[nforcer]

I've started using 5.0b3 full time even though some bugs need to still be worked out. Some questions I have:

Is there a way to force anchors with a target window setting to open in a new tab instead? For example, the link in this post http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...91#post1864205 I would like to open in a new tab, not a new window, without having to hold the command key. Under Tab and Window preferences I have turned on open links from other apps in a tab, open links to other sites in a tab, but there doesn't seem to be a setting to force anchors with a new target window into a tab. I want to use one window for all of my browsing. Whenever a new window should come up, I want to see it in a tab instead.

Another issue I have, is I set animated images to never play, yet I see the emoticons in these forms animating. I suspected it was a cache issue, so I flushed the cache, quit the app and restarted it. Still the images animate. At the time I do not have any specific site preferences for macnn forums so I do not know why this is happening. Bug or something else I'm missing?

Lastly, is there a way to have a specific workspace always open when I launch the app? Instead of seeing a blank window with the tab drawer closed, I want to see a window with the tab drawer open and 3 blank tabs when I launch the app, or when I want to "start from scratch" again. It's unclear to me how or if workspaces can automatically load a "clean workspace" on app launch.

Feature request #1) A toolbar item or button in the tab drawer to instantly generate a new tab. I realize I can press command-t, or use the pulldown menu in the drawer, but neither is as fast or easy as a single mouse click.
Feature request #2) Contextual Menu item "Filter Images from Server" that would add the base address of the server the image came from to the blacklist file, instead of the complete path to the image. It would be timesaving to be able to block an entire series of images from somewhere, rather than one individual image.

Bug report #1) When opening lots of tabs within a short period of time, I've found that some pages don't load. Only when I reload pages that this happens to, do those pages load without problems.
Bug report #2) When downloading a lot of files within a short period of time, certain downloads in the download window "freeze", even though they actually continue to be saved to the HD. There is no apparent way to unfreeze them, other than clearing all downloads.

Keep the betas coming.

[JKT]

Originally posted by superfula:
That's the thing...the crash reporter doesn't come up. The only option it gives me is to send a crash report to Apple. The lovely bomb icon never appears.

Have you tried deleting the com.omnigroup.omnicrashcatcher.plist from your ~/Library/Preferences folder?
Very occasionally, for me CrashCatcher will try to launch the Classic Mail app instead of creating a message in OS X Mail. I find this is solved by deleting that plist.

Btw, the aggressive caching of error and other pages is a known bug that didn't get fixed for beta 3 according to Scott from OG on the mailing list:

Overzealous caching(?) with 403 HTTP responses

We're still tying up all the loose ends with regards to caching
behaviors. The engineer who is closest to this code figures this
particular case is probably not fixed yet (even though we made some
pretty important changes since the beta 3 release was cut). However,
we probably don't need any more information from you at this point. We
have a bug open on this and we'll let you know if we need more
information to ensure we're doing things correctly.

Thanks for the report!


- Scott


On Mar 3, 2004, at 1:48 PM, John Siracusa wrote:

> Just a heads up on a bug that has existed in every version of OW5 that
> I've
> used (including beta 3) but that I haven't had time to track down yet.
> OW5
> seems to be caching pages that are served up in response to
> authentication
> and/or authorization errors.
>
> For example, I go to http://foo.com/ and it immediately boots me to a
> login
> screen (and sets a cookie when doing so). It does this with an
> "internal
> redirect" in apache, so as far as the browser is concerned, the URL
> never
> changes. OW5 sees http://foo.com/ as the login page. The HTTP status
> code
> for that response is 403.
>
> When I enter my login information and submit the form, it logs me in
> (by
> doing some server-side stuff) and then sends me where I meant to go,
> which
> is http://foo.com/, by using an "external redirect" (i.e. A 302
> response).
> My browser should then request http://foo.com/ and get the real page
> back
> with a 200 response code.
>
> Unfortunately, OW5 seems to decide that it's already seen
> http://foo.com/.
> It doesn't request it from the server and instead just shows me what
> it saw
> last time (i.e. the login page) again...and again...and again. Safari,
> Mozilla, IE, etc. all don't have this problem.
>
> The problem may be cookie related and not cache related. I will find
> out
> for sure when I have time to really debug this and I will submit a
> detailed
> bug report. Unfortunately, the site that exhibits this behavior is on
> our
> Intranet at work so you guys can't test it directly. But if you can
> find a
> site that does something similar, or at least look at the caching
> code, you
> might be able to get a head start. If not, then just wait for my
> report...
>
> -John

