[MinutiaeMan]

I can't think of a more appropriate title. Omni's announcement couldn't have come at a worse time (that is, the same day that Safari 4.0b came out).

It's a testament to the number of features that OmniWeb offers that version 5 has lasted as long as it has. I started using it with the second beta of 5.0, and spent almost the entire time since then with it as my default browser. That's five whole years!

Over the past year or two, I've toyed with switching to Safari (which I use at work, and so keep up to date with). And there are a couple things that really tempt me; especially bookmark syncing via MobileMe. (That feature has never worked for me in OW, ever.)

When Safari 4 came out, I decided to switch over for a day or two and see what I thought, expecting that I'd end up back in OmniWeb soon enough — just like every time I'd tried the same thing before. But then came the announcement that OW isn't being developed. I felt like I'd been punched in the gut.

I know it's not a cancellation. But considering how fast WebKit is being developed, considering how some new features are being added by various browsers (mostly Safari and Firefox; even if they're not all the features I want) — I don't think I can afford to wait forever for OmniWeb to rejoin the browser wars.

So I tallied up a list of features that I still love about OmniWeb:

• The browser drawer (I try not to call it "tabbed browsing")
• Site-specific preferences
• Useful ad blocking, especially combined with site-specific CSS
• Keyword shortcuts in the location bar
• Custom searches

I've spent the last four or five days using Safari 4 exclusively. I've been keeping an eye out for how many times it annoys me with stuff that's missing or different from OmniWeb. And I realized that I don't miss the features as much as I thought I would. Sure, I curse when I type "wiki iPod" and don't get taken directly to the Wikipedia entry on the iPod. But I think I can get used to it. Because at least Safari is in active development.

(Plus, I kinda dig the new "top sites" view, and the full-search history is killer. The tabs I understand, but they'll take getting used to.)

If and when OmniWeb 6 comes around, I'll jump on it faster than you can blink. But until then, I think I'll stick with Safari.