[Tim2 at Omni]

Hey, I told you guys in the other thread -- it's a beta. It crashes, and stuff.

Keep the feedback coming!

[CheesePuff]

Maybe if I could download it...

[BZ]

Ok... here is some feedback after playing with it all morning on two different computers:

The Great:
- Visi-tabs
- Favicons
- Workspaces
- Site preferences
- Some of the bookmark features
- Custom search fields (added Froogle in about a minute)

Wanted
- Scroll wheel support for the visi-tab window pane

Buggy
- Selecting a updated bookmark from the icon ALWAYS brings up a new window and cannot go into a new tab no matter what preference I have set.
- Form elements (like this one) seem to start to lag
- Bookmark favicons disapear (in your notes)
- Some of the auto-complete and username password stuff seems wiggy. It does not like it when there are more than a few for the same site.
- The Zope Management interface has no frame bars
- Obviously some "debugging" code still in there.

This is one hell of a browser. I can't wait to see the progress as some of these issues get pounded out.

BZ

[The Jackalope]

Originally posted by JKT:
Just for the benefit of everyone else, please take a look at the preferences - you can move the thumbnail drawer to the right side if you prefer.

The problem is, that thumbnailed tabs are what is driving me crazy. It doesn't matter what side it is on, it is wasting space. It may be a neat gimmick, but it is really the worst implementation of tabs I've seen, they are far too obtrusive.

I can see how people might like them I guess, but it is more gimicky than usefull.

[NeXTLoop]

Here's another vote for a dual implementation of tabs. The current OW implementation is certainly impressive, but for me personally I prefer something that takes up less screen real estate.

[solbo]

Looking good so far, but the tabs disappoint me. Not because of the implementation but because I thought it would be better than the traditional way. In practice though, it is not. Prettier maybe, but not more practical, in fact it becomes less practical because I have to scroll down to get to tabs that are off the drawer.

[bigbytez]

Could you have an option for omniweb to use safari's bookmarks infrastructure so that it is possible to sync omniweb's bookmarks with .mac?

[Krypton]

After my negative comments, I have to say that visual tabs are fantastic.

I think I was put off by the fact that 5.0b1 is a tad rough for a beta release, and a bit sluggish - however, we have been pressurising the guys for a release

[JKT]

Originally posted by solbo:
Looking good so far, but the tabs disappoint me. Not because of the implementation but because I thought it would be better than the traditional way. In practice though, it is not. Prettier maybe, but not more practical, in fact it becomes less practical because I have to scroll down to get to tabs that are off the drawer.

Which is less practical than having them in a disclosure triangle in other tab implementations how? Scrolling is in fact far more practical because once scrolled, the thumbnails remain visible, whereas with a disclosure triangle, they don't (you have to press the disclosure triangle each time to view your new tabs). Note that you can also make the thumbnails into tabs and fit (at a rough estimate on my 1024x768 screen) about twenty more tabs on the screen than is practical in the conventional method which, again, is a vast improvement.

The OW5 implementation can be improved - I'd like more control over the way they are ordered (e.g. such as auto-arranging by name, most recently opened, most recently viewed, most often viewed, and the ability to open new thumbs at the top of the list) and I'd like to be able to nest them so that e.g. forum threads could be nested with their forum indexes.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by solbo:
Looking good so far, but the tabs disappoint me. Not because of the implementation but because I thought it would be better than the traditional way. In practice though, it is not. Prettier maybe, but not more practical, in fact it becomes less practical because I have to scroll down to get to tabs that are off the drawer.

I can easily fit 20 tabs (in reduced non-thumbnail form). I think it's safe to say that "in practice" this is better than the horizontal layout that truncates names way to easily and fast after 7+ tabs IF you're a big tab user that doesn't mind using up screen estate for something more functional.

No matter how you cut it, if you use tabs a lot...and lots of tabs...a small screen will get you nowhere fast with a horizontal layout like Safari and Camino or a vertical layout like OW5.

Solution? Get a bigger screen? Or suck it up and use whatever works best (Safari, Camino or OW5) when it comes to tabs.

Safari Tab Pros:
Take up little screen estate

Safari Tab Cons:
In taking little screen estate you get very little feedback when names are truncated

OW5 Tab Pros:
Lots of visual (thumbnail) feedback room and room for way more tabs

OW5 Tab Cons:
Lots of wasted screen estate if you're a casual tab user that doesn't fill the whole drawer with tabs

[geekwagon]

Works great at home, but it really doesn't like the proxy server that we use at work. After about the second link you click, it sits and spins and spins without getting anywhere. If you try to quit the app, it beachballs. A force quit is then required.

