Mac OS X | Internet | Browsers | OmniWeb

OmniWeb - 5.1 beta 4

web browser with many advanced features

Download v 5.10.1

(File Size: 25.3M)

Free Product Alerts!

All Time:	(3.7)
Version 5.1 beta 4:	(4.1)
Selected Version:	5.1 beta 4
Release Date:	2004-11-18
License:	Beta
Downloads (version 5.1 beta 4):	4,218
Downloads (all versions):	611,533
Price:	$29.95

Information Related to Version:

Broken Link? Newer Version? Tell us!

Product Description:

OmniWeb is a full-featured native web browser for Mac OS X. Highly multi-threaded and written using Apple's Cocoa frameworks, OmniWeb is designed to provide you with the best user experience you'll find in a web browser. We think it's important to polish every user interaction to make sure that the browser acts the way you want it to--so you can stop thinking about the application you're using and just get at the information you want, quickly. (If you don't like anything about OmniWeb's user experience, please let us know!)

What's new in this version:

Highlights

Dramatically improved history browsing performance thanks to caching changes.
In response to the "Dialog Spoofing Vulnerability" security advisory, we now make a page active if the tab is in the background when it calls up a JavaScript dialog. In addition, the dialog now includes the host name of the page that is displaying the message. For more information and a test case see <http://secunia.com/advisories/13002/>.

Cache/History

Improved the behavior of the cache and how History interacts with it:

When we revisit pages in history, we supply all content from the cache when available. This dramatically reduces the display time for pages in history that were previously re-fetched (pages in frame sets or with iframe elements, which is a lot of pages these days).
Other actions that should prefer the cached version of a resource, such as 'View Source' now also use the cache appropriately.
We now distinguish between reloading pages as the result of a user action (in which case we reload the resources) and reloading as the result of a refresh (in which case we just reload the page itself).
We now cache content which is missing validators, but we always validate pages when we load them.
When a page refreshes itself, we reuse the history node rather than creating a new one for each refresh (which eats up memory and makes for some pretty huge workspace files).

Downloads

Downloads now prefer to grab their content from the cache when possible.

The behavior here is subject to change. If you have feedback regarding this please use the Send Feedbackâ¦ item under the Help menu in OmniWeb or send email to omniweb5@omnigroup.com.

Fixed small downloads which reported as '0 bytes' when coming from the cache.

Other Changes

Corrected a problem that would cause site-specific settings like link underlines, background colors, etc from being applied if the page was loaded in a background tab.
Fixed an issue that caused some text to be rendered at a much smaller point size in 5.1 than it did in 5.0.
Made the stop button more effective in some cases.
Fixed an issue that affected a number of sites with non-Lating encodings. Japanese sites were very commonly affected.
Several Java applets that did not work in previous 5.1 releases now work. As it turned out, Java applets were not able to access the correct set of cookies that they needed to load and behave correctly.
Fixed a problem with LiveConnect between Java applets and JavaScript
Corrected an issue that could prevent some Java applets (with improperly-nested tags in between APPLET tags) to fail to load.
Fixed some issues with loading an address for a local file that does not exist.
Fixed more memory leaks.
Fixed a bookmark-related crasher.
The location bar no longer keeps focus when loading a page from favorites. We now give the focus to the browser view.
Fixed a crash when searching on <http://www.digitalplanethq.de/shop.html>.
A crash that occurred at <www.speakeasy.net/tac> has been fixed.
Corrected a problem that sometimes required you to click in a blank area of a page in order to get a title tooltip to go away.
Optimized web pages with lots of subviews (such mailman moderator pages with LOTS of form elements). These draw much, much more quickly now.
Fixed an issue that could cause text in a IFRAME element to smear when scrolled.
Fixed 'Redisplay' in the source editor.
We no longer load any new content into inactive workspaces (including auto-refreshing pages, popup windows, etc.)
We no longer open a new window to handle external URL requests and instead just create a new tab instead (as long as that's your preference). When OmniWeb launched to open a URL from an external application it would open a new window instead of using the workspace window that was about to be restored.)

Additionally, URLs clicked in NetNewsWire when OmniWeb is hidden should now also obey your preference setting for URLs from other applications.

Fixed a printing crash.
Fixed a crash @ <http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20041022/02>
Corrected an issue reported by B. Katz that caused text to grow and shrink as you moved through history.
Fixed an issue where News Feeds with parse errors would cause menu problems.

Operating System Requirements:

This product is designed to run on the following operating systems:

Mac OS X 10.3
Mac OS X 10.2

Additional Requirements:

Mac OS X 10.2 or higher

Feedback Summary:

Version 5.1 beta 4:
Overall Rating:	(4.1)	Features:	(4.8)	Support:	(4.6)
Ease of Use:	(4.8)	Quality / Stability:	(4.1)	Price:	(3.7)

Key to Types of Feedback:

Reviews Reviews Troubleshooting Usage Tips Developer Notes Commentary Featured Reviews

Ad and Flash Blocking Ridiculously Byzantine - Version: 5.10.1, 8/29/2009 02:12PM PST

Mackidockie

It's not as though users haven't asked Omni for years to make ad blocking a simple Command-Click menu item, but nobody is listening. Sure, you can block ads, but the method is unnecessarily complicated compared with AdBlock on Safari or Adblock Plus on Firefox. If this feature were fixed, OmniWeb would be the browser of choice.

I wanted to like it - Version: 5.9.2, 4/4/2009 05:08PM PST

(0 of 1 users found this comment useful)

macfan1138

I really wanted to like this browser but working with blogger was just a nightmare and I use blogger a lot. It also couldn't render my blog properly which was odd. It split t into 2 tabs. No other browser does this and I test it on an browser I can get my hands on. I'm using a standard template also.

The browser is fast and has a lot of preferences that you can teak which is nice. I grew tired of being handcuffed by Safari but don't care for drawers that slide out. Not a bad thing just not for me.

With this browser becoming free and the Omni group more or less saying they're going to focus on other things, I think this long standing browsers days may be numbered.

Nice speed but the bad WYSIWYG editing was a deal breaker for me. If you don't blog, this will be a fine browser for you. Best of all, it's now free.

Go! Go! Omni Group - Version: 5.9.2, 4/1/2009 10:20PM PST

(1 of 1 users found this comment useful)

steeldriver

Wonder of wonders! Years ago I licensed OmniWeb (don't recall its v. at that time) and liked its adaptability. But at times I went on to try other browsers and OW sat on the sidelines, except for now and then revival, such as editing HTML or testing odd page rendering in another browser. Its current superior adaptability to specific sites (setting font size, for example, at a news site that specifies small font size) coupled with speedy rendering makes OmniWeb once again my favorite browser.