OmniWeb features , uses , advantages and disadvantages

OmniWeb is an internet web browser that is developed & marketed by The Omni Group , It is developed for Apple’s mac operating system , It is available as a free download , It stores work-spaces , It shows thumbnails of open pages , It has site-specific filtering & preferences , It checks bookmarks for changes , It remembers open tabs & windows .

OmniWeb

OmniWeb is an advanced web browser , It uses Mac OS X’s rendering engine just like Apple’s own web browser , Safari , But OmniWeb adds a lot of extra flexibility beyond Safari , OmniWeb browser provides you with superb built-in HTML editing capabilities , like syntax coloring & on-the-fly reformatting , all of which may be handy for anyone who maintains Web sites .

It is developed using the Cocoa API that allows it to take full advantage of Mac OS X features , It uses Quartz graphics to render the images & smooth text , It will use multiple processors if available and features an interface which makes use of Aqua UI features such as the drawers , the sheets & customizable toolbars , It had the best support for Mac OS X technologies among its competition .

In OmniWeb version 4.5 , The Omni Group adopted Apple’s KHTML-based WebCore rendering engine , that was created by Apple for its Safari browser , The most notable feature is an unusual implementation of tabbed browsing , where the tabs were displayed vertically in the drawer on the side of the window ( including optional thumbnail pictures of the pages ) .

OmniWeb

Version 5.5 was released On September 6 , 2006 , Major new features contain the use of a custom version of WebKit instead of WebCore , universal binary support , saving to web archive , support for user defined style sheets , the Select Next Link feature , FTP folder display , ad-blocking improvements , updated localization , many other small changes & bug fixes .

OmniWeb 5.5 beta 1 is the latest version , There aren’t many new features , but the performance & reliability seem to be better , The rendering speed is impressive & delays when changing tabs seem to be gone , It is a really useful performance improvement , This version is very stable , especially for a beta , Previously OmniWeb would crash a bit – not a lot , but more than Safari .

OmniWeb advantages

OmniWeb is designed to provide you with the best user experience you’ll find in a Web browser , It has superb features that make your time on the Web more efficient & more fun , It puts you in charge of your browsing experience rather than viewing you as a source of personal information and advertising revenue , as some other browsers do .

OmniWeb is fast , Even faster than Safari which is faster than most other browsers , It is reliable , The current version is very stable , although earlier versions weren’t so good , It is easy to use though it has many advanced features , It has tabbed browsing in a drawer at the side of the main window , Better than Safari‘s , It is flexible & configurable , but sometimes not as smart as Safari and the Java works well in most cases .

OmniWeb can set up the work-spaces that are the collections of web sites which can be opened together , They can be used to create the web pages , The work-spaces enable you to create the configurations of browser tabs , You can switch between each Work-space , hiding any others & save them so that you can load up that array of tabs in future .

You can have multiple Work-spaces for different web research topics & quickly switch between them with a key shortcut or menu choice , You can manually store your own arbitrary sets of Work-spaces & recall them later , OmniWeb can automatically save all your open windows & tabs and it can restore them when you relaunch the application .

OmniWeb includes superb features , It is a full-featured native web browser , It is superb multi-threaded & written using Apple’s Cocoa frameworks , There is a source editor built in with full syntax colouring and syntax error detection , The page can be previewed as you work on it and uploaded to your web server , It is a useful feature for making quick changes to the pages .

OmniWeb helps you create the settings for the individual sites too , Ad-blocking is built in , although this is not done via a huge sites blacklist , as with most ad-blockers , but by blocking the images that match ad sizes and the other characteristics .

It can use a powerful pattern match ad blocking feature to stop the images from loading from the servers matching the pattern , It is possible to block the images that don’t originate from the current server you are browsing and to block the images that match common advertisement sizes .

OmniWeb browser is like an enhanced , extra-powerful version of Safari , If you’ve ever been frustrated by Safari’s limited flexibility in the areas like controlling security settings & managing the bookmarks , Like Safari , OmniWeb browser comes with the same WebKit engine , so , a high JetStream score is no surprise , The power consumption was higher than Safari .

OmniWeb’s handling of tabs ( multiple web pages open simultaneously in their own tab in the main window ) is very nice , The pages are shown in the drawer at the side of the main window , either as miniature pictures of the page , or as the name of the page , It is easy to handle 10 , 20 or even more pages open at the same time , The other browsers don’t do this as well , Displaying a miniature version of the page is particularly cool .

OmniWeb offers an uncluttered interface & wonderful  features , while Safari can be extended (using unofficial third-party add-ons) to offer many of OmniWeb’s capabilities , The preferences can be set for the individual sites , You can change the handling of the page display , fonts , ad blocking , animations , preferred languages & security for any site without affecting others .

OmniWeb allows you to specify the preferences that apply to specific websites , if you adjust the font size on a given web page , the adjusted font size will be used on all other pages of the same site , The preferences can be saved automatically and retained between browsing sessions .

Shortcuts allow you to type a key word or phrase to open a certain web site or begin a specific web search , Shortcuts can be set up to access common sites , They are fast and easy , even for large numbers of shortcuts .

The bookmark system is quite advanced & can be accessed through a list like Safari , or through more traditional menus , The bookmarks can be checked for changes at user-defined intervals and there is a shared bookmark system .

OmniWeb puts a list of thumbnails ( optionally replaced with page titles ) in the drawer on the side of the window , The most visible difference between OmniWeb and the other browsers is its approach to tabbed browsing , Rather than use the conventional tabs across the top of the window .

OmniWeb can use dynamic thumbnails of each open Web page , rather than the tabs , to make navigation easier , Like Safari , It presents a search field built into the toolbar , unlike Safari , you are able to choose from among many different search engines using a pop-up menu or add new sites if the built-in choices aren’t adequate and OmniWeb’s RSS capabilities are modest at best .

OmniWeb browser offers extraordinary control over the way each site appears & behaves , on a per-domain basis , you can specify a number of details , including the default text size , whether pop-up windows and many other ads are blocked and whether or to what extent Java , JavaScript & cookies may be used .

OmniWeb helps you to specify how often any page should be checked for changes , You can see at a glance , by way of a special icon next to any item on the Bookmarks menu , if anything changed on that page since your last visit and by clicking on View Links in the toolbar , You can quickly view all the links contained in the page .

Separate window for editing is a superb feature that  allows you to enter tab characters , Click the square in the upper right corner of multi line form fields to open it in a separate window , This helps when you wish to add lots of text to an area that is very small & you want to see all of it at once .

OmniWeb disadvantages

OmniWeb doesn’t offer too many additional features that could set it apart from other , more mainstream browsers  , although it is designed & equipped with some important options for Mac , OmniWeb has weak RSS support , It does not handle inline WMA video very well and it’d randomly crash .

The interface is old-fashioned , with both a URL field and Google search box , its interface can’t be themed , and there’s no private browsing mode either , OmniWeb’s functionality can not be expanded by using plugins or extensions .

Javascript is reliable , but like the other browsers , it can’t be relied on 100% of the time , It’s written in Cocoa frameworks , so , it interacts with the other programs better , It works on Mac OS X only , It isn’t a program designed for another platform , OmniWeb for Mac works well but for those who aren’t happy with their current browser , OmniWeb for Mac is worth a try .