It's too bad as I can't wait to use it (I really like having tabs available and Safari has problems with not always getting updated content from the proxy cache)

Dual G5, I dunno what kind of proxy it is but it doesn't require authentication or anything.

[jcb9]

Well, I can't go for more than a minute or two without OmniWeb crashing, so obviously it's not really going to work for everyday browsing for me - yet. But once the kinks are worked out and the stability are improved, OmniWeb may replace Safari as my main browser. It looks very promising. I even don't even hate the tabs as much as I thought I would - I still think tabs-as-drawer is sort of a bad idea, but it's a great implementation of a bad idea, so I can live with it.

[benguru]

Hi,
There are a lot of things I like in OW 5, like build in RSS, more features then Safari. But I have a small screen and the tabs are horrible. Please give us the option of using normal tabs. Thanks

[cpac]

love the new keyboard feature - hit enter to move to whatever is "next" - works in the forums here to get (e.g. from page 1 to page 2 of this thread)

I just keep noticing nice little details...

Love this browser!

[el_humpo]

The only problem I've had so far is the widely reported form field wonkyness. Other than that, everything seems especially spiffalicious.

Rendering of page previews in the tab drawer, as well as the drag and drop animations, run smoothly on my Pismo 500 Mhz - a nice surprise And I love the little cookie jar and autofill icons in the status bar!

I'm very happy with OW5 so far, OmniGuys. Keep up the good work

[bmedina]

Feedback:
* When switching the toolbar to text only, it should be possible to have the location bar visible.
* After clicking in the tab drawer, rollovers in the main window don't work. For example, the cursor doesn't change to the hand icon when hovering over a link, even though clicking will follow the link.

Question:
The interface becomes unresponsive during a page load, similar to other browsers. Is this because Webkit is not multi-threaded, or can this behavior be fixed in the future?

[Saddam H.]

doesn't download.
doesn't quit after using for a bit. Must force quit.

otherwise an attractive browser with a nice interface and many features, but it needs more under-the-hood work.

[bmedina]

I thought of a few more suggestions:
* The tab drawer automatically opens when you create a tab the first time. It would be nice if it automatically closed when closing the last tab.
� It would be nice to be able to control-click on bookmarks from the favorites toolbar. It's possible with single bookmarks, but if you have a folder of bookmarks, it's impossible to control-click on one of them. This would be useful for deleting, opening in a new tab, etc.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by bmedina:
Feedback:
* When switching the toolbar to text only, it should be possible to have the location bar visible.

Impossible. NSToolbar can't do that.

A solution (that will be booed and hissed I'm sure) would be to View -> Show -> Separate Location Bar.

[ryaxnb]

Originally posted by mac15:
It looks nice in movies and pictures but I can't seem get used to everything the app does.

Tabs: This is one of the biggest changes, I love the way tabs look in omniweb but they aren't as funtional as I'd like them to be. Coming from an iMac with a resolution of only 1024x768 I'm not at all happy with how much space the drawer takes up. And not to mention they are incredibly slow loading. Omni needs to provide an alternate, not everyone has a massive resolution.

How about "I disagree?" Tab graphics animations seem slow to update. Other then that, great, even though I also have a 1024x768 screen (14" iBook.)

Speed: The app took off after 6-7 bounces, not bad but then again not good. I'm finding it really hard to get used to Safari's 1.0 rendering engine which is slow as all hell in comparison to Safari 1.1 and pathetic compared to 1.2 which has been seen the recent betas of Mac OS X 10.3.3. I thought omniweb would have jumped on 1.1 form the start, they say they are working on it for a 5.1 release due in a month or so. (in a month, most users will be enjoying all that Safari 1.2 has to offer)

OmniWeb has to modify WebCore (especially now that they have even more special features,) and that takes time. It's not easy to do it. And don't forget, they said they'd work on Safari 1.1 a while ago, before Safari 1.2 came out. For all we know, they've dumped that plan and are hard at work at integrating Safari 1.2's rendering engine into OmniWeb.

I hate the way it handles ads. The ad should be blocked out, but instead you left with a small indeed and the text source of what the ad should say. I prefer PithHelmets method which blocks the image and leave no space whatsoever. Sure its not a Safari feature but its something both browsers need to tone up on.

I think OmniWeb did it well. For me, though, I'm kind of biased, because PithHelmet was crashing Safari every 4 minutes - literally.

