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OmniWeb 5 - Powerful and feature-laden web browser
Authored by: JKT on Sep 08, '04 12:56:35PM

I'm surprised that you marked OW down due to its tab implementation. OK you might not like the style, that is your POV, but there are other reasons why OmniGroup went this route - one is so you can manipulate the tabs using standard Mac UI conventions: drag and drop them to re-order them in the drawer, copy/cut paste them to the drawers of other windows (or into other Workspaces), copy/paste them to other applications (where they will appear as the URL for the tab), option-drag to duplicate, shift/command-click to select multiple tabs at once, double click to open in a new window (and close in the old) and so forth. So if anything, you can deduct one for the style and add one or two for the bonus of these added features.

FWIW, one thing you may not have realised about the text editor pane is that you can choose your own font and font size for it too, so not only do you avoid tiny text input areas, but you can also choose a bigger font that you can actually read ;-)

Anybody who wants to give workspaces a try but is unsure how the concept works can visit my website here to download some I've generated (which is another feature - you can send other OW5 users your Workspaces):

http://homepage.mac.com/jtyzack/PublicFS/FileSharing44.html

---
PB G4, 1.5 GHz, 2x512MB RAM, 128MB VRAM, 80 GB 5400rpm HD, SuperDrive, MacOS X 10.3.5



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OmniWeb 5 - Powerful and feature-laden web browser
Authored by: robg on Sep 08, '04 05:15:43PM

The thing that bothers me about the vertical tabs is that they're just not as usable for my workflow. I use about 15 to 25 tabs when doing the daily site updates, and the horizontal layout is ingrained in my muscle memory, and seems notably faster to me even after using OW for a couple of weeks. Perhpas I'll eventually get over it, but even if I don't, the other great features more than make up for the one minor irritation I have with the tabs.

But you're right -- there were good reasons they went this route, and I don't disagree with their decision. It just doesn't quite work for me (yet?), but I love everything else about the browser.

-rob.



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OmniWeb 5 - Powerful and feature-laden web browser
Authored by: sjk on Sep 09, '04 12:26:02AM

Thanks for the PofW article, Rob.

You summarized pretty much how I feel about OW5 tabs. I think there's too much eye motion shifting focus of attention to the left or right to glance at tabs while other information (e.g. location bar) is being presented horizontally. And, as hessi mentioned, they can take up too much horizontal space on a 1024x768 display, leaving little (if any) desktop visible for drag/drop, tho' Exposé helps ease that issue. I hope OmniGroup does consider implementing horizontal tabs in a future release since the combination of the two styles would be useful for different browsing contexts, as John Siracusa convincingly argued at Ars Technica.

The popup text edit pane is quite nice. And there are no accesskeys interfering with control-prefixed emacs-style navigation, which remains a serious nuisance for me during input with Safari.

Something I can't find are modifier key-click combinations for Open Link (in New|Behind) Window, like Cmd-Opt[-Shift]-click in Safari. The Cmd-Opt combo seems missing for OW5 tho' I requested it and thought it would be in the 5.0 release. That's one of those muscle memory efficiency things that makes it awkward when switching between Safari and OW5.

Site preferences are nice, especially text zoom. I prefer PithHelmet content filtering to OW5 ad blocking, as mentioned in another post. Filtered pages often look more bloated in OW5 than Safari.

Auto-saving is much appreciated. That's something I first encountered using Opera on Solaris several years ago. And launching with the Shift key modifier to get a new, empty workspace is helpful to avoid restoring an unwanted auto-saved session.

That's my OW5 mini-review. I'll pay the modest and fair upgrade fee when the demo period ends.



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