Section A.5. OmniWeb

A.5. OmniWeb

OmniWeb is a Mac OS X-based browser that has changed in several significant ways since it was unveiled in 1995, and all for the better. In fact, it's now one of the most interesting browsers on any platform. The image shown in [click here] doesn't really do it justice, as its simple exterior hides a plethora of really interesting, thoughtful, cool features.

OmniWeb runs only on Mac OS X, and it's available for download from http://www.omnigroup.com. You can try it for free, but it costs $30 to own, or $10 to upgrade. At those prices, it's a bargain.

A.5.1. Background

When OmniWeb came out in 1995, it wasn't that great. Oh, it had some interesting features, but reviewers and users criticized it as slow when rendering and displaying web pages. With Version 4.5 (released in the summer of 2003), however, that changed. OmniWeb dropped its proprietary rendering engine (the part of the browser that looks at a web developer's HTML and converts it into what you see in the web browser's window) and instead began using Apple's open source WebCore rendering engine, provided by Safari (which was itself based on Konqueror's KHTML). From then on, OmniWeb was able to offer both interesting features and an excellent, standards-based rendering engine. Its market share is still tiny, but more and more Mac OS X users are discovering this innovative browser.

A.5.2. What's Cool About OmniWeb?

As a fully integrated Mac OS X application, OmniWeb shares some cool features with Safari, such as synchronizing bookmarks and password management with the Mac OS X Keychain. However, OmniWeb is really a power user's browser. It will work fine for a web novice, but for someone experienced, OmniWeb offers many brilliantly thought-out features.

Tabs

OmniWeb's tabs are different from those in almost every other tab-enabled web browser. Instead of appearing in a horizontal row across the top of the window, OmniWeb's tabs run vertically down the left or right side of the browser window.

In addition, each tab displays a small thumbnail image of the web page currently displayed on the tab. This is a great way to facilitate quickly jumping to the tab you need (although users with smaller monitors set to an 800 600 resolution might complain, since things will be crowded). If you're going to use OmniWeb, you really need to have your resolution set to at least 1024 768 (virtually all Macs ship with at least this resolution today, so this shouldn't be a problem unless for some reason you need to work at a lower resolution).

Workspaces

Similar to Firefox's concept of bookmarking groups of tabs, OmniWeb allows you to save groups of web pages, tabs, and history in what it calls "workspaces." Interestingly, OmniWeb allows you to combine two or more workspaces into one, and even email a workspace to another OmniWeb usera pretty smart innovation that Firefox should steal, uh, I mean, add.

Auto-saving of browsing sessions

Checking the box for "Auto-save while browsing" means that if you close your web browser, or if it crashes, your web browsing session is saved, including current open web pages, tabs, and browsing history. Think of it as automatic workspaces, designed to save the day if bad things should happen.

Customized settings for each domain

Firefox allows you to set preferences for the browser, but OmniWeb allows you to set preferences for each web site. In other words, you can tell OmniWeb that www.tinyfonts.com should display with bigger fonts, www.stuffidownload.com should put all downloads in a special folder different from all other sites, and www.popupsilike.com should be allowed to display pop-up windows.

On-the-fly spellchecking

Safari has spellchecking, but it checks spelling only when you ask it toand you have to ask it for every single form field on a web page! This is tedious, and OmniWeb knows it, so it offers automatic spellchecking for every form field on a page.

Zoomed Text Editor

This is a wonderful feature, which I would love to see in Firefox. Have you ever tried to type inside a text box on a web page, only to find that the small area made it difficult to see what you had written just a few sentences previously? OmniWeb allows you to click inside a text box and zoom the box into a normal-sized text editor, so that you can see everything you're writing. You have to see it to fully understand it; once you do, you'll want it!

A.5.3. What Needs Work?

OmniWeb's biggest problem, as with Safari, is that it runs only on Mac OS X. I want OmniWeb for Windows and Linux; barring that, I'd love it if the Firefox developers incorporated some of OmniWeb's more innovative and useful features into Firefox.

That said, OmniWeb does have some issues. The speed at which it renders web pages is a bit slow, especially compared to Safari. It's not terrible, but it is noticeable. Furthermore, since Safari and OmniWeb share the same KHTML rendering engine, they also have the same problems rendering some web pagesespecially those that are resolutely IE-only (boo! hiss!).

Finally, stability is a problem, more so than with Safari. OmniWeb sometimes crashes suddenly, especially when you're working with lots of open tabs and lots of pages. That's where "Auto-save while browsing," discussed previously, comes in handy.