Omniweb Version 5.7
Company: The Omnigroup
www.omnigroup.com
Price: $14.95 for license. Licenses may be used in one of three ways. See publisher‘s website for detailed information on licensing. Product may be purchased through download, or in a boxed / CD package.
‘What? You paid for a browser? Ha-Ha, Ho-Ho, Hee-Hee!!’
Folks, that is a general description of the reaction you may get from your uh, associates, when you mention that you paid the tidy sum of $14.95 for a web browser, in this world of free browsers. More on that in a bit. Omniweb is a very powerful, full-featured browser for the Mac platform. It is produced by the Omnigroup, of Seattle Washington. The Omnigroup is a company that has been with us since the days of NeXt, so they’re a long-time developer of Mac applications.
Omniweb is totally native to Mac OS X. I’ve been using it as my primary browser for the past year. During this time, I have grown to like it an awful lot. It has proven to be very fast and stable, with only two crashes in the last twelve months. The overall look of the application is pure OS X. I like this. Applications that have the cross-platform ‘ported from another OS’ look tend to make me go ‘Ugh’, but that’s just me. If it doesn’t bother you, well, good for you. Now, some bullet points:
‘¢ Speed: I’m running this on my own Mac, which is a five year old, 867 MhZ Ti powerbook, with 1 Gigabyte of installed RAM. My OS is OS X, version 10.4.11. Omniweb launches fast and has a lot of ‘snap’ to it. This is something I find somewhat lacking in Firefox, and other ‘ported over’ browsers. Websites load very fast in Omniweb, and render beautifully.
‘¢ Stability: Two crashes in a year of day-to-day use. I call that pretty stable. On those rare occasions when crashes happen, you’ll see a ‘bomb box’, along with buttons that give you the option of sending a crash report to Omnigroup. It’s a good idea to take this option. I do believe it helps the engineers track down potential problems.
‘¢ Pop-up blocking. This browser has what has got to be the most powerful pop-up blocking available. Okay, so other browsers have pop-up blocking. So what? Well, Omniweb’s works, and it works well. When using Safari, I had always noticed that some pop-ups made it past the pop-up blocker. On occasion, there would be pop-unders (an ad window, below your main window) as well. This brings me to one of my favorite features: You can set your pop-up and ad blocking preferences in the main preference panel, same as other browsers. But, you may also customize these settings for each individual site you visit. I find this to be highly useful. At each website, you may simply click the toggle switch in the upper right corner of the application window,(or, choose ‘show site preferences’ from the application menu) and the site preference pane will open at the bottom of the application window. This is what it looks like:
Here, you can see that I have chosen to always block pop-ups, and to block images and inline content from known ad sites. Another great tool is the ability to limit the number of times an animation plays. That’s great, because I have had enough of the ‘dancing bears’, and other needless visual distractions that seem to be all over the web. And no, I do not want to create my own Zwinky, whatever that is. Again, you may customize these settings for each site you visit. That is a powerful feature. All of this is built right into the application. There is no need for third-party add-ons or extensions that could cause a browser to misbehave.
‘¢ Tabbed Browsing: Where would we be without tabbed browsing? I don’t know, but there would surely be a lot of screaming and yelling. To be fair, Omniweb’s version of tabbed browsing does take some getting used to. Instead of a row of tabs across your navigation bar, the tabs are kept in a slide-out drawer. You set the draw to open on the left or right side of the window. The ‘tabs’ in omniweb appear as little thumbnails of web pages. This is an example:
Here, I only have three pages open, but I frequently have filled up with lot more. You may also set the tabs to appear as single lines of text. This is good if you cruise around with a lot of tabs going at once. Again, it does take some getting use to. Give it some time, and I think you’d agree that it’s a very powerful way to use tabs. In addition to this, you can use a feature called workspaces. This allows you to save your browsing sessions as individual sets. Real power surfers should enjoy using this feature.