[superfula]

Originally posted by JKT:
Have you tried deleting the com.omnigroup.omnicrashcatcher.plist from your ~/Library/Preferences folder?
Very occasionally, for me CrashCatcher will try to launch the Classic Mail app instead of creating a message in OS X Mail. I find this is solved by deleting that plist.

Deleted that prefs file. Opened up Omniweb....BAM! Crashes before loading a webpage completely.

[F_Elz]

Hmm... seems that some animated gifs aren't showing at all... anyone have this problem too?

[cpac]

So there's a big discussion on the OW mailing list about how to make workspaces more intuitive/useful. Current problem include confusion about how the snapshot button works, confusion about what the "save windows" checkbox means, etc.

Anyway, as one proposed improvement I made the following mockup:



Here's how it works:

(1) there's an option to have this window appear at startup (or not) or to set a default workspace on startup, or to always use the most recently used workspace (current behavior)

(2) locked = static = don't save windows - each time you load these workspaces, they go to whatever the original pages you had in them were. Unlocked = dynamic = save windows - they open up wherever you left them the last time you were in that workspace. There may be a better metaphor than a lock, but I'm not sure what it is...

(3) contents remain drag-able as they are now, between workspaces, etc.

(4) the save as button allows you to save whatever your current configuration is as either a locked/unlocked (or perhaps better terms are static/dynamic) workspaces

(5) the workspace editor gets a better, more prominent key-combo, maybe even a toolbar item

(6) a possible addition (mentioned by somebody on the mailing list) is a key combo, similar to Pather's command-tab (cmd-option-tab?) to switch between workspaces without knowing their order/going to the Workspace menu.

Thoughts?

[Deestar]

Originally posted by cpac:
So there's a big discussion on the OW mailing list about how to make workspaces more intuitive/useful. Current problem include confusion about how the snapshot button works, confusion about what the "save windows" checkbox means, etc.

Anyway, as one proposed improvement I made the following mockup:



Here's how it works:

(1) there's an option to have this window appear at startup (or not) or to set a default workspace on startup, or to always use the most recently used workspace (current behavior)

(2) locked = static = don't save windows - each time you load these workspaces, they go to whatever the original pages you had in them were. Unlocked = dynamic = save windows - they open up wherever you left them the last time you were in that workspace. There may be a better metaphor than a lock, but I'm not sure what it is...

(3) contents remain drag-able as they are now, between workspaces, etc.

(4) the save as button allows you to save whatever your current configuration is as either a locked/unlocked (or perhaps better terms are static/dynamic) workspaces

(5) the workspace editor gets a better, more prominent key-combo, maybe even a toolbar item

(6) a possible addition (mentioned by somebody on the mailing list) is a key combo, similar to Pather's command-tab (cmd-option-tab?) to switch between workspaces without knowing their order/going to the Workspace menu.

Thoughts?

I think at the moment the most annoying thing about the workspace window is that it does not act as a pallet. i.e it doesn't "float" over the main windows.

[BZ]

I really like workspaces.

Now, I just have my three workspaces set up and jump between them using F1/F2/F3. I rarely bring out the window. Maybe if OmniGuys put something in the Dock icon for Workspaces, that might help.

BZ

[cpac]

I've sent feedback on this, but I want to make sure it's not just me.

Anybody else's download window cease being scrolled to the bottom in b3? What I mean is, it used to be that as soon as you clicked on a download link, the download window would appear, scrolled to the bottom so you could watch the download's progress. Now in b3, this seems to be broken, with the download window always opening scrolled to the top (forcing me to scroll again to see any progress indicators).

[hoopz]

Howdy y'all.

I have a slight UI nitpick about the Site Preferences pane, or whatever it is.

