[I WAS the One]

I was wondering why this browser cost $15.00 bucks? What Omniweb offers that justify this price when you can go and grab Firefox or Camino or Shiira or Flock or Safari for free??? It's this browser that good? please tell me because if you can show me the benefits I would buy it!

[64stang06]

It used to be $29.95.

It's a good browser. I bought it back when 10.0 was out, mainly because it was faster than IE and was more OS X-like. I've upgraded since and keep it around, to support the company as my way of saying thanks for not abandoning OS X.

[Cold Warrior]

It used to be a better choice, early in the OS X days. But Firefox and Safari are too good for me to spend money on a browser.

[NeXTLoop]

For everyday use I'd go with Camino. If you want more advanced preferences and options, and don't mind paying, go with iCab. It can do everthing OmniWeb can... and a lot more. It's also more actively developed.

[Faust]

Why not give it a spin? You can use it unlicensed for thirty days as far as I know and it'll probably give you the answer to your question (negative or positive).

[MacosNerd]

I think in this day and age of free good browsers, asking the consumer to pay 15 bucks is just plain wacky. There's no reason.

[- - e r i k - -]

Spend the $6 on SAFT instead and use the other $9 you've saved on beer.

[I WAS the One]

Originally Posted by Faust 

Why not give it a spin? You can use it unlicensed for thirty days as far as I know and it'll probably give you the answer to your question (negative or positive).

I'm using it as you said... I just want to know if like me other people think it's weird to pay for something that do the same thing other browsers do.

Anyway I want to said something here... If you need different browsers to browse the net then nobody is developing the right browser at all. I mean, I use most of the time Safari but when I try to see a particular webpage and doesn't load up correctly I need to boot Firefox, from that point on I quit Safari and stays on Firefox for a while... suddenly a certain webpage stays too long to come up and I hurry up and boot up Opera, a browser that sucks but it's faster as hell and whatdoyouknow? the page comes up fast from that point on I quit Opera, Quit Firefox and Open Safari again (because is the one I love) and stays browsing the net, suddenly a friend ask me how to upload a lots of pics on Flickr and I recomend FLOCK! (another browser) sure you can go to versiontracker and grab a couple of apps to do that, but if you are using FLOCK after you upload pics you can see them right away without leaving the browser at all... see? every need comes with a different browser and that my friends it's what I called a BAD BROWSING EXPERIENCE. You need one browser, one good browser and if OMNIWEB give me all of that for a price I will buy it.

[MacosNerd]

Originally Posted by I WAS the One 

Anyway I want to said something here... If you need different browsers to browse the net then nobody is developing the right browser at all. I mean, I use most of the time Safari but when I try to see a particular webpage and doesn't load up correctly I need to boot Firefox, from that point on I quit Safari and stays on Firefox for a while... suddenly a certain webpage stays too long to come up and I hurry up and boot up Opera, a browser that sucks but it's faster as hell and whatdoyouknow? the page comes up fast from that point on I quit Opera, Quit Firefox and Open Safari again...

I do not go to that length to view web pages and to be honest, I've only come across a handful of sites that do not play nice with safari. For those I have firefox and even then, if a site doesn't work with safari, I generally do not go there. I (and most people I know) suddenly go from safari, to firefox, to opera, back to safari. Seems kind of insane to me.

[Faust]

By and large, I don't think it's weird to pay for any application.

We're lucky that most browsers are OpenSource. I do recall that Omniweb has a few features that other browsers don't have, but I forget which. These features obviously didn't impress me enough to rememer which features they were. I don't really use Omniweb much.

Why do you think Opera sucks? I think it's a great browser. But again, as habitus would have it, I use it only occasionally. For webdevelopment I use Firefox, for leisure I tend to use Safari.

Originally Posted by I WAS the One 

I'm using it as you said... I just want to know if like me other people think it's weird to pay for something that do the same thing other browsers do.

Anyway I want to said something here... If you need different browsers to browse the net then nobody is developing the right browser at all. I mean, I use most of the time Safari but when I try to see a particular webpage and doesn't load up correctly I need to boot Firefox, from that point on I quit Safari and stays on Firefox for a while... suddenly a certain webpage stays too long to come up and I hurry up and boot up Opera, a browser that sucks but it's faster as hell and whatdoyouknow? the page comes up fast from that point on I quit Opera, Quit Firefox and Open Safari again (because is the one I love) and stays browsing the net, suddenly a friend ask me how to upload a lots of pics on Flickr and I recomend FLOCK! (another browser) sure you can go to versiontracker and grab a couple of apps to do that, but if you are using FLOCK after you upload pics you can see them right away without leaving the browser at all... see? every need comes with a different browser and that my friends it's what I called a BAD BROWSING EXPERIENCE. You need one browser, one good browser and if OMNIWEB give me all of that for a price I will buy it.

[I WAS the One]

Originally Posted by MacosNerd 

I (and most people I know) suddenly go from safari, to firefox, to opera, back to safari. Seems kind of insane to me.

yes it's insane... BTW love your signature!

I browse a lot for a different things and topics, for press needs and search for every information on the net that will help me in my main job (on air communications) so, that's why I need to use a lot of browsers... but even you jumping from Safari to Firefox it out of line, we need one browser and that's it. you feel me?

[MacosNerd]

Originally Posted by I WAS the One 

yes it's insane... BTW love your signature!

