OmniWeb Updated, Offers Several Improvements (Updated)

The OS X geniuses at The Omni Group have updated their outstanding OS X only Web browser, OmniWeb, to version 4.0b9. The latest version offers improved support for JavaScript. However, all support for Cascading Style Sheets has been "turned off" to an incomplete implementation of CSS support. According to The Omni Group:

OmniWeb is designed to provide you with the best user experience youill find in a web browser. We think itis 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 youire using and just get at the information you want, quickly.

Weive concentrated on things like making bookmarks extremely easy to use (we were the first browser to allow you to simply drag a page to and from your bookmarks) and having them automatically check themselves for new content. But our focus goes beyond the big features, to include little details like having keyboard shortcuts for finding forward and backward (and automatically wrapping around), shrink-to-fit window zooms ? and (of course!) a fully "Aquafied" user interface. (Our Aqua support is not just skin deep: we have slide-out bookmark and history "drawers", and not only do we use native Aqua interface elements for display on web pages, we even make the default submit button in a form throb just like it would if it were the default button on a native panel, so you know what will happen when you hit return.) p Beta 9 is geared towards enhancing stability. Highlights of beta 9 include:

  • Fixed a number of crashers - in our testing beta 9 is much more stable than beta 8. (Not yet perfect, but it appears to be much better.)
  • Disabled our CSS support (by default) because it is incomplete and the partial support was making a number of sites look worse than they look with no CSS support at all.
  • In a form with multiple browse objects, if the first one was filled in but the others werenit, we sent the data for the first file multiple times. Now we only send what we should when we should.

  • Users may use OmniWeb for free, but The Omni Group is asking for a US$29.95 registration fee to help support the continued development of the product. You can find more information at The Omni Groupis Web site.