[Cadaver]

Two words for the Omni guys...

Sneaky Peaks!

...please

[Rickster]

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

The frequency and publicity of further development builds has yet to be decided... it sort of depends on how development goes this week. I'd like to see weekly public betas, but it's also possible we might see near-daily releases to a smaller crowd.

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.

I think Mike's realized that no longer being an Omni employee means he no longer is required to speak as befits an Omni representative. Anyway, I'm not sure the one-second-pause idea would work... you'd just have the same problem one second later.

In any case... having a fully customizable toolbar like Safari's means that we can have it both ways. We've considered making it so that, if you remove the Reload or Stop button from your toolbar, the other one becomes a combined Reload/Stop button like Safari's. This may or may not make it in time for the 5.0 final release, though.

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.

Oops. Those would be No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way and a title that the publisher changed its mind about bringing to market. (Both NOLF2 and AVP2 were released in 2003.) I'll bug the webmaster, I guess.

By the way... it was announced elsewhere, but Omni has halted game development work indefinitely (this happened after NOLF2 wrapped, which was effectively last June). For those who speculate on where our man-hours are going: remember, we have three other existing commercial products (and perhaps some new products) to assign our people to... just because we haven't announced anything about these products yet doesn't mean they don't have engineers on them full-time.

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?

There are several possibilities. The site could be sending different content based on a browser identification (try setting OW5 to masquerade as Safari using Site Preferences). It could also be a WebCore issue exposed by changes to OmniWeb's underlying infrastructure: for example, one of the sites I frequent had troubles where we'd end up with a lot of broken images, and without the actual images present WebCore did crazy things to the placeholder rectangles.

Will Omniweb get an updated Webcore to bring it into line with Safari ?

It's been said before elsewhere, but just to reiterate: Yes. As soon as 5.0 ships, integrating the latest WebCore becomes one of our top priorities... it'd probably take only a month or so to get a 5.0.1 out with whatever version of WebCore is current at that time.

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.

Icon sets/themes will be a separate, add-on release soon after OmniWeb ships. We'll be including a few sets based on earlier releases (4.5 and early 4.0 betas, maybe more) as well as a few themes from community artists.

The option for smooth scrolling is a System Preference. I think what is being asked for is for OmniGroup to support that option.

It's on the to-do list... simply a matter of schedule.

the favorites bar is bigger - by a few pixels. Is this to support favicons?

Yes. We're considering having a smaller, icon-less favorites bar as an option, but I doubt that'll make it for 5.0... 5.0.x, 5.x, probably.

By the way, I believe MacNN has an RSS feed, why isn't the icon showing up to add the news feed as it appears on Slashdot? ... I've experienced a lot of the beta bugs others have mentioned, but I thought I needed to bring my bookmarks issues to the forefront

Fear not... just about all the bookmarks issues you mention are beta bugs, not features. As for the MacNN RSS feed... in the current beta, we only auto-detect RSS feeds that are referenced by a LINK tag in the document. You can subscribe by context-clicking on the "RSS" icon link in MacNN's right-hand sidebar, or by manually creating a News Feed bookmark and pasting the URL. We're still working on auto-detecting all the possible ways to subscribe to a feed.

Is VersionTracker broken for anyone?

That is/was a VersionTracker bug -- they send bad HTML based on the browser identification. If you masquerade as Safari, you'll be fine (same thing for .Mac, by the way). We've asked them to fix it, and they have... though it has a tendency to break (again) and require us to ask them to fix it (again). Personally, I prefer MacUpdate anyway.

The interface becomes unresponsive during a page load, similar to other browsers. Is this because Webkit is not multi-threaded, or can this behavior be fixed in the future?

A little bit of both, actually. There's a limitation to how much we can work around this issue without rewriting WebCore to work better in a pervasively mutlithreaded world, but right now the responsiveness is also affected by, well... various aspects of it being an early beta and not a polished release.

Could you have an option for omniweb to use safari's bookmarks infrastructure so that it is possible to sync omniweb's bookmarks with .mac?

There are lots of problems with that. One is that we'd have to reverse engineer something that could change by the time we got a release out. Another is that whole DMCA thing about reverse engineering. Bug Apple about opening iSync up to third parties... in the meantime, we're working on something that would bring equivalent functionality (and not necessarily require a .Mac subscription).

