[hoopz]

Three words:

Site preferences ROCK!

This feature alone is going to net you guys customers galore. It should really be in the toolbar by default.

And I love the tab implementation.

[JKT]

I said it before and I'll say it again as a general FYI - if you are getting crashes at launch time, the first thing to do is delete the Cache folder (~/Library/Caches/com.omnigroup.omniweb5). Then try re-launching. If that doesn't help, go for the prefs and App support folder

The next thing to do is to make sure you inactivate any of the non-standard third party plug-ins such as PDFbrowser.plugin (this one in particular tends to need an update for new versions of OmniWeb - it might not need it this time, but who knows until SchubertIt have tested it out?). You can do this specifically for OmniWeb via the plug-in preferences.

For ambush:
"I use a Safari AutoTab (opens sites contained in folder in tabs) a lot on Safari...

For instance I have one for forums (5 macnn forums+spymac gallery) and one for my daily news (12 sites)...."

To open a folder of thumbs, control click the folder and select "Open in New Tabs" (opens in the current window) or "Open in New Window" (which will open a new window with all the bookmarks as thumbnails).

From what you describe, Workspaces are actually ideally suited to what you are wanting. Set one up for forums, one up for news sites etc.

Btw, as another general FYI, workspaces only reload the first time after a re-launch of OmniWeb. They do not reload each time you switch between them.

[Mr Scruff]

Any possibility of implementing the Panther smooth scrolling option?

[JKT]

Here's a good review of the beta at Daring Fireball.

It makes me think that OmniWeb is the "Apple" of the browser world.

[Gee4orce]

I use a 12" Powerbook, and I don't have any problems with screen size and VisiTabs. Don't know what you guys are moaning about...

Suggestion: combine the 'Stop' and 'Reload' buttons, like Safari does. They are mutually exclusive, and having both takes up too much room IMO.

The toolbar icons are too garish too, especially with favicons in the Favourites bar.

[Gee4orce]

...and while I'm on my high horse...

These kind of tabs have a precedent: Preview.

I don't here ya complaining about Preview's page selection drawer, and that's wider than OWs because the name goes along side the thumbnail, not underneath it.

[AngryBonk]

So far I really like it. Two things only:

- It would be nice if it would be possible to delete Flags again (maybe I�m missing something). There could be an option to delete all flags and you could do it by changing the mark icon in an unmark icon in the toolbar. As workspaces save flags as well you are collecting pretty much of these over the time which you won�t need anymore

- Right now it seems that when starting a workspace after launch, all the pages are loaded simultaneously. An option to do this in the order of the tabs instead would be nice. You are usually starting to watch your first site anyway before looking at others and it would be better performance-wise, I guess.

[workerbee]

Originally posted by Mr Scruff:
Any possibility of implementing the Panther smooth scrolling option?

Please? As an option, maybe, for those who don't like it -- you know who you are. It would suit the smooth general impression of OW very well, IMHO -- at least once the extreme crash-prone stage of Beta is over

Oh, and the icons could be a little more subtle: a little less green in the app icon, and much more subdued toolbar icons, esp. the bookmarks icon.

[JKT]

The option for smooth scrolling is a System Preference. I think what is being asked for is for OmniGroup to support that option. Anyone who doesn't like smooth scrolling (such as me) doesn't' have to use it and is unlikely to have switched it on in Sys prefs anyway.

[Amorya]

Originally posted by Gee4orce:
Suggestion: combine the 'Stop' and 'Reload' buttons, like Safari does. They are mutually exclusive, and having both takes up too much room IMO.

Nooooo! Please don't do this!

Amorya

[ginoledesma]

Sent this out to Omnigroup:

I have just tried out Omniweb 5.0 for a few minutes. I seem to be frequently running into the same problem every time that's making Omniweb almost useless to me. I open up a browser window and then load three sites in three different tabs:
- http://www.pinoymac.org/
- http://www.philmug.org/forums/today.php
- http://forums.macnn.com/

Shortly after loading these three sites and trying to click on a link, the browser stalls at "Waiting for available connection." Four minutes have passed since and I have not been able to load anything anymore. Closing the window and trying again does not do anything helpfu, at which point trying to load the default page will still result in the "Waiting for available connection" status. The application will stop responding when you attempt to quit it. Only a force quit will do.

