[Cadaver]

OmniWeb 5 is getting better and better.
Still has the WebCore 1.0 animated GIF bug (only animates one copy of each graphic if more than one copy is on the screen at any given time. But otherwise, it's shaping up nicely. I think when the most up to date webcore is integrated in to it, it'll be much, much better.

[typ993]

I'm having problems with "Waiting for connection" as well. Plus most of the vB widgets for quoting and formatting posts in this forum don't work.

[Cadaver]

Originally posted by typ993:
Plus most of the vB widgets for quoting and formatting posts in this forum don't work.

I have same issue with Safari. The widgets work fine in Gekko-based browsers, however.

[superfula]

Originally posted by Cadaver:
I have same issue with Safari. The widgets work fine in Gekko-based browsers, however.

They work fine for me. Have you tried trashing your prefs and/or Application Support folder?

[cpac]

Actually, after playing around with the buttons on the reply page, it seems like some work and some dont:

Insert LINK, EMAIL, & LIST work, but IMAGE & QUOTE dont

Nor do the style buttons, or the close tag buttons.

Anybody else?

[jcb9]

I'm getting some odd behavior with favicons in this release. OW now seems to remember favicons between sessions - sometimes. Others, it still seems to forget. But also, sometimes it displays random images from the page as the favicon, which is really weird. Reloading usually seems to return the correct favicon, but anyway, strange.

[cpac]

Originally posted by jcb9:
I'm getting some odd behavior with favicons in this release. OW now seems to remember favicons between sessions - sometimes. Others, it still seems to forget. But also, sometimes it displays random images from the page as the favicon, which is really weird. Reloading usually seems to return the correct favicon, but anyway, strange.

I had that too - then I took the advice posted above (the previous page) and deleted the OW 5 cache completely. You'll loose whatever favicons you have now, but since I deleted the cache, they've been remembered perfectly.

The cache is in ~/Library/Caches/

[Krypton]

OmniWeb toasted my Safari bookmarks... not good

(It brought up a dialogue I didn't read, and I stupidly pressed 'save anyway')

[F_Elz]

My OW5 bookmarks are gone.... I guess the syncing of bookmarks to a WebDAV server is still not ready...

[cpac]

beta 5 is up.

The ad problem (and others) are gone...

[Mike S.]

Originally posted by cpac:
beta 5 is up.

The ad problem (and others) are gone...

The cache seems to have regressed from 4, however. At least with regards to respecting the "No Cache" setting at a forum I frequent. At least I assume that's the trouble since B4 said they fixed that and B5 is exhibiting pre-4 behavior.

I've already submitted feedback.

This is a very nice build though, loading up a group of sites in tabs is considerably faster on my older hardware and render speed overall seems improved.

[ambush]

very slow, what else can I say.

[Tim2 at Omni]

Originally posted by ambush:
very slow, what else can I say.

Some other things you could say:

• Slower than before?
• Slow at some specific activity?
• Slow under a heavy load (i.e., loading lots of tabs)?
• What kind of hardware?
• Have you tried setting aside your prefs or clearing the cache?

[mac15]

I'm impressed actually, its considerably faster! Specially when several tabs are open

[Cadaver]

Still too crashy for me, but I always send in the crash reports.
Beta 5 tanked w/in 5 minutes of launch while browsing cnn.com.

[Catfish_Man]

Beta 5 feels slower for general usage on my machine. I'll post if I work out anything more specific.

[cpac]

b5 feels the same or a bit faster than b4 (and it *works* - ad-blocking-wise, etc., which gives that added boost of not waiting for data from slow ad servers)

For those that are feeling slower... have you done a clean install? have you flushed the cache (both via OW's menu and by trashing the cache folder?)

I'm on a rev A. TiBook 500, so it's not like I've got great hardware pushing this thing....

[MadBrowser]

Thanks for a new beta.

I know you guys have targeted a post 5.0 build for integrating the latest WebCore/JSCore.

For me personally, that is the most important thing missing from the product...