I think there may be some conflict if you've installed the latest Safari (1.2) with the webkit webcore stuff.

Usually, you shouldn't expect any difference. OmniWeb uses its own copy of the WebCore framework, which is bundled inside OmniWeb.app. Additionally, we don't use many of the same lower-level services which are often updated along with Safari (such as CFNetwork and Foundation's new URL Loading APIs). Generally, you can expect that a Safari update will have about as much effect on OmniWeb as it does on, say, Transmit or RealPlayer.

Tho if they'd follow the Aqua Human Interface Guidelines they should use it in the bookmarks window, because it has a [source list].

Read the AHIG again. They say you can use metal when you have a source-list/content-pane style UI, not that it's a requirement. Some System Preferences panes have source lists... does that mean System Prefs should be metal?

what is the point of blocking ads in webpages if instead it shows a huge gray unattractive box?

Well, the artist who designed the box thought it was attractive... at least, I assume he did. Anyhwo, JKT accurately summed it up -- often, a placeholder is needed in order for the page to retain proper layout, and it's also your way of knowing what you're missing in case something that's not really an ad got blocked. Come to think of it, though, an option for blocked ads not to take up space could be a good site-specific preference. We'll keep it in mind.


Phew! That's what I get for not commenting on the thread until it gets to three pages.

[sjk]

Originally posted by Gee4orce:
his in Safari and editing is painful. I'm sure it's those damned animated gifs...

You can use PithHelmet to disable GIF animations in Safari.

[sjk]

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.

I use command-. and command-R shortcut to avoid the issue with Safari's combined stop/reload button.

[Neo.cmg]

Dang Rick, that certainly took some effort on your part to collate all those questions and respond to everyone's gripes/questions. Thank you for answering one of mine with regards to the bookmarks troubles and RSS feeds I was having. Perhaps you should copy what you wrote there and put it up as an OmniWeb 5 FAQ on your website.

I really enjoy using this browser, and can't wait for the next sneakypeek/beta release. One other item I was wondering whether you all would get to is the tab labels. Currently they are truncated and varying in length depending upon your drawer size. Some times you can fit the entire tab label within the given drawer width, but for the other times would it be possible to have those labels wrap to the next line...and the next if needed? I mean vertical space is unlimited. Obviously others would rather that space be used to fit in as many tab thumbnails as possible. So, I suppose it might be up for debate. I for one, don't mind scrolling down to view the other tabs I have open and would prefer to see the tab label in it's entirety.

Neo.cmg

[Gul Banana]

Horsepoo, please think of it this way.
Software development is hard. I'm willing to bet you've never done any programming. I have - it's what I do all day and how I earn money - and I can tell you that creating something as complex as a web browser takes lots and lots of time. The Omni Group is not a particularly big company. It has quite skilled developers, obviously, but it doesn't have many of them.

Safari has hundreds of partial developers, and tens of people who work only on Safari.
Mozilla has thousands and hundreds.
Internet Explorer quite literally has thousands of people whose lives are devoted to creating it - though when you get into that quantity of people, it tends to become a liability rather than a benefit.

Given Omni's track record, it _is_ reasonable to expect high quality software from them.
It is _not_ reasonable to expect frequent releases. You're just going to have to accept that development of their browser will take a long time.
It tends to turn out, once each release is finished, that it's better than anything else out there despite the time taken - in my opinion, this was at least the case with 4.0, 4.5 and will be with 5.0 - so I buy them. The fact that it didn't exist six months ago when you would have liked it to is really quite irrelevant.

And pardon the ad hominem attack, but WHY is your username "Horsepoo!"? It really makes it very hard to take anything you say seriously.

[sjk]

Originally posted by Rickster:
Come to think of it, though, an option for blocked ads not to take up space could be a good site-specific preference. We'll keep it in mind.

Thanks for considering that. It would be great since many sites look fine filtered that way with PithHelmet in Safari.

Btw, I'm having some trouble and confusion with ad blocking in OW5:

For a simple example, spinbox\..*\.com in the blocked URL black list doesn't block any spinbox.techtracker.com ads on macfixit.com. Looks valid but so far I'm failing miserably at transferring any PithHelmet regexp rules to OW5.