It appears with a little x in the upper left corner to close it, which I think leads one to expect that it would act like a window, ie command-w should close it. But instead, command-w closes the window of the site whose preferences you are editing--kind of frustrating.

I think it should either be dismissed with an OK button--and thus could be closed by hitting enter--or, more suitably, command-w should close it instead of its parent window.

Anyway, thanks Omnifolks--I'm loving b3.



(Semi-related: how would it be if command-z/Undo re-opened a window that was mistakenly closed? Useful, or a huge HIG violation?)

[jcb9]

One question -

Is it possible to block Flash ads? With regular image-based ads, even if the ad blocking doesn't catch them, you can control click and tell OmniWeb to filter the image. With Flash ads, however, there doesn't seem to be such an option.

[squilla]

Originally posted by jcb9:
One question -

Is it possible to block Flash ads? With regular image-based ads, even if the ad blocking doesn't catch them, you can control click and tell OmniWeb to filter the image. With Flash ads, however, there doesn't seem to be such an option.

Go to Preferences, then Plug-ins, then uncheck "Shockwave Flash NP-PPC"

[Mike S.]

On the blocking of Flash ads, I sent the Omni Devs some feedback on a potentially great feature but you can enable it manually with only a slightly less perfect implementation.

To block out ALL flash go into Ad Blocking preferences and create a new filter with the following Regular Expression: /.*\.swf

The best part is that you can click to load any flash you might need on a page and use per site prefs to override the setting for any site that you visit regularly.

The negative to this method over what I suggested to Omni is that the only way to override this setting per site is to disable all RegEx content filtering for the site where as my suggestion was to allow Flash to have it's own "click to run" setting (like Java applets) since it's so pervasive and annoying.

I've been happy with the results thus far and at least I can still keep the filter by size enabled even when I override the RegEx for a site.

P.S. If you don't want to do that and you just want to try and block out particular ads or servers then "get info" on a page (command i) and use the information provided to find the flash file. You can then hover over it to see the URL and create a filter or click Display so you can copy the URL. A handy feature could be context menu access or a button in that info pane so one can easily copy the URL of a file without having to display it. It's simply enough with images but plug-in content is a different matter.

[ryaxnb]

All current iBook models are 1024x768. I'm curious... have you used OW5 with that resolution?

They are just 1/4 of the current computer lineup. However, I agree; the "majority" doesn't have it, considering that the 15" iMac and the 12" PowerBook (which is very popular AFAIK,) as well as a Power Mac connected to any standard display, aren't widescreen either.
Oh, and I have an iBook, and I'm pretty happy with OmniWeb's tab implementation.

[ryaxnb]

Originally posted by bewebste:
Yes, beta 3 definitely feels a lot more responsive than beta 2. Heck, with beta 2, even if I was just creating a new tab, it would take a good couple of seconds for it to start registering the keystrokes for the address I was typing.

I've also been getting a weird new problem under beta 3 where I'll go to load a site and it will come up with an error saying "no such host" for the site I'm going to. But then if I just hit reload, the page loads the second time without a hitch. I suppose my DNS server could be being flaky, but nothing like this ever happened before beta 3. Anyone else experience something along these lines?

Yeah, I saw that problem in 5 b2 a lot. Strangely, Safari does that too sometimes.

[phillryu]

Originally posted by ryaxnb:
They are just 1/4 of the current computer lineup. However, I agree; the "majority" doesn't have it, considering that the 15" iMac and the 12" PowerBook (which is very popular AFAIK,) as well as a Power Mac connected to any standard display, aren't widescreen either.
Oh, and I have an iBook, and I'm pretty happy with OmniWeb's tab implementation.

It may be 1/4 of the comp line up, but at MacThemes.net, about 35% of our visitors are 1024*768 users. Using OmniWeb at that resolution is definitely a stretch.

[lngtones]

Originally posted by phillryu:
It may be 1/4 of the comp line up, but at MacThemes.net, about 35% of our visitors are 1024*768 users. Using OmniWeb at that resolution is definitely a stretch.

I wouldn't say definitely a stretch, I prefer using Omniweb's tabs on my 12" Powerbook.

