simple actions like 'delete from history' (like if you typo a site, or forget to put in the first part of your google shortcut... annoying to have the pop up for the next day or two) and then throw in some things like 'bookmark site', 'inspect bookmark' or 'go to root site'... if you could figure a way to get that all accessible from the keyboard more power to you, but a little drop down button would suffice.

This would be slick too, especially the remove from history functionality.

-matt

[sjk]

Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni:
It isn't very obvious from the screenshots, but your first several workspaces are assigned F-key combos (i.e., F1 for the first workspace). This might conflict with your Expose setting, though.

I use F1-F6 for switching desktops with CodeTek Virtual Desktop and really don't want to be forced to change those just for compatibility with OW5 workspace shortcuts. I'm sure I won't be the only one having that sort of issue if there's no way to disable or change those OW5 shortcuts.

[MrBS]

Will workspaces be available from the dock icon? And will selecting a bookmark from the dock icon bring it to front?

I'm assuming there will still be the per-window preferences like 4.5, and I'm assuming they will be saved with the workspace.

Will there be a 'Workspace' menu item? Or a workspace menu under windows?

And what's the default behavior for a workspace? When I launch OW do all my workspaces load? If not will opening a workspace have the cached pages (if available)? or will opening a workspace for the first time at launch reload all the pages?

~BS

[ratlater]

Originally posted by MrBS:
Will workspaces be available from the dock icon? And will selecting a bookmark from the dock icon bring it to front?

I'm assuming there will still be the per-window preferences like 4.5, and I'm assuming they will be saved with the workspace.

Will there be a 'Workspace' menu item? Or a workspace menu under windows?

And what's the default behavior for a workspace? When I launch OW do all my workspaces load? If not will opening a workspace have the cached pages (if available)? or will opening a workspace for the first time at launch reload all the pages?

~BS

With all these questions there won't be any surprises come Feb 2.

-matt

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by ratlater:
With all these questions there won't be any surprises come Feb 2.

-matt

But how do you know OW5 public beta will be available on Feb 2?

Promises that OW5 would be done "way before the year's end" and promises of delivering on a holiday last year have been broken.

What's more disappointing is that I've been waiting for a year and a half for OW5 and the preview of OW5 doesn't quite reflect the year and a half they had.

I often heard from Omni that they were working on a new tabs implementation that would blow our minds. Turns out the implementation is almost identical to what Guy Incognito and others were mocking up in previous threads.

OW5 will ship with an old version of Webcore...so I think it's safe to assume that most of their man-power was spent on the interface. That and the fact that they stopped porting games and had only one other big project (OmniGraffle) to update last year make me wonder what exactly they were doing for a year and a half.

Maybe I'm not understanding the magnitude of it all but workspaces and these new tabs and the some of the other new features don't quite add up to a year and a half of work in my book.

We're not even getting the final...we're getting a beta release. I can only hope that it's stable and relatively bug free in it's beta state for me to justify the wait.

Am I being a tad harsh? Probably. If it makes me a little bit less of an asshole, I'll admit that the new interface seems very simple and clean. It borrows a lot from Safari's simplicity and takes certain things a bit beyond. I love the tabs in a drawer concept and workspace idea. But I still can't justify the wait...and I can't see myself giving up Safari over OW5.

[cpac]

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
But how do you know OW5 public beta will be available on Feb 2?

Promises that OW5 would be done "way before the year's end" and promises of delivering on a holiday last year have been broken.

um...

the first were "promises" made by nice Omni people who visit and post in these forums, not official OmniGroup press releases and were generally accompanied by caveats that they were mere predictions and that the process invariably caused delays, etc.... The second "holiday" thing you mention did not specify which year, it was just a mentioning of "in time for the holidays" with the caveat (made at the same time in the Mac Night Owl broadcast) that the "holidays" could refer to pretty much any holiday - Groundhog Day 2004 included.

This time we have an official Omnigroup press release/5.0 preview site up.

What's more disappointing is that I've been waiting for a year and a half for OW5 and the preview of OW5 doesn't quite reflect the year and a half they had.

[edit- more extended comments deleted in favor of a smily which says it all]

[ratlater]

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
I'll admit that the new interface seems very simple and clean. It borrows a lot from Safari's simplicity and takes certain things a bit beyond. I love the tabs in a drawer concept and workspace idea. But I still can't justify the wait...and I can't see myself giving up Safari over OW5.

