OmniWeb 5... any word?

kirklandkirkland
Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
The good folks at OmniGroup have been talking for months about a sneaky peek or other sort of preview of the upcoming OmniWeb 5 (the first version rewritten totally to be WebKit and the like integrated, unlike the quick-fix of 4.5, with a new UI that includes a "tab killer" feature and other sorts of stuff we've come to expect from the UI geniuses at Omni). Hmmm... Christmas is just about upon us, with New Years soon after that.



Has anyone heard, from other boards or various sources, anything about this product? I'm a big fan of Omni's software, and look forward to see where they take web browsing, now that they don't have to work on a rendering engine (which they were never really all that good at in the first place).



Kirk
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 69
    nebagakidnebagakid Posts: 2,692member
    "Tab KIller"? I thought those folks from the OmniGroup were good loving people. Check out this huge MacNN Forumn Thread
  • Reply 2 of 69
    hyperb0lehyperb0le Posts: 142member
    Judging by the pics that Krypton posted, the tab-killer seems to be a page thumnail sidebar like Preview's. Seems cool.



    http://www.graham.curtis.dsl.pipex.c...er/omniweb.jpg







    [edit by Brad: I made the first image a link. It's a bit wide.]
  • Reply 3 of 69
    709709 Posts: 2,016member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by hyperb0le







    I like.
  • Reply 4 of 69
    karl kuehnkarl kuehn Posts: 756member
    My feeling is that these are simply PhotoShoped images. Notice that the Adobe PhotoElements icon is on the dock in the picture? And that in the two images, one has one feature, and the other the other feature.



    Oh... and the thumbnails has three problems: The commas in the url's (not conclusive, but puzzling). There is no obvious widget to open/close the thumbnails section (OmniGroup always do that.. it promotes good use of space). And that the thumbnails is not in a drawer: OmniWeb loves that metaphor and this would seem to be just what it would be used for.



    Either it is a fake, or I am disappointed in OW5. I lean heavily towards the former.
  • Reply 5 of 69
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Karl Kuehn

    My feeling is that these are simply PhotoShoped images.



    Bingo.



    The Omni Group has not released any screenshots of OmniWeb 5.0. All that you may find have been faked.



    That top screenshot is actually a mix of OmniWeb and Mozilla Firebird. Not real.
  • Reply 6 of 69
    karl kuehnkarl kuehn Posts: 756member
    And for further proof here is what the creator of those images wrote:



    Quote:

    That's because those are file names (the sidebar is pasted out of Graphic Converter) and Mac OS X won't let me have .com in a file name without it being an extension. It was a very quick and dirty copy and paste affair I'm afraid.



  • Reply 7 of 69
    keshkesh Posts: 621member
    Ugh. Horrid design... takes up more space than individual tabs, and it's useless in my most common tabbing system: opening multiple threads on webboards.



    In that design, opening a bunch of AI threads in tabs would all look pretty much the same, while tabs at least list a little bit of the thread topic...
  • Reply 8 of 69
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    If they are using WebKit what takes so long to make? I hope they don't charge for it. I don't think people can charge for browsers anymore since open source ones like Mozilla are finally good quality, and companies like Apple and Microsoft give there arguably good quality (at least Safari) browsers away for free too.
  • Reply 9 of 69
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Aquatic

    If they are using WebKit what takes so long to make? I hope they don't charge for it. I don't think people can charge for browsers anymore since open source ones like Mozilla are finally good quality, and companies like Apple and Microsoft give there arguably good quality (at least Safari) browsers away for free too.



    An HTML display framework alone does not a good browser make!!



    Think about all the options and tools that OmniWeb has. The Omni Group did an incredibly fast job implementing them with WebCore by the 4.5 release. Keep in mind also that there are some major interface updates in the works for OW5. Tabs, for example, are not a natural product of WebCore. You have to implement some sort of window or pane manager yourself if you want one. Preferences? Threading? Object manipulation? File handling? Download managing? That's your job.



