[ambush]

thanks for making b2 actually useable!

[Tim2 at Omni]

Originally posted by ambush:
thanks for making b2 actually useable!

You're welcome!

Our plan was to release a half-baked beta 1 so that people would totally love beta 2, even with all of its bugs.

I'm kidding

[CharlesS]

Here's my nit-pick for the day: The ads blocked by the privacy settings now display a "Cannot Load Address" error instead of a gray rectangle. This is inaccurate, because OmniWeb can load the address as it is perfectly capable of doing so; it is just that you have chosen not to.

Also, it's kind of unsettling to have "Cannot Load Address" right at the top of a page you are loading, because it makes you think the site is down for a short amount of time.

Regarding speed, b2 seems to be slower than 4.5 on my dual G4/450. It is faster than b1, though. Maybe I'll try trashing some prefs and stuff.

[MrBS]

Beta 2 is driving me batty with the keyboard commands. OW seems to have taken a page out of Safari's playbook and adopted the text-editor behavior for cmd-left and cmd-right. Which makes makes it more unusable than the slower, crashier beta 1 for me.

So now if your in a text area or location bar (which many sites put you in on load) you can't use cmd-left to back up.

It seems a really odd choice as there are already tons of commands to get to the beginning of a line (like ctrl-left, ctrl-e, home, hitting the up arrow if it's the top line), and all of OW's navigation is centered around the arrow keys (up and down to scroll page, ctrl-cmd-left/right to go through workspaces, cmd up/down to move through thumbs, opt-cmd-left/right to go to marks, opt-shigt-left to go to start page), and with all that now you need to reach up to the square brackets to reliably go forward and back? Makes no sense to hijack one of the most used key combos of a webbrowser to add another redundancy for text editing.

Keep the beginning of line behavior for where OW acts like a text editor (like in the forms editor or source editor) but keep the back/forward behavior when it's acting like a web browser. An Omni web browser. PLEASE.


(and it doesn't look like you can change the behavior of cmd-left/right in the Panther keyboard pref pane)

~BS

[MrBS]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
Here's my nit-pick for the day: The ads blocked by the privacy settings now display a "Cannot Load Address" error instead of a gray rectangle. This is inaccurate, because OmniWeb can load the address as it is perfectly capable of doing so; it is just that you have chosen not to.

Also, it's kind of unsettling to have "Cannot Load Address" right at the top of a page you are loading, because it makes you think the site is down for a short amount of time.

I agree with you, but I think that just happens with flash ads/iframes though. I would also like the blocked image popup tell you which rule(s) blocked it.

~BS

[CharlesS]

Whoa... I take back the comment about beta 2's speed.

After trashing the preferences, as well as the history and basically everything but the bookmarks and cookies, OmniWeb is much faster. The beachballs are gone.

I recommend that anyone who is having OmniWeb behave slowly do the same.

[spdemac]

Beta 1 did not run on my powerbook so I waited for Beta 2 to try out the new Omniweb. My first impression is that I really really like it! Bugs in any beta are to be expected so all in all I think this is my new default browser.

I have to say Safari feels like a dependable Honda, Mozilla/Firebird is a Volvo and IE is your grand parents old clunker. But OW5 is shaping up to be a plush Mercedes or BMW! Fast, "Feels" Solid, lots of small touches that I keep noticing from the visual tabs, work spaces, the first truly useful status bar in a browser, per site settings, import text into text fields, and lots of goodies they kept from OW 4.

Get that store updated so I can sling some cash your way guys.

Great job OG!

[OAW]

Originally posted by Silky Voice of The Gorn:
Appearance > Font Style > Custom

Thanks Silky!

OAW

[Mike S.]

Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni:
I would really like to know how you're carrying out your tests. OmniWeb 5 beta 2 is significantly faster than beta 1 and 4.5 on every machine I've tested it on.

My testing methodology is as follows:

Load browser, flush cache, quit browser, load browser vist battery of sites (News.com, Cnn.com, Slashdot.org, theapplecollection.com, mozillazine.org in that order).

I then repeat all of the above a second time and keep the best number for each site, I know the best of three is the norm but I ommit the third for brevity and my observation that it would make no difference.