[OwlBoy]

I can't log into xboxlive.com with it...


[edit: erm, I guess I can, its just that I get into a loop in the sign in process, and I have to "go to" xboxlive.com again to use the site.]

-Owl

[superfula]

OW is still crashing for me. It will work fine for some amount of time, but then randomly it will crash 4 times in 5 minutes or so. Crashed anytime between the frist page loading when I open it, to just clicking on a link, to going forward and back between pages. I even had one time where it just crashed and I wasn't doing anything. Just reading an article. Beta 2 was much more stable than 3 for me.

edit: don't get me wrong, I absolutely love OW. I was usting beta 2 all the time, aside from a few sites it choked on. I'm almost tempted to download beta 2 to see if it performs any better. Does anyone have a link to beta 2 somewhere?

[Spirit_VW]

I really, really do like OW5. I love the way it's all shaping up, looks wonderful. However, I do have a question - am I the only person who uses OW5 on dialup? (stop laughing, alright?) What I assume is its cache behavior leaves something to be desired. It seems like I am constantly waiting for OW to reload content off the server instead of locally. I can visit a site, head to another site, and come back to the first site mere minutes later and OW downloads everything (images, etc.) again. Is there a checkbox or something I'm missing here? Shouldn't it be able to load the first site without having to download everything over when I've been to one other site for five minutes?

Other than that behavior, I am really digging OW5. If I can find a way around that I will gladly send the OmniGroup my money. This is a slick browser.

[F_Elz]

I am on dialup and notice the same thing...

[jcb9]

I'm loving beta 3, but I have one issue that's driving me nuts -

When a page doesn't load properly - for example, when the connection is refused - it seems to get stuck in the cache, if that makes any sense. Say I have a page open in a tab, and reload it. I get a screen saying connection refused. Then, I go to another page. When I click back, I always get that connection refused page, over and over, and I have to reload every time to get the actual page, whether or not the connection is still being refused. The only way I've found to get the page to load properly without a reload every time after that is to quit OW and restart. Very, very annoying.

[JKT]

Originally posted by jcb9:
I'm loving beta 3, but I have one issue that's driving me nuts -
<snip>

Read my previous post above (with Scott Maier's response to John Siracusa) - it is a known issue that didn't get fixed for beta 3.

Cpac - I too have sent feedback about the download panel not moving to the latest download... you aren't alone ;-)

[ambush]

Hmm.. OG is not going well.

[iOliverC]

Originally posted by ambush:
Hmm.. OG is not going well.

I've heard this too, lets hope Omni brings out a new app soon .

[larkost]

Hmm.. OG is not going well.

ambush: you care to elaborate?

[Art Vandelay]

Originally posted by ambush:
Hmm.. OG is not going well.

I just noticed on their people page that Wil Shipley, one of the founders, is no longer listed and that they are no longer doing game ports.

[Tim2 at Omni]

Originally posted by Art Vandelay:
I just noticed on their people page that Wil Shipley, one of the founders, is no longer listed and that they are no longer doing game ports.

We're doing fine. Better than ever, in fact. Wil leaving the company and our decision not to do game ports has nothing to do with how Omni is doing.

It's not a very well-known fact that our game porting "business" was actually a huge time and money sink. It's hard to pay the bills when you're doing so many game ports for so little. I like to look at it this way: now we have a few more (really good) engineers free to work on our upcoming apps!

Anyway, I just wanted to let you all know that we aren't going anywhere anytime soon. Thanks for your concern, though

[BZ]

"Upcoming apps" eh?

Sounds like new stuff? Fun stuff? Cool stuff? Neat stuff? Things I can't live without? (like most OmniApps).

Can't wait for OW5B4. It pains me that I have to go back to Safari to get some "serious" surfing done. Mostly just interface and application speed.

BZ

Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni:
We're doing fine. Better than ever, in fact. Wil leaving the company and our decision not to do game ports has nothing to do with how Omni is doing.

It's not a very well-known fact that our game porting "business" was actually a huge time and money sink. It's hard to pay the bills when you're doing so many game ports for so little. I like to look at it this way: now we have a few more (really good) engineers free to work on our upcoming apps!

