[cpac]

Originally posted by nebben123:
How long do we have to wait for 5.1? I really like OW, but I'm so close to just switching to Firefox and being done with it. All of the "advantages" that OW has, at least the ones I use, can be emulated on Firefox using extensions or bookmarklets. I just like the idea of using OW because it's a native browser and (I guess) has better support.

Probably not too long. They said early on that integration of the latest webcore was going very smoothly, and I'm sure they're working hard on it even now.

That said, switching browsers is not like switching platforms or cars or cell phones or something - you can actually keep both FireFox AND OmniWeb on your machine - even run them both at the same time!

(I, for one, have versions of Camino, Firefox, IE, Safari, OW, and Mozilla on my machine)

[JKT]

I suspect 5.1 will not be too much more than a month away, perhaps sooner than that. Just so that you all know, the focus of 5.1 is updating the rendering engine and not the addition of any new features, so it shouldn't take too long (major issues notwithstanding). FWIW, there is a 5.0.1 update to the current version now available - change list:

A bug that prevented History indexing from working as intended has been corrected.

Our internal libpng library (used to handle PNG images) has been updated (to libpng version 1.2.6 - August 15, 2004) to patch recently discovered security vulnerabilities as detailed by <http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA04-217A.html>. (Fixes CAN-2002-1363, CAN-2004-0421, CAN-2004-0597, CAN-2004-0598, CAN-2004-0599.)

Minor updates have been made to the Help files.

[BZ]

Originally posted by nebben123:
BZ -- Why don't you just use Firefox? That seems like quite a specialised set of tools to expect OG to ever implement into OW.

Hmmm...

- Firefox is clunky
- No bookmark checking
- No RSS feeds (or not done well)
- Like OmniTabs
- No bookmark syncing
- No speel checking
- No text zoom
- No workgroups
- No individual site preferences

Overall, FireFox is a good browser, but OmniWeb is a Great browser. Trust me, though, I use them all. I use OmniWeb about 80% at home, followed by Safari, Firefox and IE for one site that it seems to work better with.

BZ

[workerbee]

Originally posted by BZ:
Overall, FireFox is a good browser, but OmniWeb is a Great browser.

[Macanoid]

- No speel checking
BZ [/B]

just kidding - OW5 all the way. Fantastic product!

[TimmyDee51]

Is there any chance of OW syncing bookmarks with servers other than WebDAV servers? I'd love to use that feature, but I don't have a WebDAV server at my fingertips.

On a related note, can I sign up for a dyndns.org account and set up a WebDAV server on a 10.3 Server box I have? Any suggestions on where I can look for help setting it up? I'd honestly go through all the trouble just to get this working.

[nickm]

On a related note, can I sign up for a dyndns.org account and set up a WebDAV server on a 10.3 Server box I have?

Yes. You can just turn on the WebDAV feature of the web server with Server Admin, but it might help to read through this article to understand what is going on.

[nebben123]

here are a couple features i would like added to OW5. i don't know anything about programming, but they seem trivial.

1) NEW SITE PREFERENCE: Disable META-REFRESH. I hate it when pages automatically re-load on me and I'm in the middle of reading an article.

2) COMMAND KEY FOR "SHOW TOOLBAR". So I can easily hide the toolbars using my keyboard.


Ben

[cpac]

Originally posted by nebben123:
2) COMMAND KEY FOR "SHOW TOOLBAR". So I can easily hide the toolbars using my keyboard.

These have been around for a while:

command-\ toggles the status bar
command-option-N toggles the navigation (button) bar
command-option-F toggles the favorites (bookmark) bar
command-option-L toggles the location bar

[aged]

Originally posted by Spirit_VW:
...
However, I will *not* be using it as my default browser until they fix one glaring issue that makes it unusable for me - the cache. I am still on dialup, and OW's cache is totally useless. It doesn't seem to do anything. I find it constantly reloading images it just got done loading one page before, which *dramatically* slows down browsing. ...)

See if changing your Validate Cache Contents under History Preferences helps you any.

