OmniWeb 4.5sp1 - 4.5sp9

[hulkaros]

Originally posted by fryke
You're not thinking about all the great features that sets OmniWeb apart from all other browsers... Yes, they _should_ still charge for it. And you'll still be able to use it for free once it's finished.

Tabs are coming but are not in this build yet. Btw. OmniWeb 4.5sp2 is out.

What are the differences between sp2 and sp1? Is those differences important? Let us know, Master Fryke!

[serpicolugnut]

You're not thinking about all the great features that sets OmniWeb apart from all other browsers... Yes, they _should_ still charge for it. And you'll still be able to use it for free once it's finished.

After reviewing OW's features page, these seem to be the features that OW has that Safari and Camino currently don't (but both are beta still, so this isn't set in stone)...

1-Ability to block standard banner sizes and prevent animations from looping.

2-Searchable history. This is coming to Camino, and I think it's already available in Safari, no?

3-Auto Updating Bookmarks. This is probably the biggest OW feature that I miss. OW's implementation was even better than IEs. My guess is Safari will have this before version 1.0 comes along.

4-Automatic Spell Checking. I don't think Safari has this yet, but since it's a Cocoa app, it should be pretty trivial to add it. Should arrive before Safari 1.0.

5-In Place HTML Editor. If it was functional, I'd call this a feature... But OW's HTML Editor was so basic, I opted for TextEdit most of the time. About as useful as Mozilla's composer, which isn't saying much.

So, out of these 5 OmniWeb only features, only 2 are worthwhile (for me, at least - your mileage may vary).

Now keep in mind the stuff you lose with OW versus Safari, which is still adding features with every release up to 1.0...

1 - Tabs. Sure OW will probably have them... But right now, Safari has the best tab implementation of any browser. Will OW duplicate that model, improve upon it, or fail?

2-Autocomplete. Safari's use of the Address Book for Autocomplete is sheer brilliance. Camino is going this route as well. Hopefully so will OW and IE...

3-Superior bookmark management. Again, Camino is following Safari's lead here as well. Will OW?

I still think OW has a place in the Mac browser ecosystem, but with it's adoption of Webcore, it now shares 75% of the same app DNA as Safari. And out of the remaining 25%, will there be enough to convince people to pony up for the license?

As I've written elsewhere, the whole Mac OS X browser landscape has shifted. In some ways, third party developers had it better when IE was the default browser. Microsoft IE left a void in the market that was being filled by OW, Camino and to a lesser extent, Opera. Now that Sarari exists, third party developers know that Apple will work hard on making it the browser to beat, unlike IE, which was just good enough to use.

Safari was even instrumental in changing the Mozilla roadmap from a huge bloated browser/email/composer/calendar app into the svelte, trimmed down Phoenix web browser component, which will soon be the Mozilla project reborn. I wonder if the other browser developers will re-evaluate the landscape and adapt, or continue as they have and hope for survival...

At any rate, it'll be real interesting to watch...

[fryke]

Well, webcore and javascriptcore aren't 75%. What sets OmniWeb apart is the interface, the bookmark and shortcut features, the webeditor and much more. For an OmniWeb die-hard fan (and I'm not one of those, although I like it much), the interface and features are 75%. They don't care much about the engine, as long as it doesn't break the features. :P

[fryke]

And as for changes in sp2:



OmniWeb 4.5sp2 contains the following changes since 4.5sp1



Corrected a problem that could result in some windows not auto-sizing correctly (probably most noticeable when opening new windows)
We now cache font metrics rather than recalculating them each time we need them, This should help speed up rendering in some cases as well as resizing of windows.
We now save the "continuous spell checking enabled" setting to preferences when you leave a text area, and restore it from preferences when you enter one.
Speech Recognition has been completely disabled for now, the preference setting for this is not honored.

(You might see that their own text-handling also tells books about those 75%... OmniGroup doesn't just apply their interface to the same core, or at least: The core plays a smaller part than one might think. Safari also has higher level differences, of course, I'm not saying one or the other is completely better there.)

[cybergoober]

I think I prefer the way Safari renders text over the others. I can't quite put my finger on it.

This is definitely a step in the right direction for OW.

One feature of Safari that I've come to love is the "Snap Back" feature. When I first saw it I was like, "Yeah, whatever. That's pretty pointless." Now I find myself using it quite often.

[fryke]

OmniWeb 4.5sp3 contains the following changes since 4.5sp2:

- Fixed a bug in the Open URL panel where you'd sometimes have to hit return more than once to actually open the URL you entered.

- Updated the icon used for the sneaky peeks and updated the splash screen to match.

- We now honor the OIAnimationMinimumDelayInterval setting so animations won't loop too quickly. We also now correctly render transparent animations, rather than compositing multiple frames over each other.

- We now correctly scale all images to their target size, rather than sometimes using their source size.

- Saved the best for last: Text rendering changes!

--- Text positioning problems are hopefully completely fixed
--- Implemented letter spacing
--- Ligatures have been turned off for now
--- Fixed the problem where links could overlap with the text preceding them
--- Fixed gaps in text selection
--- We now do justified text
--- Implemented word spacin

[wtmcgee]

it's like they are churning out nightlies great to see, they will soon have one of the best os X browsers out there IMO.

[fryke]

Yep, it's been nightly builds. More than, it turns out. ;-)

Usually, Ken Case creates a build for himself before going home and then decides whether to put it out as a new sneakypeek version. Or so it seems or I imagine. :P

I must say, I've been waiting a long, long time for OW's engine to mature, and I've always been a big fan of the application itself. And I'm soooo, so glad to be back in OW now.