[Ken Case]

Hello, OmniWeb fans!

Though OmniWeb is still my primary browser, I mentioned in my February update that it's not where Omni's attention is at the moment. As a company, our attention this year has been focused on projects like OmniFocus 2, OmniOutliner 4, and OmniPresence—leaving OmniWeb as a "labor of love" project which I work on personally during my spare time.

Well, good news: I just had a brief vacation, and now have the 64-bit version of OmniWeb in a reasonably stable state. The user interface of this version has barely been touched (sorry, I'm afraid it's still using drawers rather than a sidebar!); but it's had a whole lot of work done under the hood—enough so that I've decided to call this version 6, not another version 5.x.

There are some big steps forward in this release: it's now 64-bit, and uses the latest version of WebKit (rather than embedding a customized snapshot of WebKit that continually falls out of date). That's mostly what this release is about, though there are also a few minor fixes like adding DuckDuckGo as a built-in search shortcut, skipping autofill for password fields that already have a password in them (so it won't wipe out a password you've typed), ad-blocking support for CSS and JavaScript resources (not just images and plug-ins), and so on.

But there are also some steps backwards. Bookmark syncing needs to be rewritten to be based on the approach used in OmniPresence, OmniPlan, or OmniFocus (haven't made up my mind which yet). Site icons ("favicons") are missing. Blocked content should be listed in Page Info and loaded by the "Load All Images" menu item (which should probably be renamed now that other resources can also be blocked).

I expect to be pretty busy with our commercial products until my next vacation, so please don't expect many updates between now and then. But I'm using this version for >99% of my desktop browsing, and I'm hoping a few of you will find it as useful as I do.

So! Without further ado, here's where you'll find my latest OmniWeb test builds.

P.S. — Yes, I know the graphic on the start page still says "5" where it should say "6". :)

[Uli Zappe]

Ken, thanks sooo much for posting this!

I’ve downloaded and tried the new version, and from what I can see immediately, OmniWeb runs great and seems to me even faster than the old version! :–)

One hint for those who are also going to install the new version: The individual Workspaces, Bookmarks etc. are all preserved and used in the new version, but the Preferences are not! So don’t delete your old version just yet. You can launch it along the new version of OmniWeb without problems, and then can compare and adjust the new OmniWeb’s Preferences to those you used in your old version.

[TimmyDee]

Awesome! Thanks, Ken.

[pjb]

How do you stay so productive on vacation?
Thanks for the love.

[Drayon]

Wow thanks so much Ken. Any hints on how to get this running on 10.6.8? These Lion/Mt Lion releases have done me no favours. I'd love to chip in to pay for your next holiday to work on OW ;-)

[theonehorst]

Great!!! But I can't open the dmg. Sommerhoff like File System can't be aktivated.

[Uli Zappe]

Originally Posted by Drayon

Wow thanks so much Ken. Any hints on how to get this running on 10.6.8? These Lion/Mt Lion releases have done me no favours. I'd love to chip in to pay for your next holiday to work on OW ;-)

I’d be surprised if it was possible without a lot of effort to get the new OmniWeb running on 10.6. There are many API differences in OS X between 10.6 and >= 10.7, and given the very limited time that’s available for this project as a whole, I doubt it would be wise to spend resources on supporting outdated OS versions. Why are you still running 10.6? Soon we’ll be on 10.9 …

[Uli Zappe]

Originally Posted by theonehorst

Great!!! But I can't open the dmg. Sommerhoff like File System can't be aktivated.

Works fine here. Try reloading.

[Smithcraft]

Originally Posted by Uli Zappe

I’d be surprised if it was possible without a lot of effort to get the new OmniWeb running on 10.6. There are many API differences in OS X between 10.6 and >= 10.7, and given the very limited time that’s available for this project as a whole, I doubt it would be wise to spend resources on supporting outdated OS versions. Why are you still running 10.6? Soon we’ll be on 10.9 …

Still running 10.5 here.

SC

[Ken Case]

Originally Posted by Drayon

Any hints on how to get this running on 10.6.8?

Sorry, it's not possible. Quoting from my OmniWeb status update of April, 2012:

Originally Posted by Ken Case

This new build of OmniWeb requires some new technologies which are being introduced in Mountain Lion, so I'm afraid it won't run on any currently shipping operating systems (such as Lion). OmniWeb 5.11 will continue to run on older operating systems, of course.

Long ago, we requested API from Apple which would let us build our own NSURLProtocol handler for HTTP requests. Apple implemented this new API in Mountain Lion (OS X v10.8), and this is what has made it possible for OmniWeb 6 to switch to using the system WebKit rather than embedding our own custom WebKit. Since this was a major change in the OmniWeb's underlying architecture, and since that API simply didn't exist prior to 10.8, it's not possible for OmniWeb 6 to run on earlier operating systems. (That's OmniWeb 5's job!)