@lindsay.at

So, in response to a recommendation to try OmniWeb in the TxD forums, I was asked,

Why is OmniWeb better than Safari?

I responded that it's the little usability tweaks that keep it ahead of the game. I like the benefit of being on a slightly more modern build of the web kit. I've become used to -- and fond of -- the thumbnail tabs, and the Cmd-up/down arrow way of navigating between them. I've come to appreciate the different location-bar completion (matching on full text of the URL, not just the beginnings of the URL strings), allowing me to reach the new posts on TextDrive's forums with http://forum.textdrive.com/search.php?action=show_new simply by typing "w_n" as the shortcut.

But the killer is that the browser remembers workspaces. I don't have to clear out tabs for a restart or quit. I don't need to panic if the browser goes down because of a nasty incompatible page.

The drawback with this way of working is that it encourages working with lots and lots of tabs. I stress my PowerBook's memory a lot more nowadays as a result, and there's a point at which, under low memory, OmniWeb just gets inexplicably slow. However, a quit and relaunch will fix that situation, with no work lost.

(Also, I bought a license ages ago, way before Safari. The educational OmniWeb 5.0 upgrade price was something silly like 6 USD, which I did just on principle, even though at the time (and until a couple months ago) I was a regular Safari user. There's currently (November 2006) a sale on, where a full license is available for $10. I would definitely recommend it to anyone serious about browsing at that price.)

Fraser Speirs @ 14.11.2006 00:16 London/GMT
I was just about to respond with the observation that 5.5 was badly broken with some of Backpack's AJAXy features. Decided to verify first and found that the 5.5.1 update has fixed the problems.

Maybe I'll look again at OmniWeb.

adam @ 14.11.2006 08:37 London/GMT
Yeah, That had bugged me a lot, too. Joyent, in particular, was running into those AJAXy errors for me. I jumped on the new beta 5.5.1 version when it was released when it said they cherry-picked a bugfix from a later WebKit. (They similarly fixed things with Yahoo!'s financial charts.)

So, a net positive: they can be more reactive to bugs.

Chris @ 15.11.2006 14:02 London/GMT
I've tried switching to OW from Safari, but there are just a few too many problems with the former to keep me on. First is its brutal support for RSS. OW 's "RSS bookmarks" are way too primitive, as they do not allow for previewing of articles via summaries or have an easy way of marking groups of feeds as read. They could at _least_ allow users the option of handling feeds properly with external readers. Second is no type ahead find, which is a deal-breaker for me. Sure, Safari doesnt have it built-in either, but it can be added either via Saft or SafariStand. Third is the seach field which, after using Inquisitor for Safari, is rather underwhelming.

adam @ 15.11.2006 14:31 London/GMT
@Chris: Okay, RSS is an annoyance that I've silently learned to work around (manually pasting links into NNW Lite). Keep watching this space, though, as Omni have indicated that the external reader support will be addressed in the next point release.

I will grant that Safari + additions like Saft make for a much more compelling, usable application, but I left those out of the earlier discussion because I don't like how they inject code, and that they stop Safari from being the "reference" browser on the Mac.

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