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BZ · Feb 28, 2004, 12:34 PM

Still using it...

A few things are keeping me from moving over 100% of the time (non of which are OmniTab related). Of course, I know it is a beta(2), just putting this stuff out there.

- Stability. Still crashes a few more times a day than I would like.
- Favicons for bookmarks. It would be nice if they stayed after a relaunch.
- Overall interface speed. Changing tabs, moving tabs, clicking on things are all two slow now. Going back and forth between Safari and b2 are night and day.
- Download/rendering speed. Still feels 20% behind Safari/Firefox etc. I love the browser and I am sure it will be fixed before final release, but I stay with Safari as it gets me from point A to B as faster.

Keep up the great work. Can't wait for b3.

BZ

nickm · Feb 29, 2004, 01:12 AM

I've been using beta 2 pretty much full time, but it still is fairly frustrating because the UI thread seems to get blocked so often. Little things like scrolling or clicking a link often require long waits to get handled. If the OmniFolk are listening, I think optimizing the threading should be a top priority.

cpac · Feb 29, 2004, 03:22 AM

Originally posted by BZ:
Can't wait for b3.

Me too.

Here's hoping for a new beta every 2 weeks (which would mean sunday or monday, right?)

F_Elz · Feb 29, 2004, 06:36 AM

It would be anyday now

Krypton · Feb 29, 2004, 07:00 AM

Originally posted by F_Elz:
It would be anyday now

It would be nice, but don't get your hopes up. I think the reason b2 was released was because b1 was so incomplete.

nforcer · Feb 29, 2004, 05:55 PM

Originally posted by nickm:
I've been using beta 2 pretty much full time, but it still is fairly frustrating because the UI thread seems to get blocked so often. Little things like scrolling or clicking a link often require long waits to get handled. If the OmniFolk are listening, I think optimizing the threading should be a top priority.

This problem occurs in Safari, too, and is probably my biggest usability issue right now. IGN.com is the funnest of all sites to wait for to finish rendering

If I understand things correctly, I think the UI thread getting blocked is mostly a WebKit/KHTML issue. I don't think it supports threaded rendering in a process at this time. So users have to wait while a page finishes.

I really think we are going to have to wait until Apple gets around to fixing this. Or maybe if Omni decides to make some kind of "Renderer" subprocess that is spawned everytime something needs rendering so we can have multiple pages render at once in their own independent process and still be able to use the UI for the most part. Assuming I understand everything correctly (which I probably don't).

Can anyone verify if that would work, or what is the real issue that is causing this problem?

Mike S. · Feb 29, 2004, 08:27 PM

Originally posted by nforcer:
If I understand things correctly, I think the UI thread getting blocked is mostly a WebKit/KHTML issue. I don't think it supports threaded rendering in a process at this time. So users have to wait while a page finishes.

I really think we are going to have to wait until Apple gets around to fixing this.

If it is an issue with WebKit then couldn't anybody go ahead and fix it? You know, being open source and all...

nforcer · Feb 29, 2004, 10:55 PM

Originally posted by Mike S.:
If it is an issue with WebKit then couldn't anybody go ahead and fix it? You know, being open source and all...

Perhaps, but I'm pretty sure Apple has to know this problem exists. It might not be a wise use of someones time to learn the code, then fix the code and get everything working right, only to find an Apple fix soon thereafter. Unknowingly duplicating work is a depressing thing.

ratlater · Mar 1, 2004, 04:29 PM

Originally posted by Krypton:
It would be nice, but don't get your hopes up. I think the reason b2 was released was because b1 was so incomplete.

My beta2 license expires on 3/3, so I sure hope we get a new beta RSN.

-matt

MrBS · Mar 1, 2004, 04:54 PM

Nah their strategy to combat the 'feature trickle' in 4.2 where noone was impressed by the final because they'd been acclimated to all the new stuff slowly over the course of the sneaky peeks is to have every beta expire a week before the next one, so you're plunged back into darkness and need to realize all that you'll get with the final. You'll come to the boards crying "I can't live without OW5, it has so much more than 4.5" and then, after a week or so, they'll give it back for a few days...

~BS

larkost · Mar 1, 2004, 05:16 PM

Mike S.: Multithreading complex code is one of the most difficult things to do. It is incredibly easy to create bugs that seem to come and go mysteriously, almost impossible to find. Right now I would leave this in the KHTML/Safari developer's hands, since they are already thinking though these situations.