Are URL black/white lists accessed from individual site preferences intended to be the same ones accessed from global site preferences? I think it's counterintuitive to the UI for it to be that way.

And, I'm curious... was Ad Blocking chosen as the preference name for the sake of "trendy emotional familiarity" even if a general, generic name like Content Filtering seems more accurate?

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by Gul Banana:
Horsepoo, please think of it this way.
Software development is hard. I'm willing to bet you've never done any programming.

Yes, I have. I had a decent project going for awhile, until school and work kicked in. It's hard but, if you're skilled, it should be fun and fairly easy (mostly because it's fun).

I have - it's what I do all day and how I earn money - and I can tell you that creating something as complex as a web browser takes lots and lots of time.

Good for you...I too one day when I'm out of school will earn money doing some decent shareware stuff. I don't doubt that a web browser takes lots and lots of time. But when you've been making web browsers for 8+ years, this kind of stuff shouldn't take one year of planning (especially after moving to WebCore). Maybe it wasn't a year 'cuz I can't believe people would sit down and sketch out the foundation of an app that gained at most 3 big features and 2 smaller ones.

The Omni Group is not a particularly big company. It has quite skilled developers, obviously, but it doesn't have many of them.

Safari has hundreds of partial developers, and tens of people who work only on Safari.

Nope. If the hundreds of partial developers is a reference to the KHTML developers...the same now applies to OW5.

Mozilla has thousands and hundreds.
Internet Explorer quite literally has thousands of people whose lives are devoted to creating it - though when you get into that quantity of people, it tends to become a liability rather than a benefit.

Given Omni's track record, it _is_ reasonable to expect high quality software from them.
It is _not_ reasonable to expect frequent releases. You're just going to have to accept that development of their browser will take a long time.
It tends to turn out, once each release is finished, that it's better than anything else out there despite the time taken - in my opinion, this was at least the case with 4.0, 4.5 and will be with 5.0 - so I buy them. The fact that it didn't exist six months ago when you would have liked it to is really quite irrelevant.

And pardon the ad hominem attack, but WHY is your username "Horsepoo!"? It really makes it very hard to take anything you say seriously.

What about Gul Banana...not as bad as Horseshit!!! (a mod decided to change my name to the more ridiculous Horsepoo!!!) but very close.

As for the web browser dev taking a long time...yes, it probably does. That's why Omni should probably get out of that business so they can produce something more creative. I know they can come up with something groundbreaking...but this damned web browser fixation is not helping them put efforts into something that could be cool.

I like the OW5 tabs, I like most of the new features in fact, but a year and a half is a lot of time that could have been spent bringing something really new. Not just different tab implementations thought up by some average Joes on the MacNN boards.

[Steb Mad]

Originally posted by Gul Banana:
And pardon the ad hominem attack, but WHY is your username "Horsepoo!"? It really makes it very hard to take anything you say seriously.

I guess that "Horsepoo!!!" is his message to Mods who banned his old accounts; Guy Incognito, Guy Incognito 2, etc.

--------

I agree with some that rectangle with inner shadow isn't exactly attractive and may be confusing to some that it's part of web design, not OW5's.

Other than that, I'm beginning to like OW5 more and more. I'm not used to the new tabs yet but I really like the visual approach.

[King Bob On The Cob]

Originally posted by sjk:
Thanks for considering that. It would be great since many sites look fine filtered that way with PithHelmet in Safari.

Btw, I'm having some trouble and confusion with ad blocking in OW5:

For a simple example, spinbox\..*\.com in the blocked URL black list doesn't block any spinbox.techtracker.com ads on macfixit.com. Looks valid but so far I'm failing miserably at transferring any PithHelmet regexp rules to OW5.

Are URL black/white lists accessed from individual site preferences intended to be the same ones accessed from global site preferences? I think it's counterintuitive to the UI for it to be that way.

And, I'm curious... was Ad Blocking chosen as the preference name for the sake of "trendy emotional familiarity" even if a general, generic name like Content Filtering seems more accurate?

Try /spinbox\..*\.com/ It works for me!

[sjk]

Originally posted by Neo.cmg:
One other item I was wondering whether you all would get to is the tab labels. Currently they are truncated and varying in length depending upon your drawer size. Some times you can fit the entire tab label within the given drawer width, but for the other times would it be possible to have those labels wrap to the next line...and the next if needed? I mean vertical space is unlimited. Obviously others would rather that space be used to fit in as many tab thumbnails as possible. So, I suppose it might be up for debate. I for one, don't mind scrolling down to view the other tabs I have open and would prefer to see the tab label in it's entirety.