Can you give us any idea how high on the priority list that is for post 5.0? Just curious... I think once that is done, OW5 will replace Safari for me...

Thanks for all the hard work.

[gregomni]

Originally posted by MadBrowser:
I know you guys have targeted a post 5.0 build for integrating the latest WebCore/JSCore. Can you give us any idea how high on the priority list that is for post 5.0? Just curious... I think once that is done, OW5 will replace Safari for me...

The plan at the moment is that it would be absolutely the very next thing we do...

[Krypton]

Originally posted by gregomni:
The plan at the moment is that it would be absolutely the very next thing we do...

Very good news

beta 5 is very fast on my machine, as fast or faster than the latest Safari which is quite pleasant. Tabs are far more usable now too.

[BZ]

A few moments with B5.

- Much faster OmniTabs (switching, creating)
- Rendering of pages seems faster as well.
- Does not like Zope's management interface at all (the ZMI as it is called, loads the frames all "wacky".
- Seems to cache a bit too much. Pages that should be reloaded (forum pages) after a post do not reload. Here is a board to test on http://www.bluewildfire.com/products/zubb/test/

BZ

[MacDog]

The only downside to using OmniWeb for me is that ad-blocking is just too much work. Just turning it on and clicking everything but the "3rd party" (middle) button blocks absolutely nothing. I'm somewhat forced to enter in all the archaic web addresses to actually block the ads.

I would MUCH PREFER it to be able to use my "Anti-Ad Stylesheet" like I do in Safari - which blocks every ad, every time, with no configuration at all.

Any idea when/if OW will be adding support for custom stylesheets?

[cpac]

Originally posted by MacDog:
I'm somewhat forced to enter in all the archaic web addresses to actually block the ads.

Did you know you can right-click on an ad to add it's URL (in the proper format) to the list of blocked urls?

Then some quick editing (to replace specific image numbers/names with wildcards) and all the ads from a particular site are blocked for you.

You could probably even use whatever ad URLs are contained in your stylesheet with minimal effort.

The advantage (as I understand it) to using OW's ad blocking rather than a style sheet is that OW's blocking prevents the image from being downloaded at all while the style sheet only stops it from being displayed. (If I'm wrong on this, please correct me),

[HOMBRESINIESTRO]

Do you plan to eventually release a localized build for OW5 when it's final? Please don't tell me that's this is self evident, because OW 4.5 is still not available in German yet.

[King Bob On The Cob]

Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni:
Some other things you could say:

• Slower than before?
• Slow at some specific activity?
• Slow under a heavy load (i.e., loading lots of tabs)?
• What kind of hardware?
• Have you tried setting aside your prefs or clearing the cache?

It seems slow when you do the initial load of tabs (Via Workspaces with several sites on them) but after that it's speed isn't bad at all. Could just be my computer (eMac 800 MHz)

[gregomni]

Originally posted by MacDog:
I would MUCH PREFER it to be able to use my "Anti-Ad Stylesheet" like I do in Safari - which blocks every ad, every time, with no configuration at all.

Any idea when/if OW will be adding support for custom stylesheets?

It's there, it just isn't exposed in the user interface yet. You need to set the hidden default "OWUserStyleSheetLocation", and it needs to be a URL that points to your stylesheet. For instance, something like this in Terminal:

defaults write com.omnigroup.OmniWeb5 OWUserStyleSheetLocation file://Users/macdog/Documents/MyStyleSheet.css

Will make OmniWeb use the MyStyleSheet.css file as a user stylesheet.

[Deestar]

Overall Omniweb 5 is shaping up nicely, it looks like ftp stuff is broken though. Either way it would be pretty useful if there was an option in the General Preferences to select a default FTP client, for example "Transmit" which is my favourite.



Keep the beta's coming

edit: looks like its just "Microsoft FTP service"sites that are the problem. Omniweb does not seem to list the files correctly i.e you are not able to see/click folders and files.

[Deestar]

Looks like the safari Bookmarks bug is fixed

[Mike S.]

