schmiddisaidthis

I used to use Omniweb and also bought a license for it. But then a bit more than a year ago it just had too many incompatibilities with sites i just had to use on a regular basis. so i made the switch to Safari. but not with 5.5 beta 1 out I made the switch back, and a happy surfer again. the tabbed browsing in Omniweb is amazing, i just love the icons. Plus i don't think the UI is ugly, looks way better than Firefox and Camino. The site prefs are great, and i love the idea of the workspaces. Now what would really help is if Inquisitor would work with OmniWeb.

Omniweb 5.5 Beta 1 makes me glad I paid for the license back with 5.1. It is faster than any othr browser on my Macbook. The Tabs take some getting used to if you are used to Safari type ones but once you get used to them they are awesome.

The only thing that bugs me about it is the lack of support for seperate RSS readers like Vienna.

it is definitly not the fatest, but it is elegant.

Ever since 5.5 OW is my default browser again. Great UI, great features, I'm happy again that I bought the upgrade vor OW 5, I had my doubts during the 5.1 period, now everythings great again.

a few responses to "diggin_it"'s post (not so much for this poster, but more of a counterpoint for the users who may be turned off after his/her post):

• "Worst Browser" : you can't seriously say that IE/Mac, which has been out of development for years, and sketchy standards support is better than a program with solid standards support and active development?
• Ugly: that's rather subjective, but if you don't like the interface/icons, why not head over to hicksdesign.co.uk and download Jon Hick's alternative OmniWeb "skin"? I run it, and now Omniweb looks more like safari... well, safari with a unified toolbar.
• Slow to start up: Speed is always a relative thing, but OmniWeb only takes a second to load on my system, while FireFox, for example, takes about 30 seconds (to be fair, my copy of FireFox has heaps of extensions slowing it down... but most of those are there to match default OmniWeb functionality). When people talk about "faster than Safari" they are generally referring to page rendering time, and I have to say as someone who develops for the web, I can definitely see the difference (as I'm constantly reloading pages I'm working on). Older versions did have serious speed issues, but since 5.5 I haven't encountered anything similar.
• Has no extensions: what, pray tell, would you want added? I guess you answer that later, so I'll address it there.
••"extensions [are] standard with this generation of browsers": So far, the only Mac browser with "extensions" is FireFox. Camino and safari have a few plugins, but they generally deal with preferences and are more appropriately "hacks" due to the non-standard methods in which they must access the browser (such as Input Managers and SIMBL). And as I've mentioned before, most of the extensions/hacks I've run on FireFox/Safari/etc have been to mimic pre-existing OmniWeb features. I'm not downplaying how great the extensibility of FireFox is... I'd love to see all the browsers I use allow such flexibility in a standardised way.
• Cost money: Oh damn, 30 bucks for a solid program. How dare a company try to pay its bills and employees by charging for software?! IE (windows) and Safari are free because they are part of an OS package and any programming expense can be recouped in the price of the OS or other software. FireFox/Camino = open source and part of a foundation. Programming costs are lower when people are donating time (yes I realise they have paid employees, but they also have finical backing). Opera used to be just as pricey, but they've obviously made a shift in their business model and are garnering income in another way.
• Tab Browsing: Yes, firefox can do it with an extension, but the implementation and visual effect is hardly as nice. Oh, and everytime you add a feature-based extension, you are adding to the RAM firefox requires. And frankly, only Shiira's latest beta releases even have thumbnail based tabs (older versions had a feature called tab exposé, which is pretty cool, but not the same thing). OmniWeb has had this feature since at least 2004.
• Featureless: Umm... you're kidding, right?
•• "No RSS": uh, no, it supports RSS. Even has a little icon in the statusbar to tell you when a site has a feed, features in browser RSS management (much like FireFox). I will agree that I'd rather be able to define in the prefs that RSS links get forwarded to my standalone RSS reader, but copying a url isn't exactly hard.
•• "No Bittorrent": okay. Get a bit-torrent client. Xtorrent is quite nice. Wait... what browser comes with out of the box bittorrent support? Firefox requires an extension. Okay, Opera does. Eh... I'd rather not bundle all those tasks together, but hey... to each his own.
•• "No Spellcheck": Seriously... you're kidding right? I'm typing this in OmniWeb right now and it's telling me I misspelled "Spellcheck." It works exactly the same way Spellcheck does in Safari.
•• "Anything Flashy": Because, of course, those thumbnail tabs aren't flashy. And smooth, well thought out transitions (not the garish flipping page transition stuff of Shiira) in user interface widgets certainly aren't flashy. Wait, are you saying you want flashing lights and whirling dervishes? I'd much rather have useful features like site specific preferences, Workspaces, built in ad blocking, saved sessions and customisable search engines, thanks.

