Current OmniWeb engine status?
 

I'm curious what the current status and plans of the OmniWeb engine and what not. I used to use OmniWeb but switched back to Safari a while back partly due to speed issues with OW and the lack of a more complete AJAX support (my auto-complete code doesn't work). I recall hearing that OW was using a custom WebCore but slowly switching to the apple base code, not sure if that's the case, or if it's already using apple's or what. So I'm just wondering how things are going and hoping that I might be able to use it again (once javascript works better I probably would try it again).

I don't recall if I reported that particular problem or not though, but looking forward to trying OmniWeb again since I do like it quite a bit.

In regards of the slowness, might be with lots of tabs(if that's what you call them)

The next version of OmniWeb (5.5) is currently in sneakypeek (private beta) testing and is using WebKit with added OmniGroup goodness rather than a modified (and out-of-date) WebCore. I don't want to say any more than that for fear of stating something that OmniGroup don't want made known... I'll leave it to them to add any more info they are willing to divulge.

Edit: Stop Press! Ken has just given us permission to talk about the sneakypeeks. Yes, they are faster and more compatible - the version of WebKit being used at the moment is actually newer than that in the official Safari release.

There are still a number of problems with the sneakypeek (currently at sp3) and also a number of features missing, but overall, the browsing experience is much improved over 5.1.x (speed and compatibility wise). Stability of sp1 was pretty bad in relative terms, but sp3 has been pretty good for me.

Edit 2: If you have some sites that you'd like tested, post some links and expected behaviours (or the features that OmniWeb 5.1.3 can't handle). I can tell you now that Flickr slideshows are working in sp3 and there are a few other problem sites that are no longer problems...

The autocomplete i'm refering to is here: [url]http://demo.script.aculo.us/ajax/autocompleter[/url]
which is the code the one I made into a site is based on, pretty much anything in scriptaculous and prototype javascript libraries i would love to see them work fully in OmniWeb like I believe they do in safari.

I ran across a CSS issue in current OmniWeb while trying some things, I have to make a public version of the site since it's private that demonstrates the issue before I can send in a report, it might not be an issue if the sneaky peaks are based on WebKit since it works in Safari and WebKit nightlies.

Is the sneaky peaks based on some recent build of the open source WebKit project? That stuff has been looking good and surprisingly stable, even a bug I reported a while back got fixed pretty quickly (CSS tooltip trick)

The current version of WebKit being used is r12177 - you can read a bit more about the state of the sp by looking at the release notes [url=http://www.omnigroup.com/ftp/pub/software/MacOSX/.sneakypeek/]here[/url]. At the moment the sp download is password protected but the impression given by Ken is that either the next release or one soon after that is going to be made public (though that, of course is going to be up to OmniGroup... don't take that as gospel).

Btw, the link you provide works just the same in OmniWeb 5.5 sp3 as it does in Webkit r12177.

We're updating OmniWeb 5.5 to be based on WebKit revision 13269, but we might release one more sneaky peek based on 12177 first.

I'm very much looking forward to seeing OmniWeb 5.5. Will it also be a universal application for Intel Macs?

Yes, 5.5 is Universal and has been for months. (The only reason we didn't release a Universal build of OmniWeb at the same time as all our other apps is that we weren't ready to release 5.5 yet, and didn't want to delay 5.5 by going back to make a Universal build of 5.1.)

Universal?
 

[QUOTE=Ken Case]Yes, 5.5 is Universal and has been for months. (The only reason we didn't release a Universal build of OmniWeb at the same time as all our other apps is that we weren't ready to release 5.5 yet, and didn't want to delay 5.5 by going back to make a Universal build of 5.1.)[/QUOTE]

I can understand programs like OmniOutliner or OmniGraffle needing to be concerned about file formats, and Intel vs. PPC, big endian, little endian, etc. But how much work was required to make OW into a UB?

Very glad to hear that a new OW release is coming soon. I'm a registered user but had to switch back to Safari a while ago when the speed difference became fairly large. My main question now is what will the situation be going forward? Is it now easy to keep up to date with the latest webkit releases, or is there enough custom add-ons that OW will slowly lag further and further behind? I'd hate to have that happen again.

Hmm, speaking of the usage of a recent WebKit build in OW, will that include the Web Inspector? because that'd be super awesome... that thing is handy, little slow/buggy last i used but not really that bad at all, does it's job really well.