On the style sheet "ad blocker" vs a true ad blocking system I've got mixed opinions.

On the cons for the style sheet is that when I used it with Camino (it's really the only method for that browser) I found that it whited out far too much content that I actually wanted to see. Just browsing around a Google image search would result in some images being blocked out. I consider it a sledge hammer approach to blocking.

True filtering requires more fiddling but results in very accurate and precise blocking; It's like a laser surgery and I love it. Not to mention there's a certain feeling of accomplishment when I seek out an offensive image and type up a regex filter to kill it :-)

The one thing I do like about the Stylesheet is that it doesn't kill off a web site's revenue stream. Using true blocking could eventually harm a web site and/or force them into a pay model, provided enough people were doing it that is. It is handy for killing especially slow servers that prevent you from getting to the info you want.

Is there any way to tell a browser to continue rendering a page when an ad server doesn't respond after a certain period of time, Say, 5-10 seconds? That would seem to make for a faster experience in some cases. It can already distinguish between a site and 3rd party servers.

My current philosophy on ad blocking is to seek and destroy only annoying advertisements. This means disabling all GIF animations and setting up OmniWeb to filter all .swf content. The OmniGroup devs deserve some serious butt kissing for the ingenious idea of letting you block plug-in content but clicking it allows it to work. This lets me kill off the annoying ads while not hindering the normal function of sites that use Flash.

I don't actually mind the static ads and a bunch of empty wells where blocked content used to be can make a site look rather barren.

[Mike Pither]

I am having a problem with Beta 5 whereby I now always have to reload my workspaces manually each time I open them as initially they open up with the cached content from the last time. I never had this problem with Beta 4 etc. Is there something up only on my installation?

[MrBS]

I think that's the desired behavior. Annoying when you're looking at oft-changing sites, but then again if you're reading relatively static pages it's annoying when they all 20 need to be re-downloaded. Pick y'r poison.

~BS

[cpac]

I had what seemed like some over-agressive caching going one when I first started up with b5, but after trashing the cache folder, things seem to have returned to normal (for the most part anyway).

Give it a shot.

[Mike Pither]

Originally posted by cpac:
I had what seemed like some over-agressive caching going one when I first started up with b5, but after trashing the cache folder, things seem to have returned to normal (for the most part anyway).

Give it a shot.

I tried that but no luck. I also notice that above others have mentioned the same problem. I guess it's just a regression from beta 4

[Spirit_VW]

Originally posted by Mike Pither:
I tried that but no luck. I also notice that above others have mentioned the same problem. I guess it's just a regression from beta 4

Others report over-agressive caching, I still have far too under-agressive caching...somewhere in between is the perfect middle ground.

I still gotta wonder if I'm doing something wrong...the cache seems very, very short-term.

[Spirit_VW]

Originally posted by Spirit_VW:
Others report over-agressive caching, I still have far too under-agressive caching...somewhere in between is the perfect middle ground.

I still gotta wonder if I'm doing something wrong...the cache seems very, very short-term.

Wow - having played with B5 over the last couple of hours, I have noticed that the cache seems to actually DO SOMETHING now. Wow. It's speedy. It's not downloading entire sites I visited five minutes ago. Hooray!

EDIT - Well, turns out that if I quit OW, the cache is either cleared or ignored. Still, does more than it used to for me.

[Mike Pither]

If you want up to date info from pages previously visited then B5 has a very over aggressive cache. In forums and news sites I am finding that it reloading pages from yesterday- I checked the news on the BBC which I last checked yesterday evening and 24 hours later it loads the same page again. Clicking reload solves the problem but it is obviously not correct. No doubt it will be corrected in the next update.

[Spirit_VW]

Originally posted by Mike Pither:
If you want up to date info from pages previously visited then B5 has a very over aggressive cache. In forums and news sites I am finding that it reloading pages from yesterday- I checked the news on the BBC which I last checked yesterday evening and 24 hours later it loads the same page again. Clicking reload solves the problem but it is obviously not correct. No doubt it will be corrected in the next update.