I time with a stop watch. I start the timer the moment I select a bookmark or if it's a site I don't have a bookmark for I type it out as follows; www.domain.com and start the timer the moment I hit enter.

I stop the timer when the browser indicates it's finished loading (throbber, progress bar, whatever). If I see something is obviously stalling the completion (usually an ad server) then I finish the series, reset and try the site where it stalled again.

Is this the most "scientific" way to do these tests? Of course not but it shows how a browser deals with real world conditions and that's more important than how it'll perform in a controlled environment.

If I didn't continually see the same thing over and over I wouldn't bother to mention it but this has been the situation for years and OmniWeb 5 was the last best hope for �ber rendering

Are you loading pages from your local disk, or from the network? Network speeds (esp. outside your LAN) can be so variable from moment to moment that testing a browser's performance by loading a remote page is a complete waste of time.

With all due respect that's all to convenient a scapegoat that ignores the fact that under the exact same conditions Safari, Camino and Firebird are all considerably faster and the numbers are consistent within a few seconds (often tenths of seconds) regardless of when I run the tests or how many times.

This has been the case for as long as I've been doing such comparisons and that goes back as far as OmniWeb 4.1. The players have changed with time of course.

Try backing up and deleting your preferences (~/Library/Preferences/com.omnigroup.OmniWeb5.plist). Then try clearing out ~/Library/Application Support/OmniWeb 5. Then delete ~/Library/Caches/com.omnigroup.OmniWeb5.

Is OW5 still so incredibly slow?

I did all of this before posting, except the cache file that I didn't know about.I just deleted and tried again and the change is negligable, probably do to network flux.

(edit): Please keep in mind, Mike, that you have the opportunity to help make OmniWeb 5 the fastest browser around, which can only benefit you. When you post about slowness, it would help to include details like the exact page you're trying to load, your machine configuration, OS release, etc. Also, if you know how to run the "sample" terminal command, you can send its output to our support guys and we will absolutely investigate.

I'd like nothing more than to see OmniWeb 5 be the best there is, even if it weren't the fastest I wouldn't care. OW 4.x has been at the same performance rank for a long time but I still use it. I just don't want to see it fall further behind.

I've sent sample data at the request of Omni Support twice in recent weeks and once or twice a year or two ago. I'm glad to do anything I can to assist. It wasn't for performance of course, but to track memory leaks.

My hardware is a G3/400 with 464 MB RAM, ATI Radeon 7000 running Mac OS 10.2.8.

Dismissing the performance based on the hardware (I've heard it before when I've brought up the performance gap) is also too convenient because Safari and Camino manage to consistently run circles around OmniWeb, Firebird isn't much faster than OW 4.5 on this hardware.

I'm not alone in these claims, I know somebody with an older Powerbook (Pismo) who refuses to use OmniWeb because of it's render performance. There was a website that conducted some speed tests a while back (it's dated so I can't provide a link, sorry) that said pretty much the exact same thing I'm saying now.

OmniWeb was virtually half the speed of other browsers.

I'm sure a faster Mac would make OmniWeb much faster but that ignores the point, the most optimized product is going to run well on more moderate hardware. The leader seems to be Safari with Camino a close second.

I really love the OmniWeb product, there's no question and I'm not trying to bust your chops. You work hard to put out wonderful products but the render performance just isn't there on this hardware and whether you want to tweak it to make it go faster is ultimately your decision.

I'll still have nothing but respect for the OmniGroup and it's product but don't get upset when I post some numbers you don't like seeing

I've never seen any numbers contradicting what I posted, just a lot of talk about it how a new version is "snappier" or opinions on why my numbers are invalid.

If they're invalid, why haven't I ever seen any source show different results?

[bewebste]

I was just doing a little website editing with beta 2 and noticed some oddness with my CSS files. While editing the site locally (i.e. through a file:// URL), I couldn't get OmniWeb to recognize my CSS file. Everything loaded fine in Safari and IE, but not OmniWeb. Looking in the info panel, I saw that it was indeed finding my CSS file (obtained through a <link rel="stylesheet" ...> tag), but I noticed that it was identifying it as www/unknown instead of text/css. I then tried loading it through localhost instead, and voila, it recognized the file and rendered the page just fine. So, it looks like there's some sort of trouble with OW recognizing content type for a local file, whereas it does fine when loading it over http.