Eventually OW will inherit all of this work, and still have the nice Omni interface!

ratlater · Mar 1, 2004, 05:17 PM

Originally posted by MrBS:
Nah their strategy to combat the 'feature trickle' in 4.2 where noone was impressed by the final because they'd been acclimated to all the new stuff slowly over the course of the sneaky peeks is to have every beta expire a week before the next one, so you're plunged back into darkness and need to realize all that you'll get with the final. You'll come to the boards crying "I can't live without OW5, it has so much more than 4.5" and then, after a week or so, they'll give it back for a few days...

~BS

Those sick, cruel bastards! They won't get away this...

MrBS · Mar 1, 2004, 05:23 PM

The secret's out.
::watches the sky for black omni helicopters::

Actually they could hit us with a trebuchet...
::watches the sky for large rocks, livestock and trojan rabbits::

~BS

Rickster · Mar 1, 2004, 06:30 PM

::watches the sky for large rocks, livestock and trojan rabbits::

Drat, our secret's been discovered! I guess we'll have to switch to trojan monkeys instead...

MrBS · Mar 1, 2004, 10:14 PM

Hm. Just skipping the entire trojan badger stage completely. Risky. Risky.

runawaaaay!

larkost · Mar 2, 2004, 12:12 PM

"Look, that rabbit's got a vicious streak a mile wide! It's a killer!!"

Oh... and being a native of the "Badger State", I can say with confidence that few people would bring one inside mistaking it for harmless... the claws on those things look/are mean! Skipping trojan badgers is a good move.

PS.. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, nor either count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out.

cpac · Mar 2, 2004, 05:33 PM

beta 3 is up.

has some nice fixes, and it's probably placebo, but feels (dare I say it?) snappier.

King Bob On The Cob · Mar 2, 2004, 06:40 PM

Not sure what's new, I liked beta 2 alot so maybe it'll just cut down on the amount of crashes :-)

gorickey · Mar 2, 2004, 06:55 PM

gorickey likes OmniWeb 5 b3....

ratlater · Mar 2, 2004, 06:58 PM

Originally posted by King Bob On The Cob:
Not sure what's new, I liked beta 2 alot so maybe it'll just cut down on the amount of crashes :-)

From the release notes there are few changes that I'm really happy about. Doubl-click a bookmark folder and bam you've got them all opened as tabs. You can mark bookmarks as viewed from the dock menu (thank god!). You can read and write to Safari bookmarks now. Flash and other blocked plugin content look like blocked images now. A bunch of nice autofill fixes. You can turn off favicons if you want. There are a lot more too and a bunch of bug fixes. Good stuff OG!

-matt

cpac · Mar 2, 2004, 06:59 PM

Originally posted by King Bob On The Cob:
Not sure what's new,

Here's what's new:

http://www.omnigroup.com/application.../releasenotes/

superfula · Mar 2, 2004, 07:14 PM

Been using it a whole 10 minutes and beta 3 has probably crashed 9 times. They seem pretty random too. Anyone else having troubles?

Ah...and as for editing Safari bookmarks...do we just import them like normal? Do the bookmarks have to stay in the "Safari Bookmarks" folder in order for the changes to be universal? Or can we copy them to the omniweb folder and see the changes in Safari

cpac · Mar 2, 2004, 07:55 PM

Originally posted by superfula:
Been using it a whole 10 minutes and beta 3 has probably crashed 9 times. They seem pretty random too. Anyone else having troubles?

nope - less frequent that b2 which was less frequent than b1 for me.

If it's that often, you might try moving/deleting your preferences and/or Application Support items (like history, bookmarks, etc.) If that solves the problem, you can add them back one at a time until you know which one was problematic.

superfula · Mar 2, 2004, 08:18 PM

Hmmm...well I deleted all the prefs before installing. It's been solid since I posted here though.

Tim2 at Omni · Mar 2, 2004, 09:49 PM

Originally posted by superfula:
Been using it a whole 10 minutes and beta 3 has probably crashed 9 times. They seem pretty random too. Anyone else having troubles?

Did you send in your crash reports? The customer complains and crash reports have basically determined everything we have done since beta 1, so if you want those crashes fixed you should send them in

nickm · Mar 2, 2004, 10:07 PM

OW5b3 is snappy!