[nebben123]

cpac -- thanks for the tip. but what i want is one key combo that hides/shows them all, just like the "Show Toolbars" menu option. i guess i could just add this in the System Prefs... but it'd be better if it was built-in.

[yskar]

A bit off topic, sorry:

Originally posted by Fonzie:
Anyways, one feature I would like to see in OmniWeb is this: Dated download folders, like Shiira has. This is one thing I really like about Shiira and miss in Safari and OmniWeb5.

Just for your info - you can do the same thing in Safari, using SafariStand (http://hetima.com/safari/stand-e.html). Although I personally don't feel the need of dated downloads, it would be good for some users to have this option in OmniWeb 5.

[car1son]

Has anyone done any AppleScript for OmniWeb involving bookmarks?
Every attempt I've made to access the "Bookmark" class it give me the error message: NSCannotCreateScriptCommandError. I can't tell if this class is in the Dictionary, but hasn't actually been implemented; or, if I'm simply so clueless that I can't figure out how to deal with it.

[JKT]

A Workspace tip which lets you launch OW at your desired workspace instead of the last used:

1. Navigate to your ~/Library/Application Support/OmniWeb 5/Workspace folder
2. Drag and drop your Workspaces folder to the right side of the Dock
3. Select the Workspace you want from the Dock menu and OW 5 will launch and open that Workspace for you instead of the one you were last using when you quit the app.

Fwiw, you can also use the Dock menu to switch Workspaces while OW is open.

Another and more important tip is to make sure you back up your OmniWeb 5 Application Support folder every now and then, just in case. (E.g. if you get into a situation where a newly opened site in a Workspace gets you into a crash-relaunch-crash cycle which could lead you to deleting that workspace).

[cpac]

Originally posted by JKT:
Fwiw, you can also use the Dock menu to switch Workspaces while OW is open.

eh? Not on my machine....

[JKT]

Originally posted by cpac:
eh? Not on my machine....

I meant the Dock menu for the Workspace folder, not the one for OW 5 - selecting one of the workspaces either launches OW5 and opens it, or switches to it if already launched:

[Macanoid]

Can anyone explain why I should use workspaces when I can just open folders in tabs?? Still don't see the benefit of this feature but perhaps I'm missing something here...

[JKT]

Originally posted by Macanoid:
Can anyone explain why I should use workspaces when I can just open folders in tabs?? Still don't see the benefit of this feature but perhaps I'm missing something here...

Because it compartmentalises your opened sites. I have separate workspaces for e.g. my Banking sites (where auto-save while browsing is off), the Mac forums I frequent, the sites I visit for Work, the sites for local cinema's etc. Also, having separate Workspaces allows me to have different snapshots for each where my commonly visited sites for that subject area are all saved - my bookmark/favourite bookmarks folders also contain sites that I visit very infrequently, so simply opening a folder as tabs would lead me to open ones I don't really want to see at that point in time.

I could have all this in one Workspace, but it would get extremely bulky extremely quickly. During a normal browsing session I will typically open nigh on 100 or so sites. Workspaces let me control what I am viewing far better than opening and closing folders of tabs would.

Just in case you missed it, here are some example workspaces for you to play with - best way to find out if and why you would want to use them.

[cpac]

Originally posted by Macanoid:
Can anyone explain why I should use workspaces when I can just open folders in tabs?? Still don't see the benefit of this feature but perhaps I'm missing something here...

They're just another tool - if you don't use them, you don't need them.

I have only 2 that I use:

(1) daily - I have this set up with the usual list of morning sites I visit, and so each morning a quick command-control-R, gets everything set up nicely

(2) online banking - opens all the sites for banks and credit cards and billing people (phone, cable, &c.).

Others (clearly) make much more extensive use of the workspaces. I may well add one (once work starts in a week or two) to be all my work-related things (firm intranet, legal research websites, &c.) - but in general it's just another layer of organization that you can use or ignore as you prefer....