I don't understand how you can say that Omin's new tabls are great and you love the workspaces, then say you can't see yourself giving up Safari. What about do you find better about Safari that makes you not want to use OW?

-matt

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by ratlater:
I don't understand how you can say that Omin's new tabls are great and you love the workspaces, then say you can't see yourself giving up Safari. What about do you find better about Safari that makes you not want to use OW?

-matt

I think the tabs concept in OW5 to be far superior to Safari's or any other browser...and the workspace idea is neat. But I've never really had a use for tabs...and especially not now that Expos� is here.

The question isn't really what I find better about Safari that makes me not want to use OW...the question is what's better in OW that makes me not want to use Safari...so far, not much besides workspaces.

Workspaces and Expos� might be the killer combo I've been waiting for...but was it really worth the wait and is it really worth the money. I'll judge that myself on Feb 2nd (yes, cpac...it does seem more official but...ya never know).

I currently use tab groups as 'workspaces' in Safari...it's more elegant in OW5 it seems but it works ok in Safari.

Safari = free
OW = not free

I just need more to justify the price and time...that's all really.

[Tim2 at Omni]

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
I often heard from Omni that they were working on a new tabs implementation that would blow our minds.

I'm not going to name any names, but I really think that you've taken the opinion of one or two Omni employees as official word from Omni. I doubt you'd ever see a press release from us stating that the next version of one of our apps is going to "Blow your mind". If you have been issued such a press release, please let us know so that we can correct the matter.

Turns out the implementation is almost identical to what Guy Incognito and others were mocking up in previous threads.

You're honestly disappointed by the fact that we're using thumbnails, something which many people have been wanting since tabs came into existence?

I want peace on Earth. I'm sure lots and lots of people want peace on Earth. If there ever were lasting peace on this planet, I suspect that you would complain about how unoriginal the concept is.

My point is that designing software isn't always about blowing people's minds. We saw where tabs were going and we went with it -- this is the next logical step in the evolution of the tabbed browser.

Someone had to try it.

so I think it's safe to assume that most of their man-power was spent on the interface. That and the fact that they stopped porting games and had only one other big project (OmniGraffle) to update last year make me wonder what exactly they were doing for a year and a half.

There are three people who do mainly UI. I am one of them, and was the only one for a couple of months. Looking at our CVS logs, I would say that OW5 as we all know it was born on Wednesday, Aug 27, 2003.

If you ask me, that doesn't add up to a year and a half. Just a little bit less.

Seriously, it's not that hard. If you like it, then use it. Use it forever without paying for it; it's free, man.

[rstevens]

does Omni honor Birthday Wishes?

because i have one and it involves beta testing.

[ambush]

For one I can say that I'm going to buy it the day it comes out.

Good job and I like the implementation!

[MrBS]

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
But how do you know OW5 public beta will be available on Feb 2?

Promises that OW5 would be done "way before the year's end" and promises of delivering on a holiday last year have been broken.

First off, I sure hope OG doesn't "learn" from dealing with people like horsepoo, them being so open with their development is very refreshing. Having a vague timescale mentioned offhandedly on a web board thrown back at them as a "promise" makes me cringe and I hope they stay as accommodating to the community as they have been.

[edit: well I guess with a "first off" there really should have been a second point. So the holiday thing was said in jest on a radio interview when Wil Shipley had said someone told him how it was always safe to say released on the holidays as it was always some holiday somewhere according to someone]

~BS

[WDRAM]

Agreed, MrBS. Thank you all so much for answering all of our questions in this thread, OmniGroup.

OW 5 is looking fantastic--and thanks for the free OW 5 offer, since I just couldn't resist and bought OW 4.5 last December.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni:

My point is that designing software isn't always about blowing people's minds. We saw where tabs were going and we went with it -- this is the next logical step in the evolution of the tabbed browser.

Someone had to try it.
[/B]

I agree...but after a year's work I was expecting more than just seeing a copy of Safari's bookmark and Search-field-in-the-toolbar feature and a tab design that I (or Guy Incognito rather) thought up more than a year ago.

I was expecting some radical departure from the normal boring browsers that we have today.

But whatever...OW5 will rightfully take its place as the best power-user browser. Of all the available browsers, OW5's interface is the cleanest and OW5's features are still the most interesting.

I'll definitely give OW5 a spin.