[jcb9]

5.0b2 seems to be behaving a *lot* better on my machine than b1 was. I've had a couple crashes, but the CPU problems I mentioned seem to be gone - at least, they haven't showed up yet. Which means that I'm now using Omniweb full time - hooray!

[ryaxnb]

Originally posted by Mike S.:

Good god, I think iCab would be faster.

Actually, iCab is pretty fast compared to IE.

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/003/s...rowsers-2.html
Notice how except for the text file, iCab is faster or as fast as IE on the tests.

[jcb9]

I don't know if anyone has brought this up before (as long as these OW threads have become, I guess it's likely) - one feature I really miss from Safari is that, on mouseover, Safari will tell you if a link will automatically open in another window. It's amazingly useful, at least for me - any chance we might see this in OW anytime soon?

[Mike Pither]

Apart from a relativley old (but hardly ancient mac) I notice that when Mike.S complains of terrible slowness that he is using 10.2 and not Panther. Are others with 10.2 finding a big speed increase from b1?I haven't tried timing omniweb b2 on my panther equiped powerbook but subjectively it seems about as fast as Safari and is much much faster than b1. I shall have to try it out on my old iMac 400.

[sjk]

jcb9:

If View->Show->Status Bar is activated (command-\ toggles it) you'll see the info you're looking for in the status bar at the bottom of windows, similar to Safari.

[JKT]

Originally posted by Mike S.:
My testing methodology is as follows:

<snip>

If they're invalid, why haven't I ever seen any source show different results?

Mike, are you on broadband or modem? IIRC, modem users have always found OW to be slower. Edit - sorry, that question was asked for the benefit of OG as you didn't say in your own post, and this could be the significant difference that is causing OW to be slower for you.

FWIW, it does seem odd that deleting prefs etc makes no difference when comparing beta 1 to beta 2 as 2 is definitely significantly faster - partly because it isn't getting stuck loading things like beta 1 did. Do you see similar results if you create a troubleshooting account and run OW from that?

[Quinn]

There is not progress bar showing how much of a site is loaded. The spinning status indicator is useless. Any chance of adding one? Maybe to the status bar...

Also, any way NOT to have favicons appear in the bookmarks bar? Maybe an option can be added?

[Moose]

1. Safari allows users to select toolbar bookmarks with Cmd-<n>. I use this functionality extensively all day every day. Would it be possible to implement this as a feature?

2. Currently OW doesn't remember window/size placement.

Other than that, this is a sweet browser.

[Quinn]

Originally posted by Moose:

2. Currently OW doesn't remember window/size placement.

Window > Save Window Size.

[Moose]

Originally posted by Quinn:
Window > Save Window Size.

Yeah, but I'd like it to do it automatically.

Also, I'd like it to remember that the tabs drawer is open.

Additionally, TEXTAREA elements have a weird cosmetic issue when they have focus.

[JKT]

Originally posted by Moose:
Yeah, but I'd like it to do it automatically.

Also, I'd like it to remember that the tabs drawer is open.

This is a feature of the Workspaces. Create a new workspace and tick the Save windows checkbox (or just do the same for the Default workspace). Positions, sizes, thumbnail drawer location are all remembered (beta 2 also stores the open/close state of the drawer) for each open window as well as the sites loaded. Even windows minimised to the Dock are remembered which is pretty damn awesome stuff.

The purpose of the Window>Save Window Size option is to save dimensions so that each newly opened window is the same size as this default. It isn't to auto-save the window size each time you alter one.

The text editing area issue was known in beta 1 - it seems improved a bit in beta 2, but I too am experiencing problems such as text getting clipped, bad rendering etc of the boxes.

[JKT]

Originally posted by Quinn:
There is not progress bar showing how much of a site is loaded. The spinning status indicator is useless. Any chance of adding one? Maybe to the status bar...

Try clicking it - far more informative than any status bar.

[ratlater]

Originally posted by Moose:
Yeah, but I'd like it to do it automatically.

I don't want that. Sometimes I'll resize my browser window for a specific page, but that doesn't mean I want to resize all my future windows. I like picking a nice size and knowing it will freeze like that.

I always have issues with Safari pulling up a weird window size because a javascript page resized it.