[Gul Banana]

Here's a rather amusing bug:
OW 5 downloads things to ~/Desktop
Rather than ~/Desktop/
This means it saves everything as a file in your home directory called Desktop-1, Desktop-2, etc

[cpac]

for those that don't like the icons, remember there will be a couple sets that ship with OW and you'll be able to add your own.

I'm using the graphite set right now (I'm not sure if there's a way to access it yet without changing your system prefs to graphite), and it looks great - not bubblegum or anything.

[brutal]

Originally posted by Amorya:
Nooooo! Please don't do this!

why not?

[Mike Pither]

Gul Banana
"Here's a rather amusing bug:
OW 5 downloads things to ~/Desktop
Rather than ~/Desktop/
This means it saves everything as a file in your home directory called Desktop-1, Desktop-2, etc"

Mine doesn't it down loads to my real desk top. Strange!

[Gee4orce]

Browser dilemma ! The new Safari has some cool features, and really great speed and better CSS - but I'm already in love with Omniweb's tabs.

Will Omniweb get an updated Webcore to bring it into line with Safari ? I know that the speed is going to be addressed.

BTW. Posting this in Safari and editing is painful. I'm sure it's those damned animated gifs...

[NeXTLoop]

Originally posted by brutal:
why not?

Because it's a pain in the butt in Safari when you try to hit stop, and because the site is almost done loading, it reloads it. This has been a common complaint about Safari.

[Gee4orce]

Originally posted by NeXTLoop:
Because it's a pain in the butt in Safari when you try to hit stop, and because the site is almost done loading, it reloads it. This has been a common complaint about Safari.

Simple solution is to have a 1/2 second delay between the two states, to stop that happening.

Omniweb just crashed on me again, so it's back to Safari for me for the time being.

BTW: it is those animated gifs slowing down the editing ! Scroll them off screen and editing is fine. Scroll them back on, and it all goes jerky.

[cpac]

Originally posted by Gee4orce:
Will Omniweb get an updated Webcore to bring it into line with Safari ? I know that the speed is going to be addressed.

Omnigroup has said, and I believe has posted in the 5.0b1 release notes that 5.0 final will retain v85 of webcore and javascriptcore, but that a future release will upgrade to 125 or whatever the latest version is at the time (Tim, I believe explained that there's no need code-wise for them to go through all the intermediate iterations of webcore and javascriptcore)

[Truepop]

If safari and OmniWeb use the same rendering engine, then how is that sites that render correctly in OmniWeb 4.5 and Safari look terrible in OmniWeb 5?

I have found quiet a few but one that bugs the crap out of me is Outlook web view at my school.

[RH]

Is there a way to turn off favicons in OmniWeb 5? I am sure that it is something that can be edited like in Camino but I am not sure where to look. I really just want to have the bookmarks bar use the generic icons.
In my opinion they are fine in the address bar, but in the bookmarks bar it just looks bad. It takes away from the cleanliness of the design.

RH

[dont.wanna.tell]

I really like the browser, though I miss some of the great features 4 had.

- I cannot scroll for a whole page with holding the scroll-wheel down and scrolling anymore
- I cannot set a default stylesheet (sad, because I did all my add filtering this way)
- Oh, and switching from bookmarks to page and back always reloads.

Other than that, I'm pretty much sold on this browser. I absolutely adore the tabs.
Oh and that workspace thing is pretty cool too.

cu Martin

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by NeXTLoop:
This has been a common complaint about Safari.

Common? LOL!

[Krypton]

Three things that would allow me to keep on using OW 5:

� Downloading files actually working.
� Remember passwords.
� 'Stop loading' button being functional.

All in all very good, but I had expected a beta to be feature complete.