I must be the odd exception, as the cache did nothing at all on my system before B5. Now, it works, but if I quit, it's gone.

[Mike Pither]

I received the following mail from Omni regarding the over aggressive caching problem. -

We are aware of this issue and we plan to correct it in a future version of OmniWeb.


Sincerely,


Brian W.
Support Engineer
Omni Group

[Mike S.]

Brian must be swamped with Emails, I hope OG has him set up with some kind of voice dictation package.

I've gotten many replies from him; I can't imagine the volume of Email he probably handles daily.

Maybe he's one of those Applescripts that runs Apple

If you're reading this Brian W. You're doing a great job and I appreciate seeing the replies and knowing those concerns are being addressed.

[aged]

Originally posted by Mike Pither:
If you want up to date info from pages previously visited then B5 has a very over aggressive cache....

Have you experimented with changing the "Validate cache contents:" History preference. No one choice will satisfy all your encounters, but one will probably suit your browsing style better than the others.

-P

[Mike Pither]

Originally posted by aged:
Have you experimented with changing the "Validate cache contents:" History preference. No one choice will satisfy all your encounters, but one will probably suit your browsing style better than the others.

-P

Yes I have tried all three options - Rarely, automatically & always but they do not change this behaviour. As I mentioned previously Omni have this behaviour already listed as a problem that needs fixing.

[F_Elz]

Hmm, I rarely have problems with pages loading old content.

[BZ]

OmniWeb like-a-da-power.

I just upgraded my Sawtooth from 1 to 1.5 Ghz G4 and from a Radeon 8500 to a 9800 Pro and while everything is faster all around, the application that gets the most improvement is OmniWeb 5.

Tabs open faster. Pages load and render faster, it is like a whole new browser. Yes, Safari feels like it got faster, but not as much of a gain as OmniWeb.

Anyway, looking forward to the next beta, a new webcore and come OmniWeb Caching Extreme fixes.

BZ

[biscuit]

Hi all. Decided to give beta5 a spin and I must say I'm mightily impressed. The early betas were far too slow on my machine but this is definitely usable. It seems just as quick as Safari, although that has been a bit slow on me of late. But the big plus is that my online banking works, so I don't have to keep IE or Firefox open

Anyway, I'm having trouble configuring a shortcut to search Google UK. In Safari I have Sogudi set to use the following string:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=@@@&btnG=Google+Search&meta=cr%3DcountryUK%7Cc ountryGB

Where the '@@@' is replaced by the search term. I tried putting this into OW and changing the '@@@' to '%@' like in the standard Google shortcut, but the returned result doesn't show UK specific results. Any thoughts? Apologies if something like this has been covered, but there are a lot of posts in this thread!

biscuit

[MrBS]

Just go to the site (http://www.google.co.uk/) and select the 'from the UK' option in the radio button. Then click in the search field, and you'll see a little magnifying glass + icon in the status bar. Click there, and it will ask you to name the shortcut and give it a key word. Done and done.

~BS

[biscuit]

Damn! That's far too easy! There was me thinking I was being all clever editing my own string like in Sogudi/Camino etc.

Very nice, very clever. I continue to be impressed

biscuit

[Rickster]

Thanks! You can also construct shortcuts by control/right-clicking on a form element, and choosing "Add Search Shortcut..." from the menu.

[typ993]

Brian must be swamped with Emails, I hope OG has him set up with some kind of voice dictation package.

I've gotten many replies from him; I can't imagine the volume of Email he probably handles daily.

Maybe he's one of those Applescripts that runs Apple

Just noticed this in the OW CrashCatcher Report:

if your problem requires intervention by one of our support ninjas

So Brian shouldn't have any problem handling the emails, he's a superhuman support ninja!

[F_Elz]

Any news from the OW guys?

[cpac]

well the current beta (5) expires on May 5th, so you've probably got about 10 days at most before getting an updated beta (and the accompanying "news")