-matt

[OAW]

Originally posted by OAW:

....

2. The ability to Command + Click a folder should work like Safari. It should close all the open tabs first and then load the new tabs. It is really annoying to have to select "Close All Tabs" yourself first just so you don't have new tabs spawning ad infinitum. Especially when you can't get to this command unless you click on empty space in the tab drawer ... which is next to impossible if you have more than 5 or 6 tabs open in icon view. At a minimum, this should be a preference to either use the existing behavior or close all open tabs first.

....

OAW

Just wondering if I was the only one who felt this was a problem? Personally, if OW5 reaches parity with Safari in terms of speed and compatibility I will seriously consider switching back. If Command + Click on a bookmarks folder worked like Safari as well then there really wouldn't be anything to think about. OW5 would be everything Safari is and more. Well except for the cool name. "Safari" does have a certain catchiness to it.

OAW

[Mike S.]

Originally posted by JKT:
Mike, are you on broadband or modem? IIRC, modem users have always found OW to be slower. Edit - sorry, that question was asked for the benefit of OG as you didn't say in your own post, and this could be the significant difference that is causing OW to be slower for you.

I'm on a 3Mbit Comcast cable connection.

FWIW, it does seem odd that deleting prefs etc makes no difference when comparing beta 1 to beta 2 as 2 is definitely significantly faster - partly because it isn't getting stuck loading things like beta 1 did. Do you see similar results if you create a troubleshooting account and run OW from that?

I've not created a troubleshooting account but if the OmniDevs would find it helpful then I'm not opposed to trying.

With the fresh ~/Application Support/OmniWeb 5 folder I'm noticing that the preferences panels aren't properly indicating settings.

It's clearly loading images and blocking ads but if I go and look at the settings it shows those features as disabled.

I'm going to run my tests on an eMac I have access to (G4/700[?] with combo drive) running 10.2.8 and see how it performs there. The difference is that it's connection is limited to 1 bit since it uses a PNA (phone line network) connection to a router (it's also Comcast). OW 5 has never been installed on it.

It should be sufficient to tell me if it OW is lagging or not.

[jcb9]

Originally posted by sjk:
jcb9:

If View->Show->Status Bar is activated (command-\ toggles it) you'll see the info you're looking for in the status bar at the bottom of windows, similar to Safari.

I have the status bar on, but unless I'm missing something, it doesn't tell you if the link will open in a new window. I tried it with a link in this thread - it gave the URL and nothing else, and when I clicked, the link opened in a new window.

[bpsmith]

I don't know if this has any relevance, but ever since Monday evening Level3 Communications has had some severe network trouble. I know for me, that made browsing unbearably slow in every browser. Now that things are back to normal, speed seems to be on par or slightly better than beta one for me.

[sjk]

Originally posted by jcb9:
I have the status bar on, but unless I'm missing something, it doesn't tell you if the link will open in a new window. I tried it with a link in this thread - it gave the URL and nothing else, and when I clicked, the link opened in a new window.

I can't test OW5 right now but I think you're right that its status bar link behavior reporting is slightly less informative than Safari's. I guess that's something we're both missing.

[MrBS]

Originally posted by Moose:
Yeah, but I'd like it to do it automatically.

I hate it when browsers do it automatically. First off, it's hard to tell when they save it. If it's on close it's really annoying, you close a miniscule pop under ad and suddenly every new window you spawn is 20px wide. Or if you need to widen a window to fit lots of columns in a table. Or if there's a huge gif. Let the user specify the window size they want and keep that as the default, let them make a window teeny if they want to keep it in the corner or a window huge to see a big gif without making them resize every window after that.

OW's solution is much more elegant than safari's or IE's.

~BS

[Mike S.]

I ran the tests on the eMac (same methodology, same sites).

The important things to note: The eMac is is connected on a 1 Mbps max link to the 3 Mb broadband (Homelink phone line network). The G3/400 was connected directly to the router via a 10 Mbps network card.

The eMac is a G4/700 with 640 MB RAM also running 10.2.8. OmniWeb 5 was a fresh install, beta one was never used on it.



Here re the scores for the G3/400 again (sans OW 5 B2 which benched as I indicated earlier in the thread)



Sorry about the browser ordering between the two images which makes them a bit difficult to compare.