[Krypton]

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
Common? LOL!

It's true - I have the problem that Safari slows to a crawl, and when I press 'Stop' the page finishes loading a split second before and so I end up pressing 'reload' instead.

[Tim2 at Omni]

Originally posted by Krypton:
All in all very good, but I had expected a beta to be feature complete.

Why? Betas are by definition not complete. Remember that first Safari beta? The one without tabs?

How about that OSX Public Beta that was super fast and solid as a rock?

I think you get my point

[Tim2 at Omni]

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
Common? LOL!

Even if the stop/reload button issue is not common, it is a very old one. OmniWeb 1.5 (way back in the mid nineties) had this feature and it was pulled because of the very reason given by the other people in this thread -- you'd end up reloading pages instead of stopping them.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni:
Even if the stop/reload button issue is not common, it is a very old one. OmniWeb 1.5 (way back in the mid nineties) had this feature and it was pulled because of the very reason given by the other people in this thread -- you'd end up reloading pages instead of stopping them.

Gee4orce gave a good solution. Or are you guys trying to take the easy way out of coding something a little more complex?

Put a delay. Once the page is done loading, the button should remain a 'Stop' button for half a second (or more?) to prevent this accident.

The new WebCore is rather fast anyways...this accident surely was frustrating for your NeXT customers back in the mid-90s because they were all on 2400 or 9600 baud rate modems and accidently reloading a page used to make people want to violently push their monitors off the desk if the page was composed of anything more than just text. But today with highspeed internet, broadband solutions, tabs, multiple windows and WebCore????

[lawgeek]

Originally posted by Mr Scruff:
Any possibility of implementing the Panther smooth scrolling option?

Please do this!

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni:
Why? Betas are by definition not complete. Remember that first Safari beta? The one without tabs?

How about that OSX Public Beta that was super fast and solid as a rock?

I think you get my point

Except you guys have been working on this for over a year and a half...with the help of an already mature WebCore.

I fail to understand how much work was actually put in this...don't get me wrong though, it's a nice step in the right direction over OmniWeb 4.x but after waiting for a year and half and knowing you don't need to fully concentrate on the rendering engine aspect of things, you give us this bug-ridden app?

Unless the app magically debugs itself overnight, I'd say you have well over 3 months of work to do before this app starts to look like a release-worthy app. This would push the wait to almost 2 years.

Also...the webmaster should remove that '2 new titles' in the Game Ports page...that also is pushing a year and a half of unfair taunting.

[Tim2 at Omni]

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
Except you guys have been working on this for over a year and a half...with the help of an already mature WebCore.

I fail to understand how much work was actually put in this...don't get me wrong though, it's a nice step in the right direction over OmniWeb 4.x but after waiting for a year and half and knowing you don't need to fully concentrate on the rendering engine aspect of things, you give us this bug-ridden app?

As I said in an earlier post (to the other OW5 thread) -- I'm not sure where the one-and-a-half year thing came from. OmniWeb 5 was born in early August, 2003 -- that's 7 months.

Which is not a lot of time for approximately three engineers.

Perhaps you're under the assumption that we started on OW5 immediately after 4.2 was released. That's a reasonable assumption, but it's not true. There were some projects in between, and lots of planning beforehand.

I should also point you to the disclaimer on http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/5/beta/. You did read that, right? I mean, you must have in order to have received the password to mount the disk image.

Sorry if you're unhappy with OmniWeb 5.0 beta 1. You don't have to use it -- I hear Safari 1.2 is really nice.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni:
As I said in an earlier post (to the other OW5 thread) -- I'm not sure where the one-and-a-half year thing came from. OmniWeb 5 was born in early August, 2003 -- that's 7 months.

Which is not a lot of time for approximately three engineers.

Perhaps you're under the assumption that we started on OW5 immediately after 4.2 was released. That's a reasonable assumption, but it's not true. There were some projects in between, and lots of planning beforehand.

I should also point you to the disclaimer on http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/5/beta/. You did read that, right? I mean, you must have in order to have received the password to mount the disk image.