[JKT]

To get a separate location bar, choose to Customise the Navigation bar... (View menu) and drag it from the navigation bar - it is created as a separate location bar then. This should really be more obvious (as in OW4.x)

[ryaxnb]

Originally posted by Developer:
Problems:

� Where are the site preferences?
� Der Spiegel has RSS, but it doesn't show up in the status bar. Where can I enter the RSS?

View > Show > Site Preferences.

[ryaxnb]

Originally posted by The Jackalope:
With the exception of the worst use of tabs on any browser that I have seen, it's really nice.

Unfortunately, the tabs are so bad that until there is an alternative way to use them other than that godawful drawer, I'm not going to bother with this.

Make the drawer just one way of utilizing tabs, not the only way. It is a terrible, terrible use of space, and having to go to the left of the browser all the time to change tabs feels unatural. Not to mention that on a 12" powerbook, you immediately loose a bunch of screen real estate.

I know, it's a neat idea (being able to visually see what is in a tab), but I think making it the only option is terrible.

Sorry, I gave it a whirl.

Hello? You can make text tabs. Also, going to the left is unnatural because you're used to going to the top. Use this browser more and going to the top should be less natural. . I think the drawer is nice. I have a 1024x768 screen, and there's still plenty space for webpages.

[ryaxnb]

- Scroll wheel support for the visi-tab window pane

Weird, works for me - Logitech mouse.

[Nebagakid]

Yeah, it does feel a bit sluggish.

Text entering is odd. The focus ring is weird.

I would like to see the site preferences being put somewhere more obvious.

The Bookmarks seem very complicated at first, and might turn off people, but I think it is fine. I would like to know what those little icons mean faster than a tooltip. Yeah, text entering here, I am not about this. Just trying it now, it does not work that great, I do not know why.


But, hey, it is a beta, and it works and it shows off the features. does printing work?

[ryaxnb]

Originally posted by solbo:
Looking good so far, but the tabs disappoint me. Not because of the implementation but because I thought it would be better than the traditional way. In practice though, it is not. Prettier maybe, but not more practical, in fact it becomes less practical because I have to scroll down to get to tabs that are off the drawer.

Apparently no one here has a clue that you can kill the thumbnails and get more useful info then traditional tabs. I'm a high-tab type of guy, and mostly from one site. But I love OmniWeb's tabs, because I can scroll through them. That's far more elegant then a dropdown menu.

[Nebagakid]

From Activity Monitor:

OmniWeb 38.60% CPU 37 Threads


It got up to 67% as well as low as 19% with these 37 threads!

I am on a PowreMac G4 450 (640 MB)

I mean, it does not feel as fast as Safari, I guess that is the comparison for this app, but it does not suck, It is really good and has features that are implemented well. Some exploring is all that is needed. In Safari, the program is very one level, in OmniWeb, you need to dig a bit to find everything. This is a pro-web browser, believe it or not, baby!

[ratlater]

Originally posted by bmedina:

� It would be nice to be able to control-click on bookmarks from the favorites toolbar. It's possible with single bookmarks, but if you have a folder of bookmarks, it's impossible to control-click on one of them. This would be useful for deleting, opening in a new tab, etc.

You can do this by 'command' clicking the folder in the favorites bar and then select the bookmark to open. It will create a new tab with the bookmark in the background (or a new window depending on your prefs). Also not that you must hold down the command key while selecting the bookmark and command must be pressed before the folder is clicked. These limitations are due to the way cocoa handles keyboard events I guess.

-matt

[gorickey]

From testing OW 5 to testing Safari v1.2...was this planned? Who spoiled who's parade?

[jcb9]

Aside from crashing all the time, I'm finding the OmniWeb *never* quits cleanly - every time I hit command-q, I get the crash reporter popping up. Is this happening to others, or is it just me?

[Apfhex]

I'm getting this error when trying to load ANY pages that aren't the MacNN Forums right now:

Cannot Load Address
launch path not accessible

I'm sure that relaunching the program would fix it, but...

Originally posted by jcb9:
Aside from crashing all the time, I'm finding the OmniWeb *never* quits cleanly - every time I hit command-q, I get the crash reporter popping up. Is this happening to others, or is it just me?

Quits OK here, though I did have to Force Quit it after experiencing the above mentioned error (it hung after telling it to quit).

[[APi]TheMan]

Is VersionTracker broken for anyone?

Also, I don't know if this is related to Safari 1.2 or if it's an OmniWeb 5 thing, but text boxs seem to display weirdly. I didn't get a change to play with OmniWeb 5 beta 1 for very long (maybe 5 minutes) before I updated to Saffari 1.2, so I'm not sure whether this was here before or not.