There should be some way to quickly identify tabs when using a relatively small drawer (e.g. while minimizing "drawer-wasted" space on my 1024x768 iBook display). Wrapping long tab labels in such a drawer might look, uhh, icky?

A couple usability observations...

I've been satisfied with Safari-style tabs for most of my browsing since I don't typically open more than 5 or 6 tabs in any window and their labels usually identify them (except when tab grouping same-titled pages of sites like palmgear.com, where any OW5 tab label style won't really be any better than in other tabbed browers).

Moving tabs between drawers of different windows is awkward on a small display. Using Expos� avoids having to move windows but still isn't as convenient as when windows+drawers are simultaneously visible.

Oh, I'd like a preference to float the Workspaces window in the foreground to keep it from being temporarily covered by some other window at the wrong time.

[sjk]

Originally posted by King Bob On The Cob:
Try /spinbox\..*\.com/ It works for me!

Hmm, that only partially works for me. On the same page some ads are blocked (with the empty image+link filler box) and others aren't. Not as simple and effective as PithHelmet.

Thanks, KBotC.

Anyway, that's enough OW5 for now.

[JKT]

Originally posted by Neo.cmg:
I really enjoy using this browser, and can't wait for the next sneakypeek/beta release. One other item I was wondering whether you all would get to is the tab labels. Currently they are truncated and varying in length depending upon your drawer size. Some times you can fit the entire tab label within the given drawer width, but for the other times would it be possible to have those labels wrap to the next line...and the next if needed? I mean vertical space is unlimited. Obviously others would rather that space be used to fit in as many tab thumbnails as possible. So, I suppose it might be up for debate. I for one, don't mind scrolling down to view the other tabs I have open and would prefer to see the tab label in it's entirety.

I also requested this multi-line label on the OmniWeb mailing list... another thing I'd like to see as an alternative would be yellow "tooltips" pop-up to show the full name when you hover the mouse over the thumnail (as in the Finder for truncated filenames). Option hover would spring the tooltip instantly.

[JKT]

For those of you confused about filtering - if an image is not being blocked by the Blocked URLs list, control click it and select Filter Image (may be under the image menu). This will add that image's URL specifically to the list as an automagically regex adapted expression (which, inessence, means that a \ has been placed before all .)

E.g. http://smalldog\.com/CurrentBanners/ibook_ram_468\.gif

To make that less specific so it blocks all ads using the same or similar root, all you need to do is Edit the Blocked URL list... (from the Ad Blocking Preferences) and edit it a little:

E.g. http://smalldog\.com/CurrentBanners/ibook_ram_468\.gif

to

/smalldog\.com/CurrentBanners/*

* is a wildcard - that is, any and all expressions after the last slash will be blocked.

HTH.

PS. my main request for this which I have already posted at the OW mailing lists is that the Edit Blocked URL list should appear automatically when you select to filter an image. It is most likely that you will want to block all ad images at a site and not just the one specific one - so it is highly likely you will want to edit the URL straight away.

[MrBS]

Actually '.*' would be the wild card, and you don't need to match the rest of the expression you just need to match any substring.

Here's a good tutorial on regex for everyone.

I'm also in favor of OW dropping down a sheet when you filter an image, that would allow you to select a few basic settings (like all from that directory, all from that host, all from that domain, or maybe allow you to highlight a word that you think would be the tipoff that it's a banner... like /banner/) and allow people ro edit the regex directly if you want.

Here are the filters I have on my 'black list' currently, they work well for me and the sites I visit:

Code:
us\.a1\.yimg\.com
/ajrotator/
[/\.]adserver[/\.]
[/\.]ad[sx]?[/\.]
\.doubleclick\.net
[/\.]banners?[/\.]
\.fastclick\.net/
view\.atdmt\.com/
/bimg/
/kermit\.
\.ign\..*/teasers/.*\.(gif|jpg|png)$
&adtype=
m\.tribalfusion\.com
\.adsdk\.
/ad_images/
[/\.]xlonhcld[/\.]
/fastclick/
/smartserve/ad\?