[nickm]

Can anyone explain why I should use workspaces when I can just open folders in tabs??

Well, sometimes you want more than one window (for example, when coding I often have one window for the documentation for each library I'm using, with many tabs open in each). Sometimes you want to be able to maintain the state of a browsing session when you reboot without manually creating bookmarks every time. Sometimes you are browsing and you say, "Hey, this is great. I want to be able to get my browser just like this with a keypress." Workspaces allow you to do this a lot faster than bookmarking.

Basically, workspaces are more powerful than opening a folder in tabs. I suppose that the Omnigroup could have glommed most of the features of workspaces into the bookmarks UI, but I think instead they decided to create the workspace UI and I think it works a lot better for a lot of tasks. (not that the featureset of bookmarks has stood still either).

[theolein]

I'm sorry to say, but Camino is becoming my default browser, for the simple reason that it is hellishly fast compared to all other browsers on OSX and even loads quickly these days.

[Macanoid]

sure, Camino is indeed way faster, but Omniweb has a way better interface. It can't do without the extra features anymore, plus, on my dual G5 it's fast enough for me.

[Spirit_VW]

If speed was the only measure of browser greatness we'd all be using Lynx.

[nickm]

Camino is becoming my default browser, for the simple reason that it is hellishly fast compared to all other browsers

As long as a browser can render pages faster than I can read them, then I'm happy. (well, not really, but it's kind of true). Most of my rendering happens in background tabs anyway.

[itai195]

This may have been asked before (sorry) but are there plans for gmail support? That's the main thing stopping me from buying a license, otherwise OW 5 is excellent.

[Mike S.]

Originally posted by itai195:
This may have been asked before (sorry) but are there plans for gmail support? That's the main thing stopping me from buying a license, otherwise OW 5 is excellent.

I would think OmniWeb 5.1 will inherit support since that update will bring the latest WebCore and I believe GMail is coded to work with features in that version.

[itai195]

Originally posted by Mike S.:
I would think OmniWeb 5.1 will inherit support since that update will bring the latest WebCore and I believe GMail is coded to work with features in that version.

Thanks! I figured as much, and as long as we'd be able to set OW to identify itself as Safari 1.2.1 or newer it should work.

[Macanoid]

I messed something up and need help. In omniweb (and only in Omniweb) my flash files are played with Quicktime. Can anyone tell me how to remedy that? Thanks.

[Mike S.]

Originally posted by Macanoid:
I messed something up and need help. In omniweb (and only in Omniweb) my flash files are played with Quicktime. Can anyone tell me how to remedy that? Thanks.

Assuming your MIME settings in SysPrefs > Quicktime are properly set; open OmniWeb's prefs, click Plug-ins and ensure that Flash Player.plugin is enabled (checked)

[Macanoid]

Both my QT mime settings and OQ plugin setting were correct. What I did though is un-check the flash plugin in OW and restart OW. Then re-activate the flash plugin and restart OW again. Now everything is working again.

[yskar]

Well, a month has passed since OW 5.0 was out. I wonder if Tim2 or Rickster is in the mood for talking about the progress on OW 5.1.
Will there be sneaky peeks, or just betas? When can we expect to have 5.1?
I suppose you had pizzas or something with my upgrade license fee.

[cpac]

Originally posted by yskar:
Well, a month has passed since OW 5.0 was out. I wonder if Tim2 or Rickster is in the mood for talking about the progress on OW 5.1.
Will there be sneaky peeks, or just betas? When can we expect to have 5.1?
I suppose you had pizzas or something with my upgrade license fee.

and there was supposed to be a theme editor type thing that came out before 5.1 also....

[Tim2 at Omni]

Originally posted by yskar:
Well, a month has passed since OW 5.0 was out. I wonder if Tim2 or Rickster is in the mood for talking about the progress on OW 5.1.
Will there be sneaky peeks, or just betas? When can we expect to have 5.1?
I suppose you had pizzas or something with my upgrade license fee.

