Perpetual "OmniWeb 5.0 Beta x" Thread

Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
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.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 14
    defiantdefiant Posts: 4,876member
    Wowza! Beta 5 came fast! Beta 4 was not unstable, but it had a few bigger glitches. Now we'll see how this one works?



    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/
  • Reply 2 of 14
    chinneychinney Posts: 1,019member
    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?
  • Reply 3 of 14
    defiantdefiant Posts: 4,876member
    Well well? It's better than before, but you can still feel that it's a beta. I still get the ugly redrawing bug when my favorites use a second line, and I need to scroll a web-page. The whole second line just gets dragged off when I do this. Not nice. Was introduced in beta 4 if I remember correctly. But other than that, it seems good - faster at launch too.
  • Reply 4 of 14
    nebagakidnebagakid Posts: 2,692member
    OmniWeb 5 is faster at scrolling, I believe.
  • Reply 5 of 14
    defiantdefiant Posts: 4,876member




    I looove OmniWeb
  • Reply 6 of 14
    staphbabystaphbaby Posts: 353member
    Quote:

    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.
  • Reply 7 of 14
    torifiletorifile Posts: 4,024member
    God damn it! Why the hell won't it block that CDW ad? It's driving me crazy. I want to use OW, I really do, but if it won't get rid of those ads, I just can't bring myself to do it....
  • Reply 8 of 14
    foadfoad Posts: 717member
    I love OW but when opening a bunch of sites, it slows down.



    Hopefully that gets addressed.
  • Reply 9 of 14
    defiantdefiant Posts: 4,876member
    Quote:

    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?
  • Reply 10 of 14
    jlljll Posts: 2,713member
    Quote:

    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.
  • Reply 11 of 14
    foadfoad Posts: 717member
    Quote:

    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.
  • Reply 12 of 14
    gavrielgavriel Posts: 175member
    Once you've grown accustomed to the OmniWeb-way of doing bookmarks there is really no turning back. At first it felt a little awkward but now I really think it is a wonderful implementation. Not to mention innovative. The OmniGroup took something that everybody else did the same way and built something of their own. That's exactly what they need to do to stay competitive with a commercial browser in this plethora of free alternatives.



    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...
  • Reply 13 of 14
    torifiletorifile Posts: 4,024member
    Beta 6 is out. Ad blocking FINALLY works most of the time. I'm using it now and so far so good. I can't wait for it to be final.



    They've got a new nag page as your start page, but that is easily changed if you know where to look.
  • Reply 14 of 14
    defiantdefiant Posts: 4,876member
    I can't wait either for the final version. Beta 6 feels faster than Beta 5 - nice. Now if they would just update my license for OW 5...
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