Awesome improvements guys (just keep them coming).

superfula · Mar 2, 2004, 10:11 PM

Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni:
Did you send in your crash reports? The customer complains and crash reports have basically determined everything we have done since beta 1, so if you want those crashes fixed you should send them in

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.

superfula · Mar 2, 2004, 10:17 PM

As a side note, it also has troubles loading espn.com, as well as the "Post Reply" page here at macnn Both "blink" quite a bit when loading

cpac · Mar 2, 2004, 11:20 PM

I'm not sure I like the push-pin for the "mark page" toolbar icon better than the flag (I don't use push-pins to mark things, usually I use the little sticky flags, or I fold the corner of a page or something - I just think the flag was a better metaphor, which is not to say there aren't better ones)

EIther way though, would it be possible to have a flag or pushpin show up in History for those pages that have been marked? (I keep picturing Mail's ability to flag certain emails as the equivalent to flags in history)

Also, I know it was discussed, but I'm not sure whether it was possible for 5.0 (or needed to be a latter point release), to have global and/or site preference to collapse blocked image areas...

Also, can we get a less glaring "Cannot Load Address" message for when that page has been filtered by privacy settings? As it currently stands, some ads on VersionTracker, e.g., become obnoxiously noticeable because of the size of the text/white background. Ideally we'd get the same effect as when we just have filtered images, but as a compromise, perhaps something with just a smaller font (12pt? 10pt?) would still get the message across without being so noticeable.

Mike S. · Mar 2, 2004, 11:29 PM

This build is providing a vastly improved user experience for me. The performance (strictly by those benchmarks nobody likes

) is about where Beta 1 was which is still not as quick as 4.5 but useable none the less. More importantly, the overall product quality "feels like" it's gone up several notches.

I don't notice as much HD grind during normal surfing and the overall fluidity of things is much improved. Basically, it doesn't give me the impression that it's overwhelming my computer like the first two betas did.

If it proves stable, I'm probably going to try this beta as my primary rather than falling back on OW 4.5

None of the bugs I find annoying have been squashed yet but I'm sure the OmniDevs will take care of things by release as they have in the past

What's the protocol on bugs that don't get fixed by the next beta? Does one re-submit them to let you know they still exist or just wait until release and hope for the best?

Nice going guys, I've got my hope back that this browser is going to kick @ss without my having to wait for a new Mac.

RH · Mar 3, 2004, 01:31 AM

Is anyone else having problems logging into www.wachovia.com or www.mac.com? Each site just redirects you back to the same login screens. I have tried to change the identity of the browser from Omniweb to various other browsers. This didn't happen in the previous builds or in version 4.5

cpac · Mar 3, 2004, 01:43 AM

Originally posted by RH:
Is anyone else having problems logging into www.wachovia.com or www.mac.com? Each site just redirects you back to the same login screens. I have tried to change the identity of the browser from Omniweb to various other browsers. This didn't happen in the previous builds or in version 4.5

I can log in to .Mac just fine - no change in compatibility settings.

superfula · Mar 3, 2004, 07:32 AM

It's crashing again for me. 4 times in the past 5 minutes

BZ · Mar 3, 2004, 07:38 AM

Rocking OW5B3

- Seems more stable
- Much faster in the loading and GUI department
- Like the new Safari Read/Write bookmarks feature

Getting very very close to being the full time browser... sadly, since I have been using Safari I have started to really associate websites by their favicon.ico, so pleas OmniDudes, have them stay after relaunch.

BZ

gorickey · Mar 3, 2004, 08:19 AM

Originally posted by superfula:
Ah...and as for editing Safari bookmarks...do we just import them like normal? Do the bookmarks have to stay in the "Safari Bookmarks" folder in order for the changes to be universal? Or can we copy them to the omniweb folder and see the changes in Safari

Been wondering the same thing here...anybody know?

JKT · Mar 3, 2004, 08:28 AM

Definitely a huge improvement over beta 2. Speed is far better, and caching seems much better so far. The added UI goodness is much appreciated too (especially as it pretty much follows my entire list of requests

). I particularly like the listing of thumbs in the Workspace panel and the improved thumb movement options (e.g. option-dragging a thumb now copies it as per a finder action on a file). I haven't yet tried the Safari bookmark feature, but I'm just about to...

starfleetX · Mar 3, 2004, 09:12 AM

Bug/problem:

<input type="file"> tags cause pages to hang and load indefinitely, progressing no farther than that tag.

This makes OmniWeb beta 3 completely unusable for much of my browsing.

Back to Safari and OW beta 2...

Feedback has been sent.

starfleetX · Mar 3, 2004, 09:14 AM

Originally posted by RH:
Is anyone else having problems logging into www.wachovia.com or www.mac.com? Each site just redirects you back to the same login screens. I have tried to change the identity of the browser from Omniweb to various other browsers. This didn't happen in the previous builds or in version 4.5

Same here.