What we see is that the general performance order is maintained between the two computers. Safari and Camino are well matched, Firebird/FireFox is slower than the other two but faster than OmniWeb 4.5 and OmniWeb 5.0 is the slowest of the group.

I find it interesting that Camino and Safari perform approximately the same on both computers.

What I noticed running OmniWeb 5 on the eMac was that it was a whole different experience than running it on the G3. The browser had a very mature level of smoothness and performance where as running it on the G3 feels like browsing with a junker. I attribute this to the sheer amount of hard drive thrashing that OW 5 is putting the G3 through, on some sites it sounds like a disk repair is being run on my HD.

The eMac was silence, you wouldn't even know it was accessing the HD. This isn't purely a hardware thing as I can here the eMac drive when it's being accessed. Something is up... Edit: Ok, the eMac's HD is simply a whole heck of a lot quieter but it still doesn't sound like it's being utilized as much and OW 5's disk cache is very clearly doing more disk thrashing than Safari's which does it in shorter, quieter bursts less often.

I'll trust that this is simply because the OW cache is still under active development.

I suspect Flash might be a culprit so I'll have to test. One site I visit uses a Flash based navigation menu and OW 5 B2 took what felt like a minute or more to load up with the last several seconds being major disk thrashing. I'll have to try it on the eMac for comparison and then surf around with Flash disabled in OW 5 on the G3 and see if it has any effect.

I'll drop the OmniGroup a sample of the flash site while it's loading, maybe it'll reveal something.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by MrBS:
I hate it when browsers do it automatically. First off, it's hard to tell when they save it. If it's on close it's really annoying, you close a miniscule pop under ad and suddenly every new window you spawn is 20px wide. Or if you need to widen a window to fit lots of columns in a table. Or if there's a huge gif. Let the user specify the window size they want and keep that as the default, let them make a window teeny if they want to keep it in the corner or a window huge to see a big gif without making them resize every window after that.

OW's solution is much more elegant than safari's or IE's.

~BS

This is one of the best things about OmniWeb. Don't ever change it.

[godzookie2k]

when oh when oh when will other web browsers aside from firefox implement a "make img tag" context menu? Its probably one of the best conveniences I've ever seen in a browser.

Beta 2 is shithot though. great job boys, its a pleasure to use. And I hated every iteration of omniweb before it.

[nickm]

when will other web browsers ... implement a "make img tag" context menu?

What does that do, exactly?

[godzookie2k]

right click on any image and it automatically puts an xhtml compliant image tag onto your clipboard. Then just paste. Very handy for forums and the like.

[MrBS]

Bandwidth theif.

~BS

[godzookie2k]

its pretty convinient for linking images off my OWN server thank you very much. I don't have 25 gigs of transfer for nothin.

[MrBS]

Okay that's fair, but if you've already put an image up so you're serving it where you can ctrl-click on it to 'make img tag' it seems like it's not all that useful, I mean you've already done all the work of making the tag once. Seems like in most cases it would just be used to swipe bandwidth, present company excluded.

~BS

[Rickster]

OmniWeb has had a similar feature since version 4.2: drag an image into the Source Editor and it'll write an IMG tag for it, or drag any other file or URL in and it'll write an A HREF tag... if the URL of the source document you're editing has anything in common with the URL of the image or link, it'll try to use the shortest possible relative path. Might not be working right in 5.0 yet, though...

[godzookie2k]

i didn't even know omniweb had a source editor. It works, but its not nearly as convenient as make img tag. its one of those things that you don't really see how useful it is until you use it, then you don't know how you lived without it.

[[APi]TheMan]

OmniGroup software makes me smile... I just love looking at the stuff you guys make; it's gorgeous. The colors, the layouts, the transitions... man I love it.

On the other hand... OmniWeb 5 b2 == win in my book.

[larkost]

godzookie2k: The source editor is the main reason I have been a steady OW user since OW 3 (well... in the early days it was because they were the only browser on MacOS X Server 1.x... and earlier).

The big deal about it is that you can go to a page, bring up the source editor, make changes, and then re-display them so that it looks as if that was what the server sent in the first place. This can be very useful for either playing with a layout that you are tweaking, or debugging a whole range of forums issues. It can also be very nice for playing with database drive sites (without messing up the database... or having to put in extensive debugging traps).