One more thing: I'm a big fan of the drop down sheet in textareas (like here on MacNN) where you can edit the text in a window, though after rebooting for Safari 1.2 it seems to not work... bummer.

[ambush]

Very cool... but way too slow for the moment!

[MrBS]

Originally posted by [APi]TheMan:
Is VersionTracker broken for anyone?

Their code is broken. Use site prefs to identify yourself as safari.

Also, I don't know if this is related to Safari 1.2 or if it's an OmniWeb 5 thing, but text boxs seem to display weirdly.

Safari update won't effect OW at all. OW does have an odd draw problem with text boxes

One more thing: I'm a big fan of the drop down sheet in textareas (like here on MacNN) where you can edit the text in a window, though after rebooting for Safari 1.2 it seems to not work... bummer.

That's an Omni feature, not part of webcore.

[snerdini]

Can we use the tab key to get to drop-down boxes, checkboxes, radio buttons, etc? If not, we need it

[ambush]

I use a Safari AutoTab (opens sites contained in folder in tabs) a lot on Safari...

For instance I have one for forums (5 macnn forums+spymac gallery) and one for my daily news (12 sites)....

In Safari 1.2, (ibook600+384mbram) forums load FAST even with itunes in the BG! I can't say the same for OW (for the moment, yes it's beta!)... it's plain unusable (wait is like 30 seconds!)

Main complaint: Speed! (lack off)

[Tim2 at Omni]

Originally posted by ambush:
Main complaint: Speed! (lack off)

We haven't even done our main optimization pass. This beta is not about speed; it's about proving that OmniWeb 5 is not vaporware, as it has been described for the past few years.

It's getting better every day. Since b1, we've fixed some crashers, hangers, and UI bugs, and we've made some fairly noticeable performance improvements (esp. when loading multiple tabs at once).

I'm sure that OW5 will be sufficiently fast enough for you once it is finished.

[ambush]

Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni:
We haven't even done our main optimization pass. This beta is not about speed; it's about proving that OmniWeb 5 is not vaporware, as it has been described for the past few years.

It's getting better every day. Since b1, we've fixed some crashers, hangers, and UI bugs, and we've made some fairly noticeable performance improvements (esp. when loading multiple tabs at once).

I'm sure that OW5 will be sufficiently fast enough for you once it is finished.

Cool stuff

You will have my upgrade fees bucks!

[Nebagakid]

post in these types of text boxes is utterly painful. When I hit "post," nothing happens! NOTHING HAPPENS!?!?!?!? AND ALSO THE left side of the text box is cut off about a scroll bar's width. (I see ____r's width right there, so about three characters and the focus ring is thick at the top and gets skinny). In the drop down is fine. But, I guess this will all be fixed with more optimization and bug fixes. This is the ONLY thing that is keeping me to move to this beta now, the way it does not respond to "post" the right way.

EDIT: For some reason it works on MacNN , but not AppleInsider or on people's blogs.

[Gul Banana]

Originally posted by BZ:
Wanted
- Scroll wheel support for the visi-tab window pane

Doesn't it already have it? It works for me...

One of the most annoying category of bugs remaining in the browser is non-persistence. There are a number of times you 'switch between things', only to find that the things are not as you left them.
Examples:
When quitting and reopening, favicons are gone.
When going back from the Bookmarks window, the page is reloaded.
When opening a workspace, all pages in it are reloaded.
I'm worried that some of this might be intentional... please reconsider it, if so. It makes the browser feel a LOT more responsive if switching between things Just Works.

Also the deadlocks are bad, of course, but you know that.

I'm going to try out RSS feeds now!

[Mike S.]

On the topic of speed: I posted something at another forum I frequent and I'll now post it here.

Last time I posted something similar on this board I practically got flamed for trying to make OW look bad, being unscientific, trying to deceive, etc..

All such complaints are BS, these are informal numbers done with a stop watch but I've seen tests run in a more "scientific" way that were completely inline with my last comparison so I think they're perfectly valid.

I'll now just copy/paste what I wrote over there. The entire point here is merely to illustrate OW's render speed in relation to other popular web browsers. I've already bought a license so I don't need to defend myself.

I've pitted several browsers against each other in a stop watch test spanning a few sites. I tested each browser twice and listed the best times. I cleared caches and quit/relaunched the browsers before conducting each suite.