Sorry if you're unhappy with OmniWeb 5.0 beta 1. You don't have to use it -- I hear Safari 1.2 is really nice.

I'm disappointed to hear that OW5 was actually born that late. I'd go through old message board posts but I don't have the time...but I'm pretty sure lots of people were led to believe that it was taking shape much earlier than that. I guess we couldn't really imagine you guys working on anything but OW5 and OG3 since there was no game ports or anything else coming out of Omni all of last year.

Yes...Safari 1.2 is really nice. And so is OW5...but I guess OW5 was way too overhyped. Maybe my fault, maybe MacNN members fault, or maybe Omni's fault...I can't remember how many posts I've read about OW5 in the last year but I know there's many. I probably shouldn't have read any of them.

[JKT]

Originally posted by Krypton:
� Remember passwords.

Are your prefs set up for it to do so? It's remembering the one's I want it to remember absolutely fine for me. In the Autofill prefs have you checked the "Always remember: Usernames and passwords" checkbox?

[NeXTLoop]

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
I'm disappointed to hear that OW5 was actually born that late. I'd go through old message board posts but I don't have the time...but I'm pretty sure lots of people were led to believe that it was taking shape much earlier than that. I guess we couldn't really imagine you guys working on anything but OW5 and OG3 since there was no game ports or anything else coming out of Omni all of last year.

Yes...Safari 1.2 is really nice. And so is OW5...but I guess OW5 was way too overhyped. Maybe my fault, maybe MacNN members fault, or maybe Omni's fault...I can't remember how many posts I've read about OW5 in the last year but I know there's many. I probably shouldn't have read any of them.

You need to understand how the development process (in any company) works. Although a product may not be "started" until a certain date, that doesn't meant that no work goes into it beforehand.

Many months of work by multiple individuals can go into a project before a single line of code is written. Time has to be spent analyzing what features are going to be included, how those features are going to interact with existing features, and, in some cases, apps are completely "built" on paper first, so to speak.

[BZ]

To be fair, comparing Safari (from Apple with Apple resources) to OmniWeb (from OmniGroup with OmniResources) is not (fair, that is).

I sent at least 10 hours with OW5b1 and while it is a buggy, a bit slow, does have some quirks, it also has made some of the bigger leaps in browsing features and technologies that I have seen since... I don't know.

Workspaces are amazing. I have come up with at least 5 or 6 that I could do now, that would cut down the amount of refreshing and reloading. They are like power bookmarks. Think about having a workspace for News, one for Mac forums, one for your work, one for stocks. You can flip between 5 different SETS of websites (50 or so) with a push of a button. Best of all, they remember where you were. Shut down OW, start it up again, be back in the workspace you left.

Site preferences... enough said. That no other browser has this yet is just amazing.

Semi-smart bookmarks is a great start to a wonderful feature of keeping my bookmarks alive. Sort, re-order, track, update. These are all key things.

The last power feature is the site search bar. OW5 sees the search, creates the parameter list and builds it for you. You just have to give it a name. I put Google and stock quotes on CNN/Money as my first two.

OmniGroup has proven in the past that they are wonderful innovators that bring class and refinement to the art of software development.

This is not the Highlander, there can be more than one in the end. OW5 (when done) will be my browser of choice for all its features that as a pro-user, are worth every penny and day that I waited for them (more days than pennies).

BZ

[MrBS]

Originally posted by BZ:
The last power feature is the site search bar. OW5 sees the search, creates the parameter list and builds it for you. You just have to give it a name. I put Google and stock quotes on CNN/Money as my first two.

An even more powerful use of this you may not be familiar with is to ditch the search bar entirely and access your shortcuts by typing the short name or keyword you give it in the location bar followed by the arguments. So I can type

imdb big lebowski

and get the results of that search popping up. It's really handy for sites you only visit to search (like google or imdb or stock quotes or version tracker) you don't need to wait for the site to load so you can tab to the search box and type stuff in, you just go straight to the results page from your location bar w/o ever having to take your hands off the keyboard.