There are a few features in older versions of the source editor that have disappeared (or are non-functional in newer versions) that I hope will make it back at some point (*hint* *hint*).

[Big Mac]

OW 5 is looking great. The one major issue, aside from some of the notable bugs which I'm sure you're aware of, is the fact that the tabs drawer simply takes up too much vertical real estate on my iBook. Is there any possibility that there could be a horizontal drawer in addition to the vertical options?

[workerbee]

OW 5 b2 is starting to look really nice, isn't it? However, there are still a few things I have to get used to:
- vertical tabs are very appealing visually, but somehow seem less natural to use than the horizontal tabs almost everyone else has, probably because the browser buttons and the location bar are horizontal. Closing a tabbed window in a vertical drawer is still quite strange, IMHO.
- opening Safari every now and then is an eye-opener as to sheer speediness; OW5's additional functionality is taking a heavy toll.
- flash and frame content is sort of hit-and-miss in my experience; maybe the new webcore in OW 5.1 will help.

Smooth scrolling is nice, though

[cpac]

Originally posted by Big Mac:
OW 5 is looking great. The one major issue, aside from some of the notable bugs which I'm sure you're aware of, is the fact that the tabs drawer simply takes up too much vertical real estate on my iBook. Is there any possibility that there could be a horizontal drawer in addition to the vertical options?

You've mixed up horizontal and vertical.

BUT you can resize the tab drawer (by dragging the edge) to a much smaller width if you prefer. (The smallest is less than half as wide as the default size).

[sjk]

Originally posted by cpac:
BUT you can resize the tab drawer (by dragging the edge) to a much smaller width if you prefer. (The smallest is less than half as wide as the default size).

Using a smaller width tab drawer (thumbnail or list view) makes pages less immediately identifiable than with Safari's tab bar (given a six tab per window limit, as mentioned in John Siracusa's excellent OW5 review). John's detailed analysis and recommendations re: tabs are worth consideration and not much else has been written that brings anything new and novel to the party, IMhO.

I prefer browser windows just wide enough to avoid horizontal scrolling but that quickly becomes tedious, especially while quickly browsing "random" sites/pages, since it's not automatic (and would be spacially "distracting" if it were). Since vertical windows scrolling is so common I'd much rather sacrifice vertical resolution (Safari tabs) than horizontal resolution (OW5 tab drawer) on my 1024x768 iBook display.

This image (if you imagine a wider window covering the Dock on the left) is an example of how a default-sized tab drawer covers the icon-sized right column of the desktop that I often use as a drag/drop target. It's less an issue for me with Expos� on 10.3 but for folks running 10.2 it might be a consideration. Or pick some similar scenario.

That's one of my usability arguments for why I believe a tab bar should be added to OW5. Given a larger display, and windows containing larger numbers of tabs (which I expect will become more common as I configure Workspaces) I'll likely become comfortable using the tab drawer. I'd definitely make use of both, depending on context. For me it's an example of a "functionality superset choice" that can clearly give the advantage to OW5 over other browsers.

[cpac]

well I see why using horizontal (safari/camino style) tabs would be better for you given your particular browsing preferences, but consider:

1 - trying to incorporate both types into a single window would be an ugly UI mess
2 - choosing as a global preference one or the other would change not only the tabs display, but much of how the UI works (dragging links to the drawer opens a new tab, would dragging a link to the tab bar do the same thing? could you drag tabs to re-order them?, etc.)
3 - many of the reasons to have tabs *at all* are addressed by Workspaces, so you can always use workspaces in conjunction with multiple windows (and the handy window menu or command-` or expos� w/ gestures) to duplicate the functionality you get with other tabbed browsers.
4 - the majority of new macs have widescreen displays

Basically it seems to me that the benefit (if any) of adding a traditional tabbed interface (on top of the Omnitabs we already have) is far outweighed by the design/UI costs.

[Big Mac]

SJK is correct - making the tab drawer small enough to view the page comfortably results in labels that are truncated past the point of usability. I will continue to pay for OW, but I don't think I could justify using it seriously unless the tab drawer could be placed on the bottom of the window. I do like the way the developers implemented resizing of the tab thumbnails, though.