Patience, grasshopper. We're working very hard to make sure 5.1 is faster and more stable than 5.0, but it takes time. Integrating a new rendering engine requires a lot of testing and bug squishing.

My best guess is that you'll see it near the end of this month, save for any freak accidents or unexpected alien abductions of Omni employees.

[Macanoid]

Wow - that's very good news indeed. I for one am looking forward to any beta's you want us to test

[Mike S.]

Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni:
My best guess is that you'll see it near the end of this month, save for any freak accidents or unexpected alien abductions of Omni employees.

My sources tell me that Osama Bin Laden was spotted in the Washington area and he's said to be a fan of Internet Explorer, watch yourselves!

[yskar]

Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni:
Patience, grasshopper. We're working very hard to make sure 5.1 is faster and more stable than 5.0, but it takes time. Integrating a new rendering engine requires a lot of testing and bug squishing.

My best guess is that you'll see it near the end of this month, save for any freak accidents or unexpected alien abductions of Omni employees.

Thanks, keep up good work!

[juanvaldes]

Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni:
My best guess is that you'll see it near the end of this month, save for any freak accidents or unexpected alien abductions of Omni employees.

well you just got another hundred bucks from me, order some more pizza and get to work

[Turnpike]

Originally posted by Mike S.:
My sources tell me that Osama Bin Laden was spotted in the Washington area and he's said to be a fan of Internet Explorer, watch yourselves!

Microsoft funds terrorism!

[Macanoid]

Originally posted by Turnpike:
Microsoft funds terrorism!

You don't need Microsoft for that, Bush is doing a good enough job himself

[Turnpike]

Originally posted by Macanoid:
You don't need Microsoft for that, Bush is doing a good enough job himself

large, evil corporate... Bush... there's no need to be redundant.


BUT! to get back on track!

I definitely like how OW works. Very smooth, very feature-rich. I'm a big fan. I wish the tabs could be done more like Safari's (via an option) because I like my browser to extend the full width of my screen. However, I am a big fan of drawers, so that's cool

Cache is important to me, being on dial-up. Once that and the rendering issues are fixed, I'll be much happier.

However, although it is more feature-rich out of the box than Safari, several of it's key features (for me) are already available through extensions to Safari... most notably PithHelmet and Sogudi (or saft, but Saft is not free).

Now I could swallow the price tag... if it is worth it, cough it up, right? Well, I think it is worth it. Safari is worth maybe 20 dollars, blah blah, they all have their values. Just because the rest are on sale doesn't mean that OW needs to be.

Unfortunately, the browser wars are on, and will probably always be on. That means rapid development and rapid addition of features. When the 1.0 versions of Mozilla's stuff is out for real (esp. Camino) it might have the edge again. Same with the 2.0 version of Safari. At this point, I would not be happy paying for OW and then using a different browser because OW no longer has any sort of edge. Furthermore, I'd know that if OW wanted to complete with these browsers, it'd have to release a 6.0... and I'd have to release more cash.

Perhaps if the price for OW also included FREE upgrades forever, or at least for a certain amount of time (36 months perhaps) then it would be worth the price just so I could have another browser to swap back and forth with the others... but paying for something that barely has an edge (in my view) and will probably not have an edge later on (but may gain it back) isn't my idea of a good investment... especially if I'd have to pay again after the next major upgrade. With the competition as it is, I just couldn't justify it to myself.

I'm a week away from college... college kids are always strapped for cash. I can get a lot of Ramen for the price of OW. I could get even more Ramen for Tiger, but Tiger doesn't have such strong, free competition that is so similar in so many ways.


Perhaps if OW had a good interface for extensions (as the Mozilla projects do) or something, it could fair better in my eyes.. but for now, it doesn't. I honestly think the business model is holding it back.


Besides, what would I say to my friends?