Anyway, I just wanted to let you all know that we aren't going anywhere anytime soon. Thanks for your concern, though

[Art Vandelay]

Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni:
We're doing fine. Better than ever, in fact. Wil leaving the company and our decision not to do game ports has nothing to do with how Omni is doing.

It's not a very well-known fact that our game porting "business" was actually a huge time and money sink. It's hard to pay the bills when you're doing so many game ports for so little. I like to look at it this way: now we have a few more (really good) engineers free to work on our upcoming apps!

Anyway, I just wanted to let you all know that we aren't going anywhere anytime soon. Thanks for your concern, though

Are you at liberty to say why Wil left or what he's now doing?

[F_Elz]

I wish OW5 was as fast as OW4 atleast.

[Tim2 at Omni]

Originally posted by Art Vandelay:
Are you at liberty to say why Wil left or what he's now doing?

Nope. You'd have to ask Wil.

[cpac]

Originally posted by F_Elz:
I wish OW5 was as fast as OW4 atleast.

well since we're only at beta three, I wouldn't rule out the possibility that it'll be as fast or faster...

(esp. once they upgrade the webcore to whatever the latest release is in 5.0.1 or whatever)

[Rickster]

We actually haven't been doing active work on game ports since last summer (except for a bit of part-time effort from Tim on a NOLF2 patch recently). Since then, all our engineers have been working on Omni products... though only about half have been working on OmniWeb. You'll see the fruits of our other engineers' work over the last nine months when we formally announce OmniOutliner 3 and OmniDiskSweeper 2 later this year.

As for Wil's departure... It's a big change for the company, but remember: while you may have seen Wil as "the face of Omni", he wasn't the singular driving force behind everything we've done. Omni's work has always been and will continue to be a group effort. The Omni you know and love isn't going away anytime soon.

It'd probably be best to let Wil himself answer Art Vandelay's question if he's still following these boards...

[Mike S.]

Originally posted by F_Elz:
I wish OW5 was as fast as OW4 atleast.

I'm glad that I'm not the only person noticing this :-)

I understand the beta process but part of that process is letting the developers know what you're seeing as well as making suggestions based on the progress of releases.

[F_Elz]

Anyone have this problem when part of the ad and even blocked ads getting "stuck" on the toolbar?

[JKT]

From the list of Known Issues:

User Interface

- Can't scroll past selected item in Network Activity
- Some page content can occasionally draw over the toolbar
- There is a bug where undoing a workspace deletion gives the wrong title to the "redo" menu.

It has been my experience that this largely occurs with Flash ads or Quicktime files loaded in the browser window.

[ryaxnb]

Originally posted by phillryu:
Using OmniWeb at that resolution is definitely a stretch.

I disagree. (Whee, this is fun!)

[milhouse]

I haven't read every post but does the latest OW5 beta refuse to launch with APE enabled for anyone else? The prior beta worked with APE runnning.

I sent feedback but only received an automated reply (must be busy little bees at Omni...)

TIA

[aged]

Works for me. APE, Metallifizer, and ShapeShifter installed.
Do you have some error message in the Console or other description of how it actually fails.

[Mike S.]

I recently did a cache flush from the OmniWeb menu and it feels like performance improved after doing so.

I don't know if it's an actual improvement or a placebo effect that's in play because I've just gotten used to OW 5's performance after using it for so long now.

I'd whip out the stop watch but I don't want to disillusion myself

I found it odd since I always manually delete the cache file prior to launching a new beta so I didn't expect a cache flush from a menu to do anything but clear it's cache.

I should note that the performance seemed equal from the first time I used B3 up until I did a cache flush for the first time. After that, it just seemed to run better.

Is it just my imagination or have any of you noticed something similar?

[F_Elz]

I have noticed that to some extent.

[wjsomni]

It's true I'm not with Omni any more. And, while I'd like to think I contributed a lot to Omni over the years, I hope one of the things I helped them do was learn and grow, so they aren't dependent on me (or any one person) to continue to be successful and keep up the Omni way.

Omni's new products are incredibly exciting, and I got to add something to the design of each of them before I left. I have no doubt they'll be successful, and I certainly hope they will please and surprise everyone.