~BS

[BZ]

Ahh.. but the nice thing about the search bar is that it remembers your searches.

I don't know if it is a feature or not, but if every site search could remember X searches back so many, that would be great (so, VT would remember the last 20, etc, etc).

BZ

Originally posted by MrBS:
An even more powerful use of this you may not be familiar with is to ditch the search bar entirely and access your shortcuts by typing the short name or keyword you give it in the location bar followed by the arguments. So I can type

imdb big lebowski

and get the results of that search popping up. It's really handy for sites you only visit to search (like google or imdb or stock quotes or version tracker) you don't need to wait for the site to load so you can tab to the search box and type stuff in, you just go straight to the results page from your location bar w/o ever having to take your hands off the keyboard.

~BS

[Michaelm8000]

Originally posted by NeXTLoop:
Because it's a pain in the butt in Safari when you try to hit stop, and because the site is almost done loading, it reloads it. This has been a common complaint about Safari.

This argument is such ********. How many times have you REALLY run into this edge case? Why would you be clicking the stop button at the same moment the page is finishing loading?? I think this is a feature everyone should learn to live with. It is much better this way.

[Krypton]

Originally posted by Michaelm8000:
This argument is such ********. How many times have you REALLY run into this edge case? Why would you be clicking the stop button at the same moment the page is finishing loading?? I think this is a feature everyone should learn to live with. It is much better this way.

Ahem, I don't think that's the best way to respond to customers - as already stated, adding a second pause or so might do the trick. However, when the GUI locks up I find this quite common.

Passwords - ok missed that one, thought it would be on by default.

Beta status Tim2 yes betas are never fully complete, but they usually include all the major features - I think being able to download files (other than .dmg) is a major feature.


Overall - I think everyone loves OW 5 to bits, me included, but people are bound to be disappointed when macnn members have been discussing this release for about a year.

[Tim2 at Omni]

Originally posted by Krypton:
Tim2 yes betas are never fully complete, but they usually include all the major features - I think being able to download files (other than .dmg) is a major feature.

You can download files! It just doesn't usually work

[Krypton]

Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni:
ou can download files! It just doesn't usually work

Ok, well as long as we're not deluding ourselves

BTW maybe young Mikey (8000) should pick less obvious script names on his website as he seems to have given the game away about an imminent Omni Outliner update

Moving on, will we be seeing some sp releases in between betas as with 4.5?

[geekwagon]

Originally posted by Krypton:
It's true - I have the problem that Safari slows to a crawl, and when I press 'Stop' the page finishes loading a split second before and so I end up pressing 'reload' instead.

Yup, me too. I think it is really a pretty common complaint.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by geekwagon:
Yup, me too. I think it is really a pretty common complaint.

The real question is: why do you push stop at all when the page is almost done loading? You do realize you can click links and read text or look at images that have already loaded right? Nothing's preventing you to do that.

So why do you even need to push stop when a page is almost done loading and almost everything is probably up on your screen?

To be honest, that 'pretty common complaint' is ridiculous. What's your real reason to push 'stop'? Come on, I really want to know.

[geekwagon]

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
To be honest, that 'pretty common complaint' is ridiculous. What's your real reason to push 'stop'? Come on, I really want to know.

There are lots of reasons. The main one is that I often see a situation where it takes forever to start loading the page. The server is doing some kind of dynamic content generation like a servlet, php, or something and it is some process that needs to finish before it will even start to spit out html. However, once it actually starts spitting out html my connection is nice and fast. So, I head for the "stop" button, because I am tired of waiting or what have you, and after I start the motion the server actually spits out the page. Muscle memory has taken over and now I am waiting for the damn SQL query or whatever to run again.

I can't say it happens to me every day, but it happens enough to be annoying.