    WebCore is just page access and display, little more. Even though that is a major chunk of an app, it's far from the whole thing. Simplifying this process as you are is on the order of saying something like "Camino is just another build of Mozilla." Say that to Mike Pinkerton and you'll probably get smacked.



    As for price, I already mentioned recently in another thread that Omni has planned to use the same licensing scheme for OmniWeb 5 that is in the current and older releases. There are no limitations or crutches for unregistered users. There is occasionally an immediately-dismissable nag screen on startup (with some cute messages, IMO). There is a watermark on the screen on pages that have been idle for five minutes that goes away when you move the mouse. Is that really so bad?



    For all the features that OmniWeb offers over the other browsers, it should be well worth a shareware fee... but you won't have to pay it if you don't want to.
  • Reply 10 of 69
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    Well, that is cool. OS X has a plethora of damn cool and exclusive browsers, OW looks like the best one, Camino being somewhere in the top of that list too. I just read on Slasdhot how they are porting Konqueror itself to OS X. Hopefully it won't be a damn X11 app.
  • Reply 11 of 69
    rokrok Posts: 3,519member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Aquatic

    Well, that is cool. OS X has a plethora of damn cool and exclusive browsers, OW looks like the best one, Camino being somewhere in the top of that list too. I just read on Slasdhot how they are porting Konqueror itself to OS X. Hopefully it won't be a damn X11 app.



    thing is, i don't want too many more broswers for the mac... i want a bunch of good, full-featured, web-standards compliant browsers to crop up on WINDOWS. mind you, i don't know how anyone could get market penetration without microsoft to help, but i still believe it's possible (i am an idealist).
  • Reply 12 of 69
    bartobarto Posts: 2,246member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Aquatic

    Well, that is cool. OS X has a plethora of damn cool and exclusive browsers, OW looks like the best one, Camino being somewhere in the top of that list too. I just read on Slasdhot how they are porting Konqueror itself to OS X. Hopefully it won't be a damn X11 app.



    Nope, it runs as a native application. That is because the source to Konqueror is written in QT, and you can use QT for Mac to compile it to Carbon calls (instead of X11 calls).



    Although I've been running Konq on X11 for a year or so. Personally, I'm going to wait until someone makes a binary package of Konq for Mac OS X.



    Barto
  • Reply 13 of 69
    tim2 at omnitim2 at omni Posts: 3member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Aquatic

    If they are using WebKit what takes so long to make? I hope they don't charge for it. I don't think people can charge for browsers anymore since open source ones like Mozilla are finally good quality, and companies like Apple and Microsoft give there arguably good quality (at least Safari) browsers away for free too.



    WebKit is not the same thing as WebCore -- WebKit provides view management, text/image rendering, networking, cookies, etc. OmniWeb uses WebCore, which is just for HTML parsing and display. We control the text renderer, image renderer, network layer, frame management, plugins, horizontal, vertical, etc.



    Essentially, we've written our own version of WebKit to suit OmniWeb's needs. That's a lot harder than opening up Interface Builder, dropping in a "WebView", and calling it done.



    Screenshots soon...
  • Reply 14 of 69
    nebagakidnebagakid Posts: 2,692member
    man... WebCore...pfhhh....



    Can we talk about Grindcore instead?
  • Reply 15 of 69
    tim2 at omnitim2 at omni Posts: 3member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Nebagakid

    man... WebCore...pfhhh....



    Can we talk about Grindcore instead?



    Dude. These forums have a smokey face? Sweet.
  • Reply 16 of 69
    foadfoad Posts: 717member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni



    Screenshots soon...





    Soon means...?
  • Reply 17 of 69
    tim2 at omnitim2 at omni Posts: 3member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by foad

    Soon means...?



    Today, I think.
  • Reply 18 of 69
    foadfoad Posts: 717member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni

    Today, I think.



    haha...can't wait!
  • Reply 19 of 69
    defiantdefiant Posts: 4,876member
    OmniWeb Productivity Bundle, here I come! (As soon as OW5 is out)
  • Reply 20 of 69
    foadfoad Posts: 717member
    looky looky!



    http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/5/
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