[BZ]

I have noticed that OmniWeb (5.1) has become a lot more unstable in Tiger than in 10.3.9. It now crashes at least once a day as before I can't remember the last time it crashed.

OmniDudes? Do we have any OmniWeb Tiger updates to look forward to?

BZ

[workerbee]

Originally Posted by BZ

OmniDudes? Do we have any OmniWeb Tiger updates to look forward to?

The latest version, OmniWeb 5.1, has a few known issues when running under Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger:

Java applets will fail to load in OmniWeb
When switching tabs, it is possible that some parts of the browser content area will not refresh correctly, leaving part of the page from the previous tab showing on the switched-to tab.
OmniWeb causes some logging to the console log file.
We expect to release an update for OmniWeb soon that will correct these issues.

(from http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/tiger/)

[sideus]

http://www.omnigroup.com/application...download/beta/

[RedHerring]

Is it just me, or is this beta a little snappier than previous versions?

[BZ]

The new beta crashed on me 3 times in 10 minutes this morning.

BZ

[RedHerring]

Wow! Seriously? That's not cool at all. I haven't had any hiccups yet myself. Of course, we're still talking about just the first few hours of use, so stability remains an issue to be seen.

[BZ]

Anyone else just having serious crashes in OmniWeb?

I have done all the tricks I know (cache/prefs/history) but it just keeps crashing when I am in bookmarks (unread).

Frustrating because A) I love OmniWeb and B) I have all my bookmarks in it the way I like.

BZ

[car1son]

I've run into a couple of RSS feeds I had bookmarked that cause Omniweb 5.1.1beta1 under Tiger to either crash or loop 100% CPU when it checks it - which can cause it to crash even when not obviously being used. (The CPU hogging persists until the offending feed is found and remove, a tedious elimination process.)

I've started moving my RSS to Safari. Much as I like OmniWeb's site blocking, per-site prefs, shortcuts & voice-control, Safari now has a much more advanced RSS and context-menu features (e.g., dictionary services), not to mention stability under Tiger.

[BZ]

I very much hope that OmniGroup takes up the Safari 2.o challenge and goes forward with a big update to OmniWeb (5.5?). They have a great product, but Safari just closed the gap.

Here is my "Spread the Gap" OmniWeb 5.5 wish list:

- .Mac syncing of bookmarks/prefs/everything
- Full RSS support with body text, searching, etc (steal from Safari)
- Full Safari speed
- OmniWeb DashBoard Widgets for updated bookmarks, RSS, etc (someone more creative than I)
- Tiger optimizations
- Spotlight for bookmarks/history (preference)
- Full AutoMator support
- "real" Smart Folders, bookmarks, smart everything. Get smart.
- GCC 4.0 (don't know if that does anything, but sounds cool)
- Integrate Safari bookmarks (import/export)

Please OmniDudes.. bring us again to the promise land.

BZ

[Catfish_Man]

Originally Posted by BZ

- Full Safari speed
- Tiger optimizations
- GCC 4.0 (don't know if that does anything, but sounds cool)

Redundancy++?

[BZ]

OmniWeb is driving me nuts. It just crashes every few minutes on Tiger. I have sent countless bug reports and nothing.

OmniDudes... wake up and fix this puppy.

BZ

[RedHerring]

Beta 2 got posted... maybe it'll address some of the issues you were having?

[threestain]

Beta 2 seems to purr gently for me, though I would love to have something to make me finally depose the king Safari off of the mantle of my dock.

Maybe its just getting late and I'm being silly...

[biscuit]

I was thinking about OW and the newly open-sourced WebCore/Kit stuff yesterday. Does this mean that Omni will be able to incorporate new versions of this more quickly/easily?

BTW, someone over at macosxhints built a version of Safari with the newest WebCore and posted it. It's called SafariOnAcid because it now passes that Acid2 test thing. It's a bit quicker at page loading too:

SafariOnAcid

biscuit

[JKT]

Originally Posted by biscuit

I was thinking about OW and the newly open-sourced WebCore/Kit stuff yesterday. Does this mean that Omni will be able to incorporate new versions of this more quickly/easily?

BTW, someone over at macosxhints built a version of Safari with the newest WebCore and posted it. It's called SafariOnAcid because it now passes that Acid2 test thing. It's a bit quicker at page loading too:

SafariOnAcid

biscuit

Prior to WWDC there was some discussion on the OmniWeb mailing list (initiated by Scott Maier of OmniGroup - see below) that they were going to switch to the Safari version of Webkit instead of developing there own version each time - which would have meant the loss of some features, but a gain in speed of inclusion of the latest and greatest from the Safari engine. With the new approach to the open sourcing of Safari stuff by Apple, OG reckon they can now achieve both a switch to Webkit and retain the features of OW:

Quote from 22nd April 2005:

There have been some messages posted to this list lately wondering about the status of OmniWeb and so I would like to give everyone an update on where we're at.

Currently we are working on getting localizations into OmniWeb for a 5.1.1 release. This release will also include some security fixes and most likely one or two other fixes for urgent bugs that are affecting a lot of people. (For example, there are currently issues for many of our users when trying to browse the New York Times website.)

Beyond 5.1.1 one of the most immediate concerns is updating the engine to make use of the latest updates that Apple has released. At this time we're investigating two possible avenues:

1) Sticking with our customized versions of WebCore and JavaScriptCore
2) Moving OmniWeb on top of WebKit.

Our customized versions of Apple's frameworks are A Good Thing™ for many reasons, but it means that we're constantly having to play catch-up as Apple releases new versions of the frameworks. It also means that a lot of work is involved when it comes to supporting new technologies like the scriptability extensions recently added to the Netscape Plug-In API - something we would practically get for free from WebKit.

So that's where we're at. Expect a minor update in the short-term, and an engine update of some kind a little farther down the road. Where we can we will also do other bug fix releases to address the needs of our customers as best as we can.

Scott Maier
Product Manager, OmniWeb
The Omni Group

Quote from 8th June 2005:

(Sorry for the delay: we're at WWDC this week, and have been quite busy!)

Yes, Apple's move to make WebKit open source is wonderful news for us! We still have a lot of work ahead of us, but it now seems quite likely that we'll be able to make the move to WebKit without permanently losing any of our important features.

We're really looking forward to it.

Ken

[biscuit]

Thanks for the info JKT; exciting times for OmniWeb indeed.

biscuit

[car1son]

Beta 2 still loops (in background, using 100% CPU but still strangely functional) if it hits an RSS feed it dislikes. The ones I've isolated as causing problems have all contained a character outside the usual RFC822 character set in the title, e.g. a character with diacritical, curly quote or em-dash or some such. Unfortunately, there are a depressingly large number of invalid RSS files out there (varies from day to day, usually a result of the RSS picking up a character outside the character set from a headline in the title line.)
Only solution is to set the feed bookmark to "never check"; otherwise it will keep re-tring, and re-looping, every time it's launched. (Reported to OmniGroup, too.)

I was hoping Omniweb would try to catch up with Safari's RSS processing (maybe even piggybacking on the new syndication agent, if Apple has opened it up.)

[christianclark]

I have Jaguar 10.2.8 and Omniweb 5.1 runs great for me. I feel that Apple "should have" kept Safari for Jaguar too until they go with Intel. So I can't upgrade Safari and so.....I trashed it. Omniweb is much better anyway.

Christian