Another annoyance with it happens a lot here at MacNN. Dunno if other people have this problem here but often times I find myself waiting for some dang banner ad to finish loading because the ad companies servers are being slow. The rest of the page has been rendered, but Safari won't snap back to where you were in the page until either the whole page (including all the images) finish loading or you hit stop. So I hit stop as I don't really care about seeing the latest Brawny ad, but sometimes it ends up mis-timed. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Denying that other people have a complaint with something, because you personally don't is something I find ridiculous.

[phillryu]

About the stop/reload buttons, why not make everyone happy and include an optional combo button as a customizable toolbar item?

[TimmyDee51]

I'm going to third (or fourth or whatever) the complaint on combined reload/stop buttons. I've mis-hit the stop button too late in Safari too many times. It may save space, but it's bad UI design in my book. Look at Windows. The "X" in the top right does two things -- it either closes a window or quits a program based on "state." While some people may find it convenient, it doesn't lend itself to a consistent user interface.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by geekwagon:
There are lots of reasons. The main one is that I often see a situation where it takes forever to start loading the page. The server is doing some kind of dynamic content generation like a servlet, php, or something and it is some process that needs to finish before it will even start to spit out html. However, once it actually starts spitting out html my connection is nice and fast. So, I head for the "stop" button, because I am tired of waiting or what have you, and after I start the motion the server actually spits out the page. Muscle memory has taken over and now I am waiting for the damn SQL query or whatever to run again.

I can't say it happens to me every day, but it happens enough to be annoying.

Another annoyance with it happens a lot here at MacNN. Dunno if other people have this problem here but often times I find myself waiting for some dang banner ad to finish loading because the ad companies servers are being slow. The rest of the page has been rendered, but Safari won't snap back to where you were in the page until either the whole page (including all the images) finish loading or you hit stop. So I hit stop as I don't really care about seeing the latest Brawny ad, but sometimes it ends up mis-timed. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Denying that other people have a complaint with something, because you personally don't is something I find ridiculous.

If you push 'stop', Safari won't snap back to where you were anyways...so that example is a bit odd.

As for the first example, I guess it could happen, but content that is slow to load at the beginning means that if you hit the 'refresh' button accidently, you can hit it the 'stop' right away without moving the mouse and you'll have what had loaded (right before you hit the refresh button) unchanged...try it it works. And in cases where you might have been too slow to do that, I find Gee4orce's idea really good...put a damn timer on the button so that people that have piss-poor button hitting/avoiding reflexes don't get into this mess.

I'll have to add that this problem has never, ever happened to me. Do I have godly reflexes? Am I just lucky? Who cares...I just find all of this quite bizarre..especially in this age where we don't have slow-ass 9600 baud rate modems anymore and computers advanced enough to handle multiple browser windows easily (and now tabs) and one doesn't have to sit stupidly in front of a single page wondering if it'll ever load.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by TimmyDee51:
I'm going to third (or fourth or whatever) the complaint on combined reload/stop buttons. I've mis-hit the stop button too late in Safari too many times. It may save space, but it's bad UI design in my book. Look at Windows. The "X" in the top right does two things -- it either closes a window or quits a program based on "state." While some people may find it convenient, it doesn't lend itself to a consistent user interface.

Nope...having a 'Stop' button that does absolutely nothing about 99.9 percent of the time is a bad UI design.

The 'stop' button is a waste of space in the toolbar after pages are loaded. Click on it...you'll see. It does nothing. Fun eh?

Anyways...that was my 2 cents. I don't really care if OW5 keeps the stop and reload separate. I'm quite happy with the simple Safari interface.

[iOliverC]

Originally posted by Krypton:
BTW maybe young Mikey (8000) should pick less obvious script names on his website as he seems to have given the game away about an imminent Omni Outliner update

I hear ya, but I ain't complaining. Mikes filenames have sent me a lot of traffic recently .

[sjk]

Originally posted by jcb9:
Aside from crashing all the time, I'm finding the OmniWeb *never* quits cleanly - every time I hit command-q, I get the crash reporter popping up. Is this happening to others, or is it just me?

Crashing when quitting happened more often after I configured Workspaces.