~BS

[TC]

I have to say that I love Omniweb 5 but for now it can't be my everyday browser.
Its feature set is amazing and all it needs is that final polish and it will replace Safari for me.

I have a couple of requests for improvements to the software which I have brought up in the other thread.
First up is to make the bookmark search perform live filtering, in the same way as the finder. I would use this feature daily to find sites. (If this was a good way to find sites then maybe there could be an option to make the location box work in this way as well? Or is it doing something like this already?)
It would be great if this could be done in 2 panes similar to the finder as it would be nice to still be able to see the folder where that bookmark is contained.


The second one is an option to tell Omniweb to fill in the Keywords + Notes information with the Meta Tag Keywords + description directly from the site. This information is used to help search engines know the content of a site + so could be useful in our bookmarks as well. (Maybe make this an option to happen automatically when a new bookmark is added?)

Thanks for a great browser + really look forward to using the final version.

[pliny]

� Workspaces are a really good idea. Like others have mentioned, a bunch of tabs, windows, positions can be saved. Good stuff.

� New bookmark handling is good too, though personally I prefer bookmarks as another window rather than in the main browser window (and OW lets me do this thank goodness unlike Safari), I don't think I can ever get used to bookmarking like that and it's one of my Safari peeves and this is the end of the sentence now. Oh well!

� Site preferences--finally I can set them and they stick.

� Tabs--hmm. This is different. Not like any other tab implementation around. Takes some getting used to. I wonder whether this is the most efficient tab interface, since getting to the tabs is a one or two mouse movement/click more than in other browsers unless the drawer remains open.

� The new cookie icon at the right edge of the window is a nice touch. Cookie handling has always been one of the very good things about OW, this makes it even easier by saving you a few steps.

�The run of the mill OW crashing stuff-spinning ball, lock, crash catcher--squashed in time no doubt.
--Has anyone mentioned the weird text input thing, I thought my post had disappeared but it's there after all. This after using the zoom input field.

There is some new stuff here which I think accounts for some of the strong reactions.

It all makes for pretty fun and useful browsing IMO.

[cpac]

anybody else noticing a huge improvement in OW5.0b1's rendering speed/stability today?

I don't know whether it's because MacNN, VersionTracker, etc. have all modified what they send to a browser that identifies as OW5, but whereas yesterday I got continual loading hangs on every MacNN forum page, today I get nothing of the sort - just nice complete loading, and now even the text fields seem to work as they should...

[MrBS]

Originally posted by TC:
First up is to make the bookmark search perform live filtering, in the same way as the finder.

While it's not exactly what you want, OmniWeb has an extremely useful feature that lots of people probably don't even know about, it has a slightly different version of live filtering in the location bar.

The one difference is that it only looks at the beginning of each word segment, so you can't do any substring like in the finder (ie lone won't find baloney) but it does look at the beginning of every hostname/domain/directory/file/extension/word in title.

It searches your history and your bookmarks. So to get to this thread (if it's bookmarked or you've been here before) you can just type in the first couple characters of any of the words, like 'forum omni' or 'fo ma om 5'. Really handy when you want to quickly get back to a page.

~BS

[sjk]

Originally posted by MrBS:
I'm also in favor of OW dropping down a sheet when you filter an image, that would allow you to select a few basic settings (like all from that directory, all from that host, all from that domain, or maybe allow you to highlight a word that you think would be the tipoff that it's a banner... like /banner/) and allow people ro edit the regex directly if you want.

Yep, that would be convenient.

I'd also like some status on what's blocked. For example, the PithHelmet preference tab in Safari displays:

Blocking 13881 of 210921 URLs (6.58%)

Btw, OW5 still refuses to block all spinbox.techtracker.com ads on macfixit.com regardless of the black list regex's I've tried. Probably worth reporting this directly to OG.

[JKT]

Originally posted by sjk:
Btw, OW5 still refuses to block all spinbox.techtracker.com ads on macfixit.com regardless of the black list regex's I've tried. Probably worth reporting this directly to OG.

I don't know which of these is the one that works for me but...

/techtracker\.spinbox\.net/*

/spinbox\.versiontracker\.com/*

/bison\.versiontracker\.com/*

I assume it's one of these, but it might not be.