• “The old user agent switcherooâ€: As a Mac user, there have probably been times when you have visited a website, and you’ve seen some kind of warning that reads something like this: “Our website has been optimized for Internet Explorer. Please visit us with a proper browserâ€. Sometimes, these little messages are cute and friendly, and sometimes, not so. On occasion, you might have even come across a site that refuses to load at all. There are still a few such sites out there, but their numbers are shrinking, thankfully. Omniweb has the ability to fake out such sites, to make such sites believe that you are indeed using another browser. Safari also has this ability, but in order to use it, you must activate the debug menu, (now called the develop menu, in Safari 3.1). With omniweb, this feature is easily accessed, through site preferences. An example:
Here, I’ve set site preferences to ID my browser as Internet Explorer 7.0, for this particular website. Very simple to use, and you don’t need to quit the application, activate a hidden menu, and re-launch the application to use it.
• Bookmarks, cookie management, and History: While Safari has very good bookmark management, Omniweb takes it a little bit further. You can really go to town on managing your bookmarks with Omniweb. This is something that should make big bookmark collectors very happy. Cookie management is nicely done. When you see the cookie icon in the the status bar, just click on it, and a nicely made menu will drop down, showing all the cookies for that particular site, and their status. (Rejected, accepted, or temporary) Again, other browsers have this but it is frequently buried, and sometimes difficult to read. Omniweb takes it a little bit better. The browsing history is very searchable, and highly detailed.
• Snap-Back: One of the most useful features on Safari, is the snap-back button. The little orange button in the Google search window is frequently a godsend when you are doing intense google searching. When I first started using Omniweb, I was a little disappointed that it did not have this feature. Until,,,I found out that it does. Snap-back in Omniweb is under the history menu. When you want to mark a page to snap-back to, such as a google search, you select “mark pageâ€. To return, or “snap back†to your marked page, you simply select “go to previous markâ€.
Like many OS X native applications, Omniweb has a fully customizable toolbar. Besides selecting page marking from the history menu, you have the option of dragging these buttons to the toolbar. Placing them right next to the Google window gives you your snap-back feature. But, a single snap-back button would be more welcome, I think.
• One more thing: Ever visit a blog area or forum, and find the windows for typing text are just a tad to small? Well, Omniweb has an answer for this: When you first move your cursor into a text window and click there, an odd looking icon appears in the status bar. Curious? So was I. I clicked it, and a nice, bigger text window dropped from the smaller one, in OS X drop-sheet style. And you can make it even bigger. Just type your text here, close it, and there will be you text, all nice arranged in the web pages smaller window. Thanks to those who thought of this feature.
• Areas where the product needs improvement:
-The implementation of snap-back is a little confusing. Safari has the edge here. A snap-back button, located in the Google search window, or right next to it, would be welcome.
-The small icons that appear in the status bar, (Cookie, RSS feeds, etc.) in the bottom right hand corner, need to be different colors so they’ll stand out better.
To be sure, there is a learning curve with Omniweb, same as all other browsers. You have lots of tools to work with here, and you’ll probably need to play with some settings, to find what works best for you. For example, I had to do some trial and error with the pop-up blocker, before deciding that setting it to “Block pop-up windows: only when not requested†worked best for me.
So now, we get right down to it. In a world of free browsers, is Omniweb worth your $14.95? Well to me, it is well worth it. The security features that you can setup for each individual website, plus the great cookie management and searchable history is indeed money well spent. And, as I mentioned above, these features are built right into the application. There is no need for third-party extensions or add-ons. The price of $14.95 is very fair for this product. How many commercial applications are sold at this price point today?
Of course, the fact that I enjoy using it doesn’t make it right for everyone, so here is what I’d suggest: Try before you buy. Omnigroup’s try out policy is easy to live with. Download Omniweb version 5.7, and give it a shot. I think you’ll be pleased. You may even find yourself taking the Safari icon off your dock.
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