OmniWeb 5.0
Posted February 2nd, 2004 @ 08:37pm by Erik J. Barzeski
Does anyone have any comments on OmniWeb 5.0? I am going to reserve judgment and simply post comments to this entry as items pop up.
For some reason, the whole MT back-end, which normally looks quite good, looks horrible in OW5. Images aren't loading, the CSS sheet didn't load at all, and so on. It loaded on CocoaDevCentral, but not here. I quit, I expunged, I reloaded. Anyway, I'll go add some comments now…
Posted 02 Feb 2004 at 8:52pm #
I don't like the way they do tabs. The drawer is too intrusive and takes up more screen space than regular tabs like other browsers use, although it does let you have more tabs open.
I won't say anything about it being slow, since I assume it's due to debugging code, although OmniWeb was always slower than other browsers.
Posted 02 Feb 2004 at 8:54pm #
I still love Safari. I guess I just need to spend some time with OmniWeb 5.
Posted 02 Feb 2004 at 8:59pm #
Im not a fan of the way they do tabs either, takes up way too much screen space for my liking.
I also assume that the fact is a beta version is to blame for it crashing and dieing on the second webpage i tried.
Personally i cant see myself paying to use a web browser while Safari and FireBird are around. *shrugs*
Posted 02 Feb 2004 at 9:32pm #
For awhile, the stylesheets on my blog wouldn't work. Now they do. Who knows?
The drawer has a preference to determine which side it opens on? Why not just do like every other drawered app and open on the "more available" side?
I can't log into some sites because the password doesn't take (or something).
Why couldn't site preferences have an intelligent keyboard shortcut like "shift-cmd-;"? Why can't "Flush Cache" be cmd-opt-e like Safari?
I hate that I can't cmd-click a Favorites bar bookmark folder to open them in tabs, and I hate that I can't hit cmd-1 to go to my first favorite, cmd-2 to my second, etc. as I can in Safari.
More to come, no doubt.
Posted 02 Feb 2004 at 9:49pm #
OmniWeb 5b1, part 1
Suggestions for and observations of the OmniGroup's beta release of OmniWeb 5.
Posted 02 Feb 2004 at 10:30pm #
I think I would be kosher w/drawer tabs if I had a wide-screen. I don't think they were intended for my 1024x768 powerbook.
That said, I think they are pretty cool. Dragging and dropping links to the left or right of the screen is a lot easier than the 20 pixel tab bar on safari.
Site preferences kicks ass. Workspaces work pretty well for me. Customizable search bar is nice. There is a lot of options to OmniWeb. If I were to spend 2-3 months using it every day, I imagine I couldn't go back.
What irks me, and has always irked me (in the 3 months I've had a mac) is that I cannot highlight text and drag it to the location bar or search bar, Safari or OmniWeb. When I am going on a link digression of epic proportions (a daily occurrence when I fire up NetNewsWire over coffee in the morning) I like to sit back and reach for the keyboard as few times as possible (I don't like to put the coffee down). I should be able to drag plaintext URLs (or arbitrary text) into the location bar & search bar.
Posted 02 Feb 2004 at 10:33pm #
The tab drawer is quite nice on the 20" Cinema Display I use at work. I don't think it'll work well on my 15" iMac at home, though.
Nice browser, the only real problem I've had with it so far is the slowness. (I've gone back to Safari for now.) I'm assuming that'll change before release, though.
Posted 02 Feb 2004 at 11:02pm #
The bookmarks editor is a complete mess. I get duplicates just from dragging. I get folders and things I can't get rid of. All sorts of crashes - a mess!
Posted 03 Feb 2004 at 2:55am #
:-O
Wow... Pretty impressive. I especially like the form editor window. Very handy. Once this gets outta beta, I might just switch full time to it.
Posted 03 Feb 2004 at 12:43pm #
Re: MT backend
No problems here, worked just fine, looks the same as in any other browser.