P.S. I stand corrected on the .* = wildcard, but post / a simple * works for me (i.e. /* has the same effect as /.* AFAICT).

[JKT]

Originally posted by cpac:
anybody else noticing a huge improvement in OW5.0b1's rendering speed/stability today?

I don't know whether it's because MacNN, VersionTracker, etc. have all modified what they send to a browser that identifies as OW5, but whereas yesterday I got continual loading hangs on every MacNN forum page, today I get nothing of the sort - just nice complete loading, and now even the text fields seem to work as they should...

I'm not getting as many Orphans as I was, but I do still get the spinning activity disk (even though there isn't anything listed in the Network Activity pane) 99% of the time here. Also, text entry fields are as buggy as ever for me.

[Mike Pither]

Any news on when the "user manual" is arriving? I think it was due out today but there's no sign of yet on Omni's web site and it's 9pm in Italy now. Version 5.0 has a lot of new features some of which I am having trouble understanding how to use.

[MrBS]

Originally posted by JKT:

P.S. I stand corrected on the .* = wildcard, but post / a simple * works for me (i.e. /* has the same effect as /.* AFAICT).

Not to drag this on too long, but the astrix is just saying that there can be between zero and infinity '/'s, putting the dot in front of it makes it match between zero and infinity characters, but like I said you don't need to match the whole url you just need to get a substring, so you don't need to put a wild card at the end at all.

Originally posted by JKT:

I'm not getting as many Orphans as I was, but I do still get the spinning activity disk (even though there isn't anything listed in the Network Activity pane) 99% of the time here. Also, text entry fields are as buggy as ever for me.

I'm seeing the same thing, orphans are much improved but I still get pages spin-spin-spinning. Text entry in 5b1 is worse for me than 4.5 and the alphas, oftentimes I can't see anything at all (not just the first 2 characters, and clicking from field to field doesn't help), and sometimes the field gets scrolled up, so the first couple lines are above the drawable area even though the scroll bar says it's at the top of the field. And usually I can't expand the text field. When I can though none of the other problems bother the form editor window.

~BS

[itai195]

Actually .* isn't a wildcard, because . doesn't match newline characters

I know unix supports newline characters in filenames, I doubt any web servers do though... Just my geek trivia for the day...

[ginoledesma]

I've always considered Omniweb to be the prettiest browser, even when Safari first came out. I'm still having a hard time adjusting to the performance of the application, however. I get the spinning beach ball quite often, especially with tabs showing. The app tends to be unresponsive at times.

Some questions/comments:
- Is there a way to show/hide the tab drawer? I'm on a rather tiny screen (12" iBook G4) and need as much space as I can. While the tab drawer doesn't really occupy that much space, its a bit of a waste in terms of real estate, taking up far more space than is needed.

-Hooray for various sizes of the toolbar! Holding down command and clicking the button on the upper right portion of the window (what's that called again) iterates among the various sizes of the toolbar.

- Still can't seem to understand why I frequently run into "Waiting for available network connections." This is mighty annoying for me as I have to force quit the application and start all over.

- Workspace is fantastic. I'll surely be making use of this feature everytime I can. Right now, I have to make a conscious effort in remdingin myself its there.

- Still running into the occasional UI glitches with text input. Right now, the text area has some portions of the text hidden or chopped off.

[proton]

Originally posted by ginoledesma:
- Is there a way to show/hide the tab drawer?

- The Show Tabs button in the toolbar.
- View menu -> Show -> Show Tabs
- Command - Option - T

Originally posted by ginoledesma:
- Still can't seem to understand why I frequently run into "Waiting for available network connections." This is mighty annoying for me as I have to force quit the application and start all over.

It's a beta. It'll be fixed by the final.

- proton

[BZ]

Didn't see this here.. so..

Ars Review of OW5b1
http://www.arstechnica.com/reviews/0...web/ow5-1.html

It is a very indepth review and I agree with most of it. The biggest statement is that OmniGroup should put in regular tabs, and while I understand that they want us (the non-normal user) to get used to OmniTabs (just trademarked that Rickster! ) I agree that they should at least put them in. It will be one less obsticle to overcome when someone hands over the $29.95.

Other good points:
- Build a tool to "sync" with Safari bookmarks
- Stability concerns (beta beta beta)
- The fight between pro features and confusing the normal user.