Friend: Hey, what browser is that?
Me: OmniWeb. Check out the cool features!
Friend: Oh yeah... Firefox, Camino, and Mozilla do that, too. I saw an extension for Safari that was similar, too.
Me: Oh... well, OmniWeb has graphical tabs.
Friend: Hey, that's pretty cool... not sure if I'd use it, but I'd like to have it around to play with. Where'd you download it?
Me: Uhh... it's $30.
Friend: Oh. I'll stick with Safari/Camino/Firefox/Mozilla/iCab/IE/Shiiva/Konquerer/et cetera


:-/ Bottom line, it may increase my Internet happiness by 5-10%. In a month, though, it might not be any better than the competition, for my needs... in two months, the competition might be slightly better. 1H2005, Safari might blow it out of the water. 3Q2006, my only choice to make my investment in OW finally pay off again by being better is to buy the upgrade to OW6. Just doesn't work for me. It'd have to simply be WAY better than all the competition, and it just doesn't have that sort of edge.

Keep up the good work, though. I understand it is perfect for some people, and that's great. Besides, I'd like somebody to keep coming up with cool features I'll be able to find in an extension for Safari

[MrBS]

Well after agreeing with your first paragraph, I have a couple corrections.

First off, Pith Helmet costs ($10/$25), and that doesn't even provide the whole browser thing that you get with OW for $30. ($20 if you're a student like you said, $10 if you bought 4.0, free if you bought 4.5 in the last couple months). It's also an inferior solution. Any false positive and you're screwed. It's just gone, you won't even know it's missing. OW's solution is much more elegant.

I haven't used Sogudi, but I'd be very impressed if they were able to do better than OW's shortcuts or make it as simple to create them. [edit: the ability to make post requests is a fairly major part of OW's implementation which sogudi lacks[/edit]

OmniTabs are much different than other browsers tabs, and at first I wasn't a fan of them at all. Give them a try for a bit and they'll probably grow on you. A couple tips: set OW to open external links in a new tab and make it so that cmd-clicking opens the link in a new background tab. Much more versatile and powerful than mozilla/safari. Every time I use one of those browsers I get extremely annoyed that I can't even reorder the tabs, or get any hint as to what's in the page besides the first 7 characters of the title. Also, hitting cmd-w in omniweb makes sense to close one of those little documents that you have in the drawer. I can never get my head around cmd-w not closing the window in safari.

And lastly... your answer of "Uhh... it's $30." fell way short of the mark. You could point your friend to the download site, where your friend could test it out under omni's extremely liberal licensing. Use it for free for 30 days. Check it out. Repeat as necessary.

~BS

[Turnpike]

0.7.x versions of PithHelmet were free. According to reviews at versiontracker, they were also easier to use. As for it not providing "the whole browser thing"... the point of it is that it works with a free browser. With the free, older version and my free browser, I'm $30 ahead of OW.

However, I do happen to like the fact that it not only blocks the ads, but removes them from the layout. Less elegant, sure, but it isn't just the flash game where I shoot the duck that bothers me, it's the space it takes up. Perhaps there is an option for this in OmniWeb, I do not know. There should be, if there isn't. It isn't an "inferior method", just a different one. One I happen to prefer.

Sogudi's shortcuts are pretty easy. You type in the abbreviation, then you type the URL you want it to go to, and @@@ to represent where the rest of the text should go. I don't see there is much improving to be done on shortcuts these days. Perhaps if it could accept shorcuts of the form "abbreviation arg1, arg2, long argument" and separate the arguments, it would be nicer... but I haven't seen this as something I need or want. Now, if it could pass POST variables, that'd be nice.

I did like the tabs, I just didn't much care for my screen being narrower. I had it set in OW and in Safari where middle-click opens a tab in the background. Cmd-click does this in Safari, too, so OW doesn't have anything over Safari there. Neither was better than the other here. Both of them felt the same for using cmd-w to close a tab because... well, they both do that the same, the way I have them set at least, perhaps this was a preference. Reordering the tabs is nice though. Having a graphical representation was spiffy, too, but it took up way too much space... although shrinking it to text didn't help, 'cause it stayed wide.

