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OmniWeb 5 - Powerful and feature-laden web browser
Authored by: vocaro on Sep 08, '04 02:21:50AM

I had been using Mozilla for about six years, partly due to necessity (as a Linux user, it was pretty much the only option), but mainly it was just loyalty -- Mozilla was the first browser to reveal how broken Internet Explorer was and how much better the web could be.

But after switching to the Mac last April and running Camino daily, I just gave up. Camino has some nice features, but it's simply not good enough. I kept running into bugs that annoyed me: blinking cursors stuck in the middle of the screen, an inability to autofill forms, site icons that kept disappearing from bookmarks, etc. I tried to fix the holes by hacking the source and sending patches to the maintainers, but I'm not an undergrad anymore and no longer have time to write code for free. And I didn't want to switch to Safari (Gecko loyalty again) or to the standard Mozilla suite for Mac (I'm just too much in love with Cocoa and Aqua).

And yet, just last Thursday, I happened to be browsing OmniGroup's site and decided to give OmniWeb a try. I loved what I saw! Rob's review is right on the money: OmniWeb includes all sorts of thoughtful features. Clearly, the developers are trying to make the web experience even better than it is with Mozilla, just as Mozilla was trying to make it better than with Internet Explorer. The thumbnail tabs are cool, the autosave is a must-have, there are dozens of configuration options, and none of Camino's bugs.

I thought to myself, "Why am I suffering with Camino, hacking its code and trying to make it better, when I could spend $20 [I'm a grad student and get the academic discount] and get a better browser right now?" Obviously, it was an easy decision, and although I'm kinda sad about leaving Gecko, I'm a happier surfer now.

Note, however, that OmniWeb is certainly not perfect. In particular, the autofill feature sometimes fails, there's no type-ahead find, and images don't shrink to fit the window size. Nevertheless, if you've been using Camino like I was, just waiting and hoping for it to get better, I suggest you give OmniWeb a shot.

Trevor

P.S. There's one thing that Rob didn't mention in his review: One of the reasons why OmniWeb improved so much in version 5 is that it is now based on KHTML, the same layout engine used by Safari. So if you purchase OmniWeb, you aren't really buying a browser; you're just buying a different skin for Safari. Still, it's a much nicer skin and well worth the price in my opinion.



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OmniWeb 5 - Powerful and feature-laden web browser
Authored by: syko on Sep 08, '04 03:18:55AM

Camino all the way! :D

It's little annoyances I can live with.. and I have been for quite some time now..

If Safari would save name/pws in the keychain, like they should-- you'd think Apple would've implemented this LONG ago, I'll go to Safari.. but for now, Camino works great..

If Omniweb had 'real' tabs where they belong, I'd fork up $ for it as well.. (it saves to keychain)



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OmniWeb 5 - Powerful and feature-laden web browser
Authored by: lavar78 on Sep 08, '04 07:28:26AM
If Safari would save name/pws in the keychain, like they should-- you'd think Apple would've implemented this LONG ago, I'll go to Safari..
Well, by all means, go to Safari. It saves names and passwords in the keychain and has done so for a while.

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OmniWeb 5 - Powerful and feature-laden web browser
Authored by: syko on Sep 08, '04 11:48:07AM

"Well, by all means, go to Safari. It saves names and passwords in the keychain and has done so for a while."

since when?

i just tried it again and it doesn't....



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OmniWeb 5 - Powerful and feature-laden web browser
Authored by: michaelj on Sep 08, '04 12:52:41PM

syko, look at Safari's preferences. Click the auto fill tab. By default the option to store user names and passwords is unchecked. If you simply check that box, Safari will store that data. This option has been there since the first release.



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OmniWeb 5 - Powerful and feature-laden web browser
Authored by: syko on Sep 09, '04 02:10:51AM

i stand corrected!!

now why didn't apple enable this by default??

ARGGGG



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OmniWeb 5 - Powerful and feature-laden web browser
Authored by: lavar78 on Sep 09, '04 09:34:45AM

It shouldn't be enabled by default. There are privacy issues, so it's best to let the user enable it if desired.



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OmniWeb 5 - Powerful and feature-laden web browser
Authored by: Blah on Sep 11, '04 04:11:46PM
It shouldn't be enabled by default. There are privacy issues, so it's best to let the user enable it if desired.
You beat me to it - but that's absolutely correct. I would never enable or use that on any computer. And the fact that various apps gather personal info from other apps (like address book) automatically and invisibly sucks. As a privacy advocate myself, I won't use Address Book at all for that reason.

The thing that's really sad is that browsers (most, if not all) have cookies fully enabled by default across the board. Leading to the pervasive cookie abuse we have now. At least OW lets you specify what you'll accept with fine granularity. I'm going to give it another look....



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OmniWeb 5 - Powerful and feature-laden web browser
Authored by: theNonsuch on Sep 08, '04 08:40:48AM
Um, Omniweb does save usernames and passwords in the Keychain. They also support the same method as Safari, so if you've saved username / password combinations in Safari, OW will be able to use them, too.

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OmniWeb 5 - Powerful and feature-laden web browser
Authored by: theNonsuch on Sep 08, '04 08:46:18AM

Sorry, misread your comment. That's what happens when you comment before coffee. :(



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OmniWeb 5 - Powerful and feature-laden web browser
Authored by: afb on Sep 08, '04 06:23:59PM

The most annoying thing about the passwords is that, while all three of these browsers do store passwords in the keychain, they all store them differently, so none of them can access the others' stored passwords. :-(

---
now is the time for all good cows to come to the aid of their pasture.



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Keychain sharing
Authored by: sjk on Sep 09, '04 02:24:41PM

Hmm, Safari and OW5 share Keychain entries fine for me. Sometimes OW5 prompts to get access to entries originally created with Safari and clicking "always allow" stops the prompting on followup visits.



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