Thanks

[JKT]

At the moment, I'm not sure OmniWeb is worth paying for (and I use it all the time, though Firefox at work on a PC and Safari rarely when I just want to look at something quickly). A year ago, OmniWeb's feature set was still a lot better than anything else out there (even with the extensibility of Firefox). Two to two plus years ago, it was much, much, much better (version 5.0 was first privately tested in Jan 2004, so it has been 3 to 4 years for the others to get close). Even now, Firefox still lacks good replacements for some of the features that keep me using OmniWeb (graphical tabs, workspaces, site specific preferences, etc). However, the main problem with OmniWeb is that its development has progressed at a relative snail's pace the past couple of years (it is continuous, but mainly bug fixes and upgrades to newer versions of WebKit at the moment). IMO, OmniGroup need to come out with OmniWeb 6.0 in the next year, with some features that haven't been thought of yet by the others (like they did with 5.0) so that it makes it appealing to buy it again.

Fwiw, I bought OmniWeb for $20 (edu discount) at version 4.x not long after 10.0 came out and so far I have paid a further $10 for it to upgrade to version 5.0. That's $30 for 7 to 8 years of use. Given that I have used it practically every day for many hours since then (and I've been using advanced browser features that the others are only just getting now or still lack for the past 4), I consider it money extremely well spent. If I was jumping in now, though, I'd have serious second thoughts.

[I WAS the One]

[QUOTE= If I was jumping in now, though, I'd have serious second thoughts.[/QUOTE]

So... Right now Omniweb desn't have anything to offer that other browsers already did for free? I was hoping to find out the wonders of Omniweb. because as I said I'm tired of the browser-jumping game. I need one strong and stable and ready for this web world.

[JKT]

OmniWeb does still have features that make it more compelling than the others, but there aren't very many of them in comparison to what there used to be. However, in terms of priority for me:

1. Workspaces - other browsers offer something like this, but they aren't as well implemented (and the feature in OmniWeb could stand some improvement as well, to be honest). This allows you to create sets of pages that you visit as separate 'spaces' so e.g. I have a Mac related Workspace and a work related Workspace (amongst many, many others). Selecting the former will cause all my mac related websites to load separately from my work related ones (which is where other browsers fall down - their equivalent features tend to leave the prior windows and/or tabs in view rather than hiding them). You can also have different window sizes and placements saved as part of the Workspace set.

2. Site specific preferences - for each top level domain (e.g. macnn.com or apple.com) you can set and use specific preferences for all the pages at that domain. So, e.g. if I want to disable cookies and javascript at apple.com, but not at macnn.com, I can; or if I want to have a larger font for text at apple.com but not macnn.com, I can; or if I want files I download at macnn.com to go to a specific 'MacNN' folder rather than the default download folder, I can; etc.). In terms of the number of options that OmniWeb has that you can set specifically, no other browser comes close (with the possible exception of iCab, but I haven't used it for a long, long time, so I don't know if it is on a par with what it used to be in OS 9 days).

3. Graphical/vertical tabs - none of the extensions for Firefox or Safaristand for Safari can get this to work properly, and I hate that they use a sidebar instead of a drawer (though this is not to everyone's taste).
The fact that the tabs are vertical just makes much more sense for scrolling them when you tend to have about 30+ open at any one time in a window.

4. Movement and copy, cut and paste of (multiple) tabs - other browsers let you move tabs (now), but only one at a time and so far I haven't come across anything that lets you copy or cut and paste them like you can in OmniWeb.

5. Pop-out form editor - as well as gaining the resizable text input areas from latter day WebKit , OmniWeb has had a pop-out 'Form Editor' window since 5.0. The advantage of this over the WebKit method is that you can pick and choose the font and font size for the pop-out editor, whereas you are restricted to the choice of the website (or have to use a CSS hack) in the resizable text areas in WebKit.

6. The Download window - it is just more powerful than Safari's or Firefox's and tells you a lot more about the files than the others do.

7. URL auto-completion that works like Spotlight - can't remember the URL, but can remember the theme of the page you were on... just type it and OmniWeb will show you all URLs in your bookmarks and history that (a) have that word or words in the URL and/or (b) had that word or words in the name of the page.

[dirt farmer]

Curious as if anyone has used Demeter yet? I've heard nothing but good things, yet I've not tried it myself

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by dirt farmer 

Curious as if anyone has used Demeter yet? I've heard nothing but good things, yet I've not tried it myself

Haven't used it, but if the product page is any indication, it sounds like a half-baked Safari 3 with the ability to control iTunes from the browser interface itself (something I have never, ever wished for).

[phoenix78]

I find "very few" webpages that safari doesnt load properly. The only issue i can recall right now is javascript? or java based pages? (not sure on the exact details of this)

In the case that i have an issue i go to Camino and im set :-)

Theres better things to spend your money on IMO But the Omni group is a cool company though. I use omnigraffle and it is great

I havnt tried omniweb... how is it holding up so far? Is it fast and capable of displaying pages properly and also capable of running the java-based pages?

[cgc]

Originally Posted by phoenix78 

I find "very few" webpages that safari doesnt load properly. The only issue i can recall right now is javascript? or java based pages? (not sure on the exact details of this)

I generally like OmniWeb, but it has issues on some sites with JavaScript and those tabs are annoying (would prefer either Safari-style tabs on top or an option to move the large preview OmniWeb-style tabs to bottom of window so window doesn't change sizes).

Love the fact that they finally updated the toolbar...bout time!