[kevinkendall]

Originally Posted by Ken Case

We will (of course) be making UI changes in OmniWeb 6, and as we do that we'll consider and explore some alternate layouts for our tabs.

Hi, Ken
I'm a NEW OmniWeb user (only about an hour ld!).

After my exclusive use of the Opera browser on PCs running Windo$z from 1999 to 2007 (from its v3.6x days to v9.5x or so), at which time I FINALLY got just completely fed up with the MutherSucking Windo$z O.S. and went back to Mac, from whence I began in the mid 80's, I began using Opera's Macintosh version on my Mactop, my Mac laptop. It worked OK in v10.4.11 Tiger usually, but recently Opera got v10RC & shortly after that v10.00 out & methinks (i hate the use of that word by others, but it seemed apt here) that for the first time I can remember, the Opera engineers rushed things. The develpment & customer-listening time between the RC (Release Candidate) & the "final release" v10.00 was toooo short. v10.00 is buggy & has a feeling of having been 'rushed' out to publishing. Actually, the RC was buggy, too.

But anyway, so I'd occasionally use Safari or Firefox when my Opera wouldn't render a page properly & Safari's OK, but its developers are just not progressing the browser to be competitive with others, especially in the area of Tabs. In this area, one of Opera's benefits (the Opera engineers originated the "multiple-tabs-within-1-running-window," by the way) is that Tabs can be set to remain as is (tabs will become narrower with the addition of more tabs), extendable tabs (clicking on a right-pointing arrow shows overflowed tabs), or stacked tabs (rows & rows of tabs, with each new successive row stacking in a descending direction).

Now, as far as OmniWeb goes in this browser usability area, the inflexibility of how OmniWeb's Tabs may be displayed is surprising to me, considering that the OmniWeb Preferences are AMAZINGLY extensive. I loooove that about OW. As it is, however, I appreciate that I can change the Tab List appearance from "Thumbnail Picture" to "Text List." With "List" I can get alot more sites vertically stacked up. I also like the fact that I can rearrange the opened sites in the vertical list, also.

I understand from your post that ya'll have been working on the rendering engine, etc & not the GUI but hey.... especially how the tabs can be handled in the GUI is at LEAST as important as how fast sites show up. People are comforthungry. Generally, folks like things "as they are." And as far as Tabs in browsers these days go, Tabs located up along where the other menu items are is pretty much the de facto standard. 'Tabs on top' is pretty much expected. OmniWeb's 'tabs to the side' is kinda cool-looking, and is in fact useful in terms of ease of use, but practically speaking, 'tabs to the side' cuts down on horizontal space. Perhaps ya'll are being forward-looking though, as screen dimensions are in fact becoming more & more wider than their predecessor screens. For example, my Mactop's screen dimension is 1280px X 854px, which is nearly 1.5:1. And generally, screens & monitors are going into the widescreen display dimensions. So with that in mind, perhaps a couple years down the road when most screens & monitors will be widescreens, depletion by OmniWeb of the horizontal dimension will be OK & completely acceptable. But until then, ya'll need to add the option to your customers to move the tabs to the top of the window. IF you are interested in picking up Safari customers........

As far as other browsers for Mac are concerned generally, I looooove the hyperspeed of Shiira but its "tabs" area suck bigtime, they're just buggy as heck (try moving them around within the tab-row), and I like the stability of Safari, and I like the status-quo standardness of Firefox for Mac (though it reminds me of Windo$z... yyyuck...), & my longtime fav Opera is 98% of the time superfast & is always superflexible and I can have more sites open with Opera & the Opera app & the OS still remaining stable than I can with ANY other browser I've tried (160+ sites I've had open, divided up within 3 or 4 Opera windows), but as of v10.00 I think it's finally happened: "Selling out & rushrushing to please the people," at the expense of quality of function. Never thought I'd see that..... Stainless is for the new Intel Macs, which I don't have, but I can see that OmniWeb is going to probably become my Safari replacement. And...dunno... maybe even my Opera replacement on my PPC Mac TiBook.

One thing I was happy to find out about OW is the fact that down-clicking my mouse's scroll wheel will open a link in a background tab, something I absolutely must have with any browser. So that's nice. Now, as far as right-clicking (context menu) is concerned, WOW....... WHAT the hay were yoooz guyz thinking?? I mean, the list is just plain odd, & mostly unusable 95% of the time. At the top of OW's context list, the location that is most quickly available to one's mouse arrow, are *4* options for opening *the current page* into 4 different ways. huh? It's already open!! But I CAN see only 1 of those 4 being useful in the quick-access context menu: "Open page in a new Window." That'd be useful when one got into a site that was completely unrelated to other tabs one has up & one wants to separate the new subject matter from all the rest & open a bunch of new tabs relating to that new subject in a new Window.
NEWS BULLETIN: I just recovered from an OmniWeb bug, Ken..... Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to have periodically been saving this text with a Command-A & Command-C to copy all that I'd typed in this post to the clipboard (I learned that that's kinda useful alotta times!, and the superb JumpCut clipboard utility that I use mooch-o helps out alot for text copying & pasting).
OK, here's what happened: I right-clicked on this page, out in whitespace & got the context menu. I selected "Open Page in Background Tab," which happened. BUT.... I then clicked on the "X" in that new duplicated page/tab, and BOTH that duplicate AND this original page FROM WHICH the duplicate was made DISAPPEARED! BUG!!! So I got into this forum again, got the Quick Reply window up again & Command-V pasted all my text back into it.
whew.
ok. tell ya what. I'm done for now.
But Ken, please email the developers these few requests:
1. Give the tab bar locations these 3 options: On the Left side, on the Right side, or ON THE TOP.
2. Change the context menu's list of options. Dump the superfluous stuff that doesn't belong in the quick-access context menu; instead, move that rarely-used stuff up into the menu somewhere.
And in the context menu, I believe the list should be in this order, from top to bottom: Go Back, Go Forward, Close Tab (this is a command that I'd like to see ADDED to the context menu), Add Page to Bookmarks, Download Page As, Open Page in Background Page (but fix the bug I described up above first!), Copy Page Address to Clipboard, View Page Source, & maybe Stop Animations, too. All the rest of the stuff could go up in the menu somewhere.
ok. I'm done.
But convey to the developers for me that a new user (moi) thinks that their OmniWeb browser creation is, so far, top-notch for the most part. Now, it's time to tweak the usability. And to listen to OmniWeb's new users/customers for usability suggestions......
P.S. - I LOVE this vBulletin forum software OmniGroup uses, by the way.... REALLY stable & flexible & full of options. Nice..... <G>

Kevin Kendall