The