Safari 4
 

So, I bit the bullet and installed Safari 4 today. It's incompatible with Glims, but otherwise it is an absolute speed demon. Shall we speculate upon the ramifications for Omniweb?

[URL="http://www.macworld.com/article/139027/2009/02/omniweb.html?lsrc=rss_main"]Consider OW ramified?[/URL]

Well, that does end that discussion.

Safari 4 (especially the javascript portion) is an amazing progress for Webkit and Safari.app built on top of it but still Safari is operating systems default browser and Apple can't do radical things as Omniweb or any other third party browser does.

It is the basic (in Apple quality) OS default browser. More like IE 6 on Windows. MS tries to compete with firefox and others in expense of turning the default basic browser to a mess. That is a thing Apple would never do. Just compare the simplicity of IE 5/6 interface to IE 7 and 8.

I hope I could express myself. People, especially advanced users will still need a third party independent browser built on webkit and most importantly native OS X Cocoa. Ask yourself why Firefox even after adopting Cairo acceleration isn't so popular on OS X? Or Opera which I can say as one state of art professionally written code?

[QUOTE=Ilgaz;55725]... but still Safari is operating systems default browser and Apple can't do radical things as Omniweb or any other third party browser does.[/QUOTE]

I would have to disagree with you on the above. Apple has added a lot to this version of Safari. Would you say doing the tabbed titlebar is not a radical change? How about the Top Sites display? HTML5? CSS3?

Safari is blasting through and killing the competition. They have moved the browser forward faster and further than any other browser ever.

I use Safari about 98% of the time now. I tried to move back to Omniweb, but Safari is just light years ahead in rendering and speed. As long as Safari Stand keeps working, I'm using Safari.

I did wish that Omni had more resources, but looks like they are doing very well with their other products. So it's all good.

[QUOTE=pkenoyer;55754]I would have to disagree with you on the above. Apple has added a lot to this version of Safari. Would you say doing the tabbed titlebar is not a radical change? How about the Top Sites display? HTML5? CSS3?

Safari is blasting through and killing the competition. They have moved the browser forward faster and further than any other browser ever.

I use Safari about 98% of the time now. I tried to move back to Omniweb, but Safari is just light years ahead in rendering and speed. As long as Safari Stand keeps working, I'm using Safari.

I did wish that Omni had more resources, but looks like they are doing very well with their other products. So it's all good.[/QUOTE]

What I tried to mean is, Apple can't put site specific prefs and other things Omniweb does in expense of complicating the plain default browser of OS X.

I believe it is one of the reasons that Apple stays away from extensions. Compare Safari preferences to version 1 preferences for example, you will see only absolutely necessary stuff added.

Wow. That article said OmniWeb is no longer under active development.

Well, I guess that is that. Crap.

I just installed Safari 4 today. It is WAY faster than OW. At this point, the only things that keep me in OW are workspaces and site specific settings. I really like working in OW, but it is starting to feel like an abandoned product.

I've just tried Safari 4 beta ... well ... really fast and really butt-ugly. In fact, I think it may be the ugliest and fastest browser at the same time. Tabs position is probably a useless fad that both Opera and Chrome offer and for some reason it just looks wrong on Safari (especially with many tabs open) ... seriously, give me a freaking OW drawer any time (still the best tab implementation available). *Top sites* is probably another semi-useful feature, but at least you can disable it. On the positive side, Safari team did a great job on speed improvements ... really, really fast browser.

I definitely think OW is a far more attractive browser, but I find it ironic that an OW fan (and I'm one) would criticize another browser’s tabs implementation as faddish. I’m sure the same comment has been made about OW’s.

I’ve played with installing SafariStand to get OW-style tabs and an approximation of the workspace functionality. Installed Safari AdBlocker for more robust ad blocking and am now trying to find a way to do more site-specific appearance customization. If I can get that figured out (and possibly even if I can’t), then I'll be making Safari my new default browser.

I would LOVE nothing more than to see OW stay in active development and to gain the performance improvements necessary to keep it competitive. But right now, Safari is just smoking OW. And it does not appear to have the memory leaks that OW has. I’ve had a workspace I regularly use up and running overnight. In OW, it would be consuming about 350-450 meg of real memory when I wake up. If I quit and relaunch OW, that goes down to around 200 but quickly climbs back up. Safari with the same tabs open has been stable around 200.

Right now this app is giving me better browser AND system performance. That’s tough to ignore.

How can Safari 4 be "butt-ugly"? Admittedly, everyone has their own taste, but it looks mostly just like 3.0, and I think it looks pretty darn nice. Certainly nicer than OW at this point, with that white favorites bar and those purple bookmark icons. Not to mention all the Jaguar-vintage icons and drawers. You might not agree with me, but attractiveness is in the eye of the beholder.

Nothing so far in Safari 4 interests me
 

Within reason, I don't care much how my browser looks. OmniWeb, Firefox, and Safari are all acceptable.

Faster is nice, but I'm limited by Internet speed. Also, with it so easy to load commonly viewed sites in the background in OmniWeb's various workspaces, speed is seldom an issue for me with OmniWeb. Safari has nothing like workspaces.

Ad blocking is more thorough in OmniWeb: by URL, but third party, and by size. And where that interferes with rendering a valuable site (my broker, my bank, my clients), I can turn it off site by site by site. Safari has nothing like that.

So far, it seems that Safari STILL cannot save my open windows and tabs between sessions (way behind OmniWeb and even Firefox), even in ONE workspace!

Today I tested migrating my 1500+ bookmarks from OmniWeb to Safari. No problems. So with that escape route available, I'll stick with OmniWeb to the bitter end. For me, Safari and Firefox don't come close.

I'll be missing OW, and the workspaces, and the site specific preferences, but Safari 4 is so much better in everything else... o_0

i am just trying to get a handle on the claim that safari4 doesn't have memory leaks...and this is [I]beta software[/I]?

[QUOTE=Ghil;55838]I'll be missing OW, and the workspaces, and the site specific preferences, but Safari 4 is so much better in everything else... o_0[/QUOTE]

The most important feature of Safari 4 beta is the amazing increase in Javascript performance which can be easily implemented to Omniweb easily when that engine is out of beta (or even earlier in sneaky peek).

People would talk about that cover flow thing etc. but ignore the under the hood magic (which is now called nitro).

Everything (not just omniweb) will benefit from it down to Nokia phones running webkit for example.

It also doesn't have vertical tabs.

[QUOTE]Ad blocking is more thorough in OmniWeb: by URL, but third party, and by size. And where that interferes with rendering a valuable site (my broker, my bank, my clients), I can turn it off site by site by site. Safari has nothing like that. [/QUOTE]

You should look into [URL="http://glimmerblocker.org/"]GlimmerBlocker[/URL] then. Runs as a proxy, so works with all browsers (I use it mostly for Safari). Not only offers subscriptions (which you can create yourself; I subscribe to my home subscription at work) for ad blocking but also CSS modification, javascript transforms, etc. Has whitelisting. Also - and this is handy - can scan pages as you view them for "suspects", usually ad Flash or JS, that you can the make into a rule with one click. Fairly extensive, flexible, and the developer is responsive and frequently updates it.

[QUOTE=mrglsmrc;55846]i am just trying to get a handle on the claim that safari4 doesn't have memory leaks...and this is [I]beta software[/I]?[/QUOTE]

I think the point was that even though it is beta software it leaks less than the release version of OW.