I also can't login to my university to submit assignments ( https://submit.ncsu.edu/ ).

murk · Mar 3, 2004, 11:01 AM

I want my Safari Booksmark Bar and my OmniWeb Favorites Bar to stay in sync. Anyway to do that?

Krypton · Mar 3, 2004, 12:39 PM

Beta 3

(relatively fast too!)

However, Flash content is quite flaky (redrawing all the time) and pages with lots of flash are very slow.

bewebste · Mar 3, 2004, 12:56 PM

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?

cpac · Mar 3, 2004, 01:11 PM

Originally posted by bewebste:
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?

Something like this was mentioned on the OW mailing list - I had it happen more often in b2, but I believe it still happens it b3.

Basically it seems like OW caches error pages so if you tried to reach a page while you were out of range of an Airport network (or some similar situation) the next time you load that page, OW pulls the error page up from the cache.

If I'm right, the simple (?) solution is to make OW not cache error pages...

ratlater · Mar 3, 2004, 01:23 PM

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?

Had that happen with b2 a few times, not b3 though. It's not your DNS servers fault.

-matt

NeXTLoop · Mar 3, 2004, 01:27 PM

Beta 3 is a definite improvement over the previous betas. so far I've only had one crash after changing the preferences and customizing the toolbar to my liking (every single beta of OW 5 has done this). Aside from that crash, everything is working fine.

Speed seems improved both in rendering and in the interface. Several of the interface refinements are very welcome, especially the re-addition of the Start Page icon. The Preferences are now sticking, something that seemed broke in Beta 2.

This has now become my default browser. By the time it gets to final release, this will definitely be THE browser to beat. Nice work OmniGuys.

F_Elz · Mar 3, 2004, 03:30 PM

I love beta 3

cpac · Mar 3, 2004, 03:31 PM

Originally posted by cpac:
I'm not sure I like the push-pin for the "mark page" toolbar icon better than the flag (I don't use push-pins to mark things, usually I use the little sticky flags, or I fold the corner of a page or something - I just think the flag was a better metaphor, which is not to say there aren't better ones)

I didn't realize the flag was being used for the start page. (So that's why the new icon) but why not keep the flag for "flagged" pages, and adopt a house/home for the start page icon? Most users are probably more used to clicking on a house or similar to go to their start-page rather than a flag...

That said, the pin's growing on me, but I have another suggestion: Instead of using the two-toned double arrows for back/forward for marked pages, why not just use single arrows with a pin overlaid on them? This would make their function somewhat more clear, especially if they're in the toolbar, but the pushpin isn't. (this would, of course, also work with the flag)

F_Elz · Mar 3, 2004, 04:37 PM

Does marking a page work? Maybe I don't quite get what it does....

Rickster · Mar 3, 2004, 05:02 PM

Page Marking in OW5 is like SnapBack in Safari. Mark a page, and you can use the Previous Mark button to jump back to it, no matter how many pages you've gone to in between. Like Safari, we automatically mark pages at certain times, so you can always jump back quickly to the last address you manually typed in, or the last search results page you were on. Unlike Safari, you can have multiple marked points in your history -- so after you jump back, you can jump forward again.

Basically it seems like OW caches error pages

I have started to really associate websites by their favicon.ico, so pleas OmniDudes, have them stay after relaunch.

That we didn't fix these in time for beta 3 (which needed to get out in time for beta 2's exipration) doesn't mean we dont intend to fix them before final...

I want my Safari Booksmark Bar and my OmniWeb Favorites Bar to stay in sync. Anyway to do that?

Not automatically, but it's pretty easy to do by hand now. Watch for further syncing developments in the next beta...

Also, can we get a less glaring "Cannot Load Address" message

Blocked FRAMEs and IFRAMEs are supposed to display in the same manner as blocked inline images, plugins, etc. The way they look now is a bug, not a feature.

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.

Very odd. If you see anything logged to the Console by OmniWeb or CrashCatcher when that happens, please let us know. Also, you can send us the logs Apple's crash reporter writes to ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/com.omnigroup.OmniWeb5.crash.log (or thereabouts).

superfula · Mar 3, 2004, 05:57 PM

Rickster: I sent my crash log to the omniweb support email addy.

cpac · Mar 3, 2004, 10:38 PM

thanks for the clarifications re: iFrame/Frame ad display and cached error pages. It's good to know they're known issues. (i had checked the release notes)