Yes, I could point my friend to the download site. Knowing my friends, they might try it... the mac ones, at least. However, as a rule, we don't see the point in using software we don't plan to use long-term... they might try it for a few days, but none of us are rich enough to buy something that we really don't need or even want that much. And unfortunately, most of us are morally opposed to piracy. I'm also morally opposed to license abuse, we redownloading a trial is not something I would do.


It just isn't worth the price to me. I wouldn't use the workspaces features. The features that are most important to me are already replicated in Safari. Overall, I suppose OW feels a little bloated. Certainly the slow render speed that is going to disappear is partially to blame, but also the fact that it has so many features I don't care about.

In the end, it boils down to opinion. Having used OW, I can safely say that it doesn't have any features over Safari that are worth $30 to me. Yes, I'd qualify for the educational discount... but it still isn't $20 better. It might be $5 better for my Internet usage patterns, but even at $5 that's assuming it stays better... which it won't, unless they keep offering free upgrades, which they can only do for so long. Not that it matters, 'cause it'd cost me 20 and then 10 every time it got a major upgrade.

Again, for my uses, it can't compete. It's a good browser, among the best, if not the best. However, it costs money, and a non-trivial amount of money for me. The others are free, and have the possibility to leave OW behind. Then OW is expensive, AND not as good. Just because it is among the best doesn't mean it will stay that way.


Let's put it this way: if The GIMP were nearly identical to Photoshop, except Photoshop had a faster Gaussian Blur and a slightly nicer but more cluttered interface, and The GIMP had better blending options, I'm not going to be shelling out the dough for Photoshop. Especially since I'd feel like I was paying for all the standard crappy Photoshop filters that nobody uses. OW is cheaper than Photoshop, but you can still buy something nice for 30 (or 20) bucks. Just my opinion.

[Mike S.]

Originally posted by Turnpike:
Besides, what would I say to my friends?

Friend: Hey, what browser is that?
Me: OmniWeb. Check out the cool features!
Friend: Oh yeah... Firefox, Camino, and Mozilla do that, too. I saw an extension for Safari that was similar, too.
Me: Oh... well, OmniWeb has graphical tabs.
Friend: Hey, that's pretty cool... not sure if I'd use it, but I'd like to have it around to play with. Where'd you download it?
Me: Uhh... it's $30.
Friend: Oh. I'll stick with Safari/Camino/Firefox/Mozilla/iCab/IE/Shiiva/Konquerer/et cetera


:-/ Bottom line, it may increase my Internet happiness by 5-10%. In a month, though, it might not be any better than the competition, for my needs... in two months, the competition might be slightly better. 1H2005, Safari might blow it out of the water. 3Q2006, my only choice to make my investment in OW finally pay off again by being better is to buy the upgrade to OW6. Just doesn't work for me. It'd have to simply be WAY better than all the competition, and it just doesn't have that sort of edge.

I don't think the OmniGroup would say this but my perspective of the situation is a resounding, who cares?

Look at it this way, let's say there are 15 million active OS X users out there and the vast majority of them are using the Internet (if not all).

It comes time to make a browser choice; there are a bunch of freebies and there is OmniWeb that has the best UI, the most robust feature set and a price tag.

Let's say only 1% of those people buy a license, that's 150,000 people paying their $30 license fee or $4,500,000 in revenue for the OmniGroup.

What should they do? Keep charging and continue to make it the best while reaping millions in revenue or stop charging for it so more of the people who aren't willing to pay for a browser might use OmniWeb over any of the other free ones?

You see what I mean? Why should they care how many people are using it for free if they have a small but loyal base putting food on their tables? Let everyone else use Safari, Camino et all.. OmniWeb is for those who recognize and appreciate the feature set.

[TimmyDee51]

Originally posted by Mike S.:
OmniWeb is for those who recognize and appreciate the feature set.

Well said. That's exactly how I feel about it. And if Omni wants more money for an equally spectacular version 6, they'll probably get it from me.