I guess you won't use OmniWeb, and frankly there is no convincing a person who jumps in blindly to reviewing/slamming something without even really paying attention. As Mac users, we all got a bit pissed off by the recent article from the lawyer who berated his PowerMac because of the differences in Microsoft apps, and whined about the absence of features that were right in front of him the whole time. Let's not do the same when we review an app, unabashedly trashing it with little more than a cursory glance at it.

What OmniWeb offers (and well worth the asking price) is a well thought out application that works effortlessly in a mac oriented workflow. Yes Firefox has all those extensions (and the bugs to prove it!), but can be fiddly accessing all those features. Clearing cache and history, accessing RSS and site specific preferences is intuitive and low on clicks.

I'm a serial browser user, but I always come back to OmniWeb.

Check out what the most extensive list of mac browsers has to say about OmniWeb - http://darrel.knutson.com/mac/www/browsers.html

Id like to apologize for my quick judgment. It was unacceptable for me to bash omniweb without taking a more thorough survey of its features. I've deleted my last post against it, and while I still don't like it a lot, I think I've forfitted my right to pass judgment on this particular app.

Anyone undecided about what browser to use should read 'gbb's comments about 'diggn_it's views, but also go check out 'diggn_it's views on Firefox. You will definitely get a good idea about the pros and cons of each.

Long live OmniWeb, long live Firefox.

Everybody download 5.5.1, some serious incompatibility solved! Now it works perfectly on Iusethis too :) This browser keeps getting better. It's the only one I can use - Safari aside - on a regular basis.

Well, I finally did what I thought I never would and paid for a browser! OmniWeb has great features, does everything that it should so very well and version 5.5.1 seems to work a real treat - long-gone are the days when it was slower than the big Mac browsers - it renders very quickly now and handles pages that Safari and Shiira can't.

Not that I think it is worth $30 - I managed to live without its more innovative features up until now because of the price - but seeing as it is on sale throughout November for $10 prompted me to buy (in fact, I bought a family license for $15 - half the price of the normal single-user license!) Well worth a look at the moment.

Firefox is great...but it's not as good as OmniWeb... workspaces...icon tabs...search engine definitions...per site preferences....best bookmarks manager...syncing to .Mac...

When I found out about the $10 offer I used OW exclusively for about seven days, dropping my other browsers cold-turkey. I thought this the best way to really get to know OW.

After that week was up I was actually excited to get back to Safari. Never thought I'd say that. OW is a great browser, but where Safari is simple and elegant, OW (IMO) is over-designed.

To each his/her own.

5.5.2 beta 1 out: great improvements, now RSS feeds can be handled directly in you fav newsreader. Works perfectly with NetNewsWire.

This thing is awesome ! It does lack some features of Firefox (like developers plugins) but aside from this I love it and use it as much as I can. None of the other browsers seem to offer such a 'like butter' scroll smoothness. Everything just feels snappy in this version which is why I hate Firefox most. I love the preview tabs also.

I know most of these features (and more) are available in Firefox through plugins but really it's a refreshing app. I'd love to see del.icio.us being supported natively (as an option).

PS: The price is now 14.95$ according to their website. Definitely worth it (as soon as I figure out how to pay with Paypal on their shop...).

Its one of those apps that you might not fully appreciate it until you take the time to actually give it some thorough use and discover whats behind it. I think its great and the price is right. The individual site preferences are fantastic and great bookmark managing.

Anyone else experience bugs with forms and linefeeds?

For some reason on the private backoffice we use at my company everytime I post a form with a TextArea it seems to add a newline character at the end of each auto-wrapped line. Is the form posting part any different from Safari (which doesn't have this problem)?

I gave OmniWeb 5.5 a swirl a couple of days ago to have a look at a more feature-rich browser than the Safari 3 beta. First, I was sceptical, especially considering it actually costs money (gasp)! At first, I thought it was like Safari just with preview tabs. Then, I found the individual site preferences, encountered workspaces, understood the search terms system and grasped the concept behind the adblocker.

Hence I switched for good. Great deal for $15, and I am pretty sure 5.6 will be even better. I like to support Mac devs, and OmniWeb definitely deserves some recognition (and yes, gasp, money).

Wonderful piece of software. Considering how much its grown on me recently, I'll likely be buying it soon. Its the only thing thats managed to pull me away from Opera in all the years I've been using it (on OSX at least).

Once they add resurrecting of closed tabs, better ordering or tabs (switching back to last viewed when closing), and just some general bugfixes, I'll be sold.

Crashed a lot for me when I tried it -- more than once a day. As someone who does professoinal software development (most of it being for the Web), and who goes to school online, that's just unacceptable, sorry.

Sent many crash reports to Omni and never heard a word back from them.

I've so far found the 5.7 beta very stable. It my primary browser and it gets heavy use (developer in a busy digital agency). The main gripe with any WebKit browser is usually memory use, 5.7 uses a lot less (though still more than your average mozilla browser).