I still own 35% of Omni, and am currently still on the board, so obviously I'm a biased source -- I want very much for Omni to keep rocking. Also, as the first person to work at Omni, I want to see my baby continue to grow and kick butt.

I think what I'm good at is starting companies, and the world could use another company like Omni, so that's what I'm hoping to do.

-Wil Shipley
Founder, The Omni Group

[Mike S.]

Originally posted by wjsomni:
I think what I'm good at is starting companies, and the world could use another company like Omni, so that's what I'm hoping to do.

-Wil Shipley
Founder, The Omni Group

Another innovative, Cocoa based, Mac OS X Software house? Hell yeah, bring it on!

Best of luck Will, I look forward to seeing what you create next; whether it's Mac OS X focused or not.

[ryaxnb]

Originally posted by milhouse:
I haven't read every post but does the latest OW5 beta refuse to launch with APE enabled for anyone else? The prior beta worked with APE runnning.

I sent feedback but only received an automated reply (must be busy little bees at Omni...)

TIA

works for me...

[workerbee]

What's the generally accepted solution among you digital illuminati for when OW 5 suddenly becomes very unstable and crash-prone after having opened some frame-based and JavaScript-filled pages OW obviously doesn't like at all, and when flushing the cache doesn't seem to help?

Delete all the prefs or just a selected few? And if deleting all the prefs is the way to go: how could one possibly not lose all the carefully constructed shortcuts, site prefs, cookies and so on and so forth?

TIA for any insights�

[cpac]

Originally posted by workerbee:
What's the generally accepted solution among you digital illuminati for when OW 5 suddenly becomes very unstable and crash-prone after having opened some frame-based and JavaScript-filled pages OW obviously doesn't like at all, and when flushing the cache doesn't seem to help?

Delete all the prefs or just a selected few? And if deleting all the prefs is the way to go: how could one possibly not lose all the carefully constructed shortcuts, site prefs, cookies and so on and so forth?

TIA for any insights�

Well despite using Westlaw.com on a daily basis (very heavy frame & javascript use) I haven't seen this behavior. I did get a massive slow down for a while that was fixed by flushing the cache, but since that hasn't helped you, I think you're right to to the preference route (though maybe you want to start with clearing the history?).

Anyway, I'd just move the folder to your desktop, let OW create a new one, and then ad files back one by one to see if the problems crop up again. It's the best way to maintain as much of your data as possible.
--------------------------

On another note, I know B3 doesn't expire until around the end of the month - does that mean we cannot expect B4 until that time? (The every-two-weeks thing was nice, but we passed that on Monday or Tuesday)

[Mr Scruff]

Just giving OW5 another tryout for an hour or so. Some observations:

Scrolling is still a bit sluggish for me (thanks for including the smooth scrolling as requested). Is this an issue with needing to sync to the Safari 1.2 webkit, or just a general optimisation problem? To be honest, scrolling isn't fantastic in Safari even, unless it's just a page of text, but I'd like OW to at least be at that level.

I prefer the font spacing in Safari to OW (this is obviously personal preference). OW seems to space it's lines out more, which makes the text a bit less readable for me. Is it possible to add an option for this?

[workerbee]

Originally posted by cpac:
I did get a massive slow down for a while that was fixed by flushing the cache, but since that hasn't helped you, I think you're right to to the preference route (though maybe you want to start with clearing the history?).

Thanks for the tips. You were quite right, in a way: after telling OW 5 to flush its cache and clear its history several times today, after which nothing changed and OW 5 kept acting strangely, I've finally gone into my ~/Library and manually deleted the history.ox (3MB) from Application Support and the Cache package file (2.6 MB) from Caches.
Now OW is behaving again, and I've learned not to trust the "flush cache" and "clear history" commands, and to check things out manually instead.

[pliny]

Ahh, it's so good to flush caches manually, it's like spreading your hand across a messy desk.

Doing a manual flush results in some good performance improvements. In only a couple of weeks the beta expires, wonder what's around the corner.

[Deestar]

Hmmm, is it me but have Omni gone very quiet on us. No New public betas for over 3 weeks...