Back to OmniTabs for a second, I really think they would work better with new users than regular tabs. The visualization of things is much more important than the reading text. Most people know about icons and small pictures, but titles to webpages? No.

OmniWeb5.0 Suggestions:
- Put in regular tabs
- Make the title in the OmniTab be an option (for each workspace).

BZ

[JKT]

I was just about to post that link too - I've just read it and I have to say that although I understand his argument for regular tabs, I just can't envisage an elegant way of implementing both into the same browser. The only achievable way, in my view, would be to make it an either/or situation - it would be a usability and UI nightmare to try and shoehorn both into the same window. However, the either/or situation also isn't terribly desirable IMO and for that reason I'd urge OmniGroup not to include a trad tab bar in the initial release unless there is an overwhelming demand for it during the beta testing.

Actually, when I think about it, the best compromise would be to ignore the regular tab bar altogether and instead improve the labelling of the list view in the drawer - if the labels did spill onto more than one line to display e.g. the full title, you would get far more useful info than a trad tab and it would also make much better use of the "white space" in the drawer for the people with less tabs. Dynamically shrinking the number of spill lines as you added more tabs would be a neat trick too.

[lookmark]

The solution, IMO, is to change the tab drawer into a pane (that would also dynamically change the size of the tabs as they're added, a la Apple's Finder Sidebar) and offer the preference to have the pane on left, right, top, or bottom.

[ryaxnb]

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.

If you have to learn to live with it it's not much of a feature - software should be adaptable. How about this?
You can choose, in the Customize Navigation Bar thing, a Stop/Reload combo button (w/ 0.75 second pause.) That way, if you want combo, just take the standard Stop and Reload buttons off the toolbar and replace them with the Stop/Reload button.
And I have another problem with the combo - I often click it multiple times, because Safari is slow (I'm using 1.1.1 on an iBook 900) sometimes, and I get no response when clicking.

[ryaxnb]

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

Hey, that was supposed to be my idea!

[ryaxnb]

Originally posted by Gul Banana:

*Snip, about 3 people working on browsers*.

Yeah - that's like expecting 5 people to crank out an OS as good as Mac OS X in one year. I mean, with hundreds of people, just heavily upgrading and porting NeXTStep took years.

[neverwind]

I'd like the ability to command-click on folders in the favorites bar and have the contents all open in tabs like safari does - it's irritating to have to right click and select, "Open in new tabs."

[JKT]

Originally posted by neverwind:
I'd like the ability to command-click on folders in the favorites bar and have the contents all open in tabs like safari does - it's irritating to have to right click and select, "Open in new tabs."

That would make it impossible to open any individual links in a new tab/window from those folders. If you hadn't noticed, to do a command or command-shift click of a bookmark within a favourites bar folder, you have to press the modifier key(s) before clicking the folder to activate the menu, otherwise they don't register once the menu has appeared (this is a long-standing Apple bug apparently).

If that feature must be added, then it would have to use something other than the command key.

[dru]

Is there a special reason Omni can't use Command [ and ] to trigger Back & Forward, respectively, like Safari, Mozilla, the Finder and so on?

I use my scroll wheel button for "Back" which is triggered by Command + [.

Yes, I really do go back that often.

[cpac]

Originally posted by dru:
Is there a special reason Omni can't use Command [ and ] to trigger Back & Forward, respectively, like Safari, Mozilla, the Finder and so on?

I use my scroll wheel button for "Back" which is triggered by Command + [.

Yes, I really do go back that often.

command-left arrow works. (and I believe it works in most other browsers as well)

[[APi]TheMan]

I like OmniWeb 5b1 and I did a little experimenting with the workspaces a few days ago. I hadn't used OW5 in a few days and just now I launched OW5b1 and I got this error... twice. I think I've even rebooted within the last 24 hours, so I'm not sure what's "in use". Having said all this, I might as well add that OmniWeb launched fine after I dismissed the two dialogs.

http://homepage.mac.com/aorth/.Pictu...ready_used.jpg

Good work so far on OmniWeb 5. The tabs are lovely and I am definitely a fan of the separate stop/reload buttons. I am a frustrated victim of Safari's unified stop/reload button-late-clicking "feature".

