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Oct
28
(2005)
Browsers (again)
Filed under: Uncategorized. Tags: browsers, omniweb, software.
I’ve been playing with different browsers for the last couple of weeks (Safari, Flock, Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, iCab), and kept coming back to Safari because it just plain “feels” right. The other apps feel ported, in some parts poorly. Then, Les Orchard reminded me of OmniWeb. I’ve always loved OmniWeb, but the rendering engine was lacking in older versions, and the recent version switched to a custom WebKit framework which works quite well.
OmniWeb 5 has a lot of really nice features. The tab implementation is simply second to none. The app behaves as a first-class citizen on MacOSX. It’s got some handy stuff like a tearable textarea widget (so you can hit a button and the textarea box becomes its own window, with resize controls, and export/import functions). The source view rocks, too (with live editing as well), and it’s got a decent built-in adblocker.
And, it also offers bookmark syncing via WebDav! (note: U of C webdav info) I’m going to give it a shot as a default browser for awhile…
Here’s a screenshot of the textarea widget from the WordPress post entry screen, with the “torn off” windowed version as well:
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5 Responses to “Browsers (again)”
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I always have the same feeling of portedness using Firefox while in Gnome in Linux. The widgets just don’t act the way I expect them to. In fact the only OS Firefox’s behavior is seamless in is Windows. I use it on both, however, because I’m now used to fun things like the gestures extension.
Yay. Imagine my sense of joy at using a browser that feels like its widgets were ripped from Windows XP
Hehe… I can only imagine. Unofortunately, I’ve been stuck in Windows more than I care to admit over the past couple years. I really need to sit down one week (preferrably when there’s no school) and make Linux do the fun linguisticky stuff I need it to.
How about Camino? Gecko rendering, Aqua UI. (For those who aren’t familiar with it, it’s the project Dave Hyatt was working on before he went to work on Safari for Apple.) I completely agree about the squicky non-native feel one gets from most other browsers, and I made a post similar in spirit to yours back in August:
http://e-scribe.com/news/31
Camino is closing in on its 1.0 release. I’ve had some performance problems with recent nightlies but overall their progress has been impressive.
http://www.caminobrowser.org/
I’d used Camino a long time ago, and just tried 1.0a. It’s nice, but not quite there as an OmniWeb killer.