Times were consistent within tenths of seconds between suites so think this is a decent indicator; the tests I've done in the past had results inline with "professional" tests done by web sites so I'm confident in their relevancy in the real world.

My computer is a PowerMac 8600 with a G3/400 running Mac OS X 10.2.8 with 464 MB of RAM. My internet connection is through Comcast cable and has a max advertised speed of 3 Mbps. Tests were conducted between 6 and 6:30 PM ET US.



OmniWeb continues to be the slowest of my preferred browsers but it's got the most compelling feature set and that keeps me on board.

It is, of course, not fair to pass any kind of judgment on 5.0 seeing as it's the first beta release with lots of new code one of which is a completely new disk cache system but I figured I'd do this so I can track it's performance progress through the development cycle as well as see what kind of effect a WebCore update has on it later on.

Safari is running both Sogudi and PithHelmet which may add or detract from it's performance, I don't know, but it's clearly the fastest with Camino right on it's tale.

Firebird had surprisingly poor performance but nightly builds of browsers have their ups and downs.

[Jim Paradise]

The icon is a lot nicer than their old one.

[curmi]

Tabs are done the way I believe they should have been done. Excellent.

I think the icons in the toolbar are ugly, and the default toolbar set is poorly set up. Safari's toolbar actually looks more elegant, apart from the Metal.

[Nebagakid]

yeah, the icons do not seem that vibrant and happy. They look like play dough, in a way, that has some inner tubing to shape it. Let's blame MIKE! BWAHAHAHAHAHA

[Neo.cmg]

OMG, the bookmarks are just terrible guys. The News Feeds "Playlist" is inoperable. I can't drag anything to it. By default the RSS feeds are saved to the My Personal Bookmarks "Playlist". And don't get me started on the redundancy involved with this Personal Bookmarks "Playlist" crap. Within the Personal Bookmarks is a folder named Favorites which is also another "Playlist" of it's own. I can't delete the folder inside of Personal Bookmarks without losing the "Playlist" of the same name. Are the bookmarks along the favorites bar linked to what resides in the folder, or the "Playlist"? From the default setting, there happened to be folders created below all the "Playlists". These folders were all the folders that were contained in the Personal Bookmarks "Playlist" and if I were to get rid of either this folder, or the one in the My Personal Bookmarks "Playlist" the other would automatically be deleted. If this all sounds to confusing, well...it is, and it shouldn't be. The bookmarks have some serious issues that need to be resolved. By the way, I believe MacNN has an RSS feed, why isn't the icon showing up to add the news feed as it appears on Slashdot?

I've experienced a lot of the beta bugs others have mentioned, but I thought I needed to bring my bookmarks issues to the forefront, as I like these to be organized in a somewhat logical sense, and OW 5b1 is preventing me from doing so. I guess thanks is in order to Omni for letting us get a preview of 5.0, but now I just can't wait for the next release.

Neo.cmg

[jcb9]

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, I was having problems with Omniweb crashing constantly - I literally could not go one minute without a crash. I finally decided to trash Omniweb's prefs, the application itself, and all other traces of the application - and reinstall. It's made a world of difference - suddenly, Omniweb is usable!. So far, I haven't had a single crash. I'm sure I will eventually, it being a beta and all, but still - if, like me, you've been having lots of crash troubles, you might try trashing your prefs at all and starting again.

[Carbonic]

to bad i can't try it.. once i launch it the friggin report a crash comes up x_x;;

your killin me larry.

[cpac]

the favorites bar is bigger - by a few pixels. Is this to support favicons or???

[Gul Banana]

It's good to hear that rapid progress is being made, Tim. So far, I'm definitely paying for it. Even if the bugs were fixed and the speed didn't improve I'd still consider it worth doing so though that is not in any way a suggestion to do that, just because of the features.

[MadBrowser]

I think that once it is closer to Safari's speed it will be great.

It has a *killer* feature set.

Being before the main optimizations I guess I shouldn't have expected it to be as fast as Safari... Tim2 says it can get faster and I'm sure he's right.

Some stuff seems okay speed, other stuff slow... Loading multiple tabs at once is something and he mentioned it specifically so hopefully that's something that can get faster.

I too am seeing the crashes. Tons. That's cool though, I submit my reports and hopefully some of that info will help smash them before the release.

Any chance of a beta 2 or is the focus just working towards the final release.

I hope that integrating new WebCore isn't too huge of a job.

Once the following are fixed, I think OW5 will be near perfect:

1. Get speed up to Safari level.
2. WebCore v125
3. Reduce number of crashers.

Thanks to OG for all the hard work. This is a very cool product.