[Amorya]

Originally posted by Turnpike:

Sogudi's shortcuts are pretty easy. You type in the abbreviation, then you type the URL you want it to go to, and @@@ to represent where the rest of the text should go. I don't see there is much improving to be done on shortcuts these days. Perhaps if it could accept shorcuts of the form "abbreviation arg1, arg2, long argument" and separate the arguments, it would be nicer... but I haven't seen this as something I need or want. Now, if it could pass POST variables, that'd be nice.

Omni can pass POST variables in shortcuts. I dunno fi oyu can do it manually, but you can click the Add Shortcut button on a form field and it makes a shortcut that submits in the same way as the field.

Amorya

[Turnpike]

Originally posted by Mike S.:
I don't think the OmniGroup would say this but my perspective of the situation is a resounding, who cares?

Look at it this way, let's say there are 15 million active OS X users out there and the vast majority of them are using the Internet (if not all).

It comes time to make a browser choice; there are a bunch of freebies and there is OmniWeb that has the best UI, the most robust feature set and a price tag.

Let's say only 1% of those people buy a license, that's 150,000 people paying their $30 license fee or $4,500,000 in revenue for the OmniGroup.

What should they do? Keep charging and continue to make it the best while reaping millions in revenue or stop charging for it so more of the people who aren't willing to pay for a browser might use OmniWeb over any of the other free ones?

You see what I mean? Why should they care how many people are using it for free if they have a small but loyal base putting food on their tables? Let everyone else use Safari, Camino et all.. OmniWeb is for those who recognize and appreciate the feature set.

I've said it before and I've said it again; OW is not right for me. I am NOT saying that OW is going bankrupt for this, I'm NOT saying they are an evil corporate, I'm NOT saying that other people shouldn't give it a try.

I KNOW OW is for people appreciate its particular feature set. That's what I've been saying in two rather long posts, and it seems to have evaded you. I even stated explicitly that I like its features but they aren't something that I deem worth the price, considering MY income and MY savings account and MY Internet usage habits.

And the conversation I mocked was flippant. Guess I shouldn't have posted that with so many rabid fans around, huh? I was stating my opinion, and I don't see the need for a lecture on how OW can make money and how it isn't evil.

You say OW has the best UI. Unless you can give me some sort of mathematical approach to scoring a UI, that is COMPLETELY subjective. I happen to (slightly) prefer Safari's UI. There are aspects of OW I prefer, but overall I enjoy Safari's more. However, I am not stating that it is the best UI or even better than OW or anything else. I'm stating that it suits me better.

Perhaps OW 6 will come out and I'll be totally wowed by it. Maybe I'll proudly cough up my 20 bucks. For ME (and I emphasize ONCE AGAIN, for ME and in MY opinion and judgment of MY situation) it is simply the wrong choice at this time.


I certainly hope the developers look at my posts and see feedback as to why some users won't switch to their product, and will consider the feedback in their next version. Perhaps the developers, unlike their customers, enjoy a bit of criticism. Even if it isn't something they agree with, feel like changing, or even care to think about, maybe they will at least respect and acknowledge the opinions of somebody that does not zealously support their project.

And don't get me wrong. I want them to keep working on OW and making it better. I may never buy it, but I'd like the selection for the Mac OS, I'd like the competition for other browsers and developers, and I'd like the great minds working on churning out new features.

Who knows, maybe they won't respond so negatively to my criticism of OW and will be happy to get feedback regarding the location of their tab bar. Maybe they'll think about making a less feature-rich "lite" version that wouldn't feel so bloated and wasteful to people who don't need all the extra features.

BTW, I find the comment "who cares" to be extremely disrespectful. and I'm quite sure the OW people wouldn't share your perspective. They seem to be very helpful from what I've seen, and to develop any sort of community they couldn't have a "who cares" attitude about their software and potential users.

