Perpetual "OmniWeb 5.0 Beta x" Thread
Well, I figured it was time for a "perpetual" thread rather than creating a new one for each beta.
OmniWeb 5.0 Beta 5 is released.
Running it now... will post my thoughts later. My biggest beef with beta 4 was that ad-blocking was broken and that there were still some major glitches if you scrolled while the page was loading.
edit: Filtering still seems a little finicky, but it's working much better overall. I'll be back with more observations later.
OmniWeb 5.0 Beta 5 is released.

Running it now... will post my thoughts later. My biggest beef with beta 4 was that ad-blocking was broken and that there were still some major glitches if you scrolled while the page was loading.
edit: Filtering still seems a little finicky, but it's working much better overall. I'll be back with more observations later.
Comments
http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/5/beta/ (MacUpdate didn't want to load)
And of course the release notes:
http://www.omnigroup.com/application.../releasenotes/
I am curious about it, but have never tried it. Perhaps I will now. What are its advantages?
I looove OmniWeb
Originally posted by Chinney
Brad. Brad. Brad. OmniWeb. OmniWeb. OmniWeb. What gives?
I am curious about it, but have never tried it. Perhaps I will now. What are its advantages?
I know I'm not Brad, but cool features include:
? probably the most attractive gui around;
? those groovy visual tabs (instead of just having the name of the page, which often isn't very helpful, it gives you a little picture of the page ? although you can get it to just give you the title if this is a bit over the top for your tastes);
? automatic checking of your bookmarks at customisable intervals for updates (this is very cool indeed, although it tends to get confused by web-sites with dynamic content);
? highly configurable ad blocking/image filtering (although pith helmet does much the same thing for safari), and pop-up blocking (although these days, only IE doesn't do this anyway);
? better support for apple's text services than even safari (although safari is catching up);
? workspaces: saving the state of your open browser windows, so you can switch between multiple workspaces, or open the browser to a default workspace (including window position, minimisation state etc.) every time it's launched;
? a light, but useful and easy to use html source editor built in, with syntax colouring, auto-formatting etc;
? per-site display preferences;
? customisable shortcuts to favourite sites (ala hand-editing your hosts file, but less scary); and,
? searchable history.
There's more, it just isn't leaping to mind.
What's more, omniweb was pretty much the first browser on system 10, and at the time was much better than the competition (except for it's crappy CSS rendering, but this is more-or-less fixed now that they've replaced their in-house engine with WebCore).
Basically, it just rocks. It's one of the most native-feeling applications for Mac currently available.
Hopefully that gets addressed.
Originally posted by foad
I love OW but when opening a bunch of sites, it slows down.
Hopefully that gets addressed.
WHat!?! If you load more than one site, it slows down? Oh the humanity!
Take a look at Safari for example. Safari opens a maximum of four 'streams' at a time. That means you can load 100 pages, and it will hop through them 4 at a time instead of loading them at the same time.
Now, OmniWeb would try and load all 100 pages at the same time, which of course makes it slower.
Also, I'm not sure whan you exactly mean. Does it feel like OW itself slows down, or do the pages just take longer to load?
Originally posted by Defiant
WHat!?! If you load more than one site, it slows down? Oh the humanity!
Take a look at Safari for example. Safari opens a maximum of four 'streams' at a time. That means you can load 100 pages, and it will hop through them 4 at a time instead of loading them at the same time.
AFAIK that was fixed in 1.2.
Originally posted by Defiant
WHat!?! If you load more than one site, it slows down? Oh the humanity!
Take a look at Safari for example. Safari opens a maximum of four 'streams' at a time. That means you can load 100 pages, and it will hop through them 4 at a time instead of loading them at the same time.
Now, OmniWeb would try and load all 100 pages at the same time, which of course makes it slower.
Also, I'm not sure whan you exactly mean. Does it feel like OW itself slows down, or do the pages just take longer to load?
The OmniWeb application itself slows down. In some instances, it becomes responsive-less for a few seconds.
I remember reading a thread over at Ars Technica just days before the public beta was released, where one of the developers from OmniGroup got many, many pleas from the forum members, asking for the "oldschool"-way instead. I wonder what they're thinking now...
They've got a new nag page as your start page, but that is easily changed if you know where to look.