[jcb9]

One feature I really don't like -

If you have multiple tabs open, scroll down to the bottom of the active page, and hit the space bar, it takes you to the next tab. I'll often scroll down with the space bar, hit it once too often, and find myself in the next tab, which can be quite irritating.

[[APi]TheMan]

Originally posted by jcb9:
One feature I really don't like -

If you have multiple tabs open, scroll down to the bottom of the active page, and hit the space bar, it takes you to the next tab. I'll often scroll down with the space bar, hit it once too often, and find myself in the next tab, which can be quite irritating.

Interesting. I never knew space did that... What if OmniWeb had a shift-space to go back a tab and then back up the page? Or if there is already a key (besides the up arrow) to scroll up a page, why not add functionality for it to move to the previous tab if you were at the absolute top of a page already?

[neverwind]

That would make it impossible to open any individual links in a new tab/window from those folders. If you hadn't noticed, to do a command or command-shift click of a bookmark within a favourites bar folder, you have to press the modifier key(s) before clicking the folder to activate the menu, otherwise they don't register once the menu has appeared (this is a long-standing Apple bug apparently).

If that feature must be added, then it would have to use something other than the command key.

So - one or the other right...?
Couldn't both be implemented - or is that the long standing bug? If Omni WERE to find solutions to these sorts of things - usability advances and killer interface improvements - they WOULD own the market. I'm still undecided if OW5b1 does this for my browsing workflow.

[sjk]

Originally posted by jcb9:
If you have multiple tabs open, scroll down to the bottom of the active page, and hit the space bar, it takes you to the next tab.

Switching to the next/previous tab after scrolling off the bottom/top of a page could have a preference setting.

Most people won't anticipate the current behavior and those who don't immediately like it may want to change it at least until they're ready to try it.

[ambush]

I need a shortcut for going to the pages end/beginning.. in saf it's cmd-arrow up or cmd-arrow down.. but that changes the tabs in OW (which is good) but.. I need something else to scroll option down/up isn't an option.. it's too slow..

BTW, scrolling with the mouse seems way smooother than in safari..

congrats..

[BZ]

Ok.. guys... I am ready for OW5b2 or OW5SP2.

BZ

[MadBrowser]

Seriously. I am SO impatient...

Probably because I think OW5 shows so much potential, I really want to use it as my full time browser... but the crashes make that pretty much impossible at this point.

I am anxiously waiting for an updated beta or a sneaky peek.

Using OW5 as my preview browser on my WebObjects projects has been a lot of fun.

[Catfish_Man]

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.

Weirdly enough, I run into this edge case all the time. It has to do with the way the app lags for a second as it completes the page load. This makes it so that the button appears as stop, but is actually reload. Given how fast pages load, and the way I browse, I run into it pretty frequently when I use Safari (although I haven't been seeing it in 1.2, perhaps 'cause I haven't had to stop any pages yet).

[oVeRmInD911]

Originally posted by ambush:
I need a shortcut for going to the pages end/beginning.. in saf it's cmd-arrow up or cmd-arrow down.. but that changes the tabs in OW (which is good) but.. I need something else to scroll option down/up isn't an option.. it's too slow..

BTW, scrolling with the mouse seems way smooother than in safari..

congrats..

Does your keyboard have the Home and End keys? Those should work.

[dru]

Originally posted by cpac:
command-left arrow works. (and I believe it works in most other browsers as well)

I checked your claim. To my surprise it works with Safari, IE, Mozilla and Camino.

It must be pointed out that Command + [ is the official shortcut listed in the "Go" menus of Safari, IE and Camino; Mozilla lists no shortcut.

*HOWEVER*, Command + LeftArrow doesn't work in the Finder which also uses *only* Command + [.

Obviously Apple means to move to Command + [, as displayed in all the menus of the above listed applications and Omni definitely must support this standard rather than some deprecated, hidden shortcut key.

Come-on guys!

[ambush]

Originally posted by oVeRmInD911:
Does your keyboard have the Home and End keys? Those should work.

I'm on a laptop

[Mike Pither]

I am also on a laptop (15 in al powerbook) and I have home and end keys. They are the up down left and right keys.

The left key has home written on it and the right end. If I hold down the fn key home takes me to the top of the page in one click and end the bottom in one click. If I hold down fn with the left or right keys I scroll up or down the page rapidly.