My perspective on you is a resounding "get off the high horse, and let people state their opinions." If you believe I have missed a feature or you think I misinterpreted something in OW, I'd be happy to have you point it out to me. But since you don't care about my opinions, I'll have to wait for somebody else to discuss this software in a more friendly manner.

and another FYI, all you've made me do is have a lesser view of OW. I'll try not to let that cloud my judgment too much, but I do have bias towards software with a good community behind it (eg Adium). Although the devs seem like great people and a good portion of the community that I've seen here has been both helpful and informative, it is disappointing to see such rabid and blinded people giving me no respect because I don't happen to agree with their opinions.



Devs: I'm very sorry about all this. If you were offended in any way, I apologize, because none was meant. I just take offense at people who disregard my opinions, my choices, my knowledge of my situation and habits, and everything else because they feel they have to defend a product. I'll do my best to not let it cloud my judgment as I continue to try new versions of your software.

"I hear Magnum's gonna blow us all away."




Amorya: Thanks for the tip, I'll check it out and see what I can make of it

[Turnpike]

Originally posted by Amorya:
Omni can pass POST variables in shortcuts. I dunno fi oyu can do it manually, but you can click the Add Shortcut button on a form field and it makes a shortcut that submits in the same way as the field.

Amorya

Yeah, you can add them manually
That's handy.

[Amorya]

OmniWeb is my favourite browser. I've not tried Camino, but I've used every other Mac browser and like Omni the best. Still on demo time asofyet but they'll get the cheque when my student loan comes through

It's not a perfect browser. But I have some odd ideas about a perfect browser that totally contradict everyone else (eg links should require a double click).

I think Turnpike has a good attitude. Competition is always good. Omni is not competing on price, so they have to compete on features. This is good.

You say OW has the best UI. Unless you can give me some sort of mathematical approach to scoring a UI, that is COMPLETELY subjective. I happen to (slightly) prefer Safari's UI.

Fairy nuff. Personally I think Safari has one of the worst interfaces ever to come out of Apple. It's not absolutely terrible, but it's not at all special... things like the method of 'customising' the toolbar, and the structure of the menus - it seems to me that Apple just threw together an IE-beating browser (not saying much!) dead quickly.

I know from Dave Hyatt's blog that they have actually thought about stuff - just to me, my impression is otherwise.

The reason I like Omni's interface is because it just feels 'mac-like' to me. Drag and drop everywhere. I don't use all (or even most) of the advanced features like workspaces. Just for casual browsing, it's dead quick for me. I don't get frustrated by things, like I do in other browsers (like the Safari stop/reset button, or IE's disposition to bringing pages to the front when they're done loading).

Sorry for late-night-rambling.


Amorya

[Mike S.]

Turnpike: I think it's you who has missed the gist of my argument.

I was not attacking you personally or calling your opinion irrelevant; I selected I single portion of your post and addressed it specifically.

In other words, the oft repeated "It's nice but not worth paying for when there are free browsers" argument.

What is the point of even bringing it up? It infers a belief that Omni shouldn't be charging for a browser and the only way they'll get more users is by not charging for it.

I simply provided the perspective that such a belief doesn't matter, they do charge for it, it brings them revenue, enough people don't mind paying for it and having more users with no tangible gain (it would likely cause a loss) is irrelevant to a company out to make a profit.

I'm not a rabid OmniWeb supporter though I do prefer the browser. I'm a vocal critic of it's render performance but that didn't stop me from purchasing a license because it's good qualities outweighed that one aspect.

I rotate between OmniWeb, Camino and Safari regularly and have contributed thoughts, opinions and bug reports to the Camino Project and Apple.

You shouldn't be so quick to get all defensive on a message board, you submit an opinion and it's going to get challenged or backed. If a person is giving a personal attack you'd know it; what I wrote was not such an attack.

Sorry if you got offended by it but I didn't perceive it as or intend it to be offensive.

[nickm]

the point of it is that it works with a free browser

Safari is not free. Or can you point me to the download page for the latest version?

Safari is a feature of Mac OS X, and if you want the latest version, you need the latest version of Mac OS X, which costs $130. This will continue to be the case with Safari 2.0 and Tiger. "But I was going to get Tiger anyway..." you say. Fair enough, but don't pretend that you aren't paying for Safari, then.