[sjk]

Originally posted by cpac:
1 - trying to incorporate both types into a single window would be an ugly UI mess
2 - choosing as a global preference one or the other would change not only the tabs display, but much of how the UI works (dragging links to the drawer opens a new tab, would dragging a link to the tab bar do the same thing? could you drag tabs to re-order them?, etc.)

I don't see those as unresolvable issues. OmniGroup programmers seem clever enough.

3 - many of the reasons to have tabs *at all* are addressed by Workspaces, so you can always use workspaces in conjunction with multiple windows (and the handy window menu or command-` or expos� w/ gestures) to duplicate the functionality you get with other tabbed browsers.

Are you suggesting cycling through windows, which is unnecessary when using a horizontal tab bar to directly identify and select the desired page? I'm interested in discovering new and different ways to manage and navigate pages but would rather not increase the amount of keyboard and mouse activity in OW5 over what I currently use in Safari for frequently repeated actions.

And OW5 users still running 10.2 (as few or many as that is) don't have Expos�.

4 - the majority of new macs have widescreen displays

That just might be the silliest reason I've heard.

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

Basically it seems to me that the benefit (if any) of adding a traditional tabbed interface (on top of the Omnitabs we already have) is far outweighed by the design/UI costs.

Well, I'm unconvinced by your reasons. I hope you won't misinterpret my comments as a sign of disrespect or a personal attack, which is never my intention. Nor do I need to be "right". In fact, it's more fun being "wrong" and discovering something new.

It's clear to me that neither the OW5 tab drawer or a more traditional tab bar are the most effective, efficient, or comfortable (or natural, as workerbee mentioned) interface in every context for some users' browsing styles. I'm not suggesting OW5 have a tab bar identical to Safari's but OG could (re)consider how to achieve similar functionality without compromising usability, which demonstrably happens with the new tab drawer (and workspaces) in certain situations. That's a pretty strong case for any counter-argument to ignore.

No software is perfect for everyone, yet OW5 features that make it appeal to a wider diversity of users may translate into more sales, which benefits both OG ($$) and its customers (continued development/support).

Perhaps in lieu of adding a tab bar OG (or ...?) can provide some helpful and "satisfying" recommendations for advantageously exploiting the OW5 UI? Lack of that information is a common void with certain "complicated" applications, Mulberry (e-mail GUI) being a prime example. And Apple often neglects to inform us about UI changes, like the more subtle "option-click" ones in Safari 1.2. It's often a combination of experimentation, knowing who to ask, where to check (e.g. some weblog), and a bit of luck to discover these things. That's my pitch for more readily available "usability tutorials" for apps that seem begging for 'em, but aren't "mainstream" enough for anyone to have written a book.

Honestly, I'm more interested in OW5 reaching at least the same stability, speed, and buglessness as Safari more than I am in it having a "traditional" tab bar. I just wanted to express my opinion, which mostly summarizes what I've already read up until now and hopefully isn't too redundant.

[ratlater]

Solving the tab problem is not easy. You need to juggle the size of the tab with how much information about the tab can be displayed. Safari style tabs take up very little space, but they also don't yield much information. You are also very limited by the number of tabs you can use per window. OmniTabs take more screen real estate, but they also yield much more information and allow you to use a greater number of tabs per window.

Personally I only have limited uses for Safari tabs. It's okay to have a few pages open in one window, but I never really remember what is in the tabs. With the OmniTabs I create tabs all over and re-order them. It's easy to see what the page is and I can even see if I read that page yet. I'm sure others hate the OmniTabs and want Safari tabs, but I think putting them both in OW 5 would be a terrible mistake. Adding every feature people could want smacks of a Windows like experience. The UI inconsistency would be terrible. For people with low resolution screens, try to shrink the drawer down. I think the OmniTabs can be very useful even when the thumbnail is tiny.

-matt

[GeeYouEye]

I have one big gripe, one smaller gripe about b2: I can't use Yahoo mail at all with it. Every time I try to log in, Yahoo gives me an error about the browser not accepting cookies, even though the global and site prefs are set to allow them. The smaller one is that the separate window for editing forms doesn't work at all.

Oh, and I still thing the tab drawer would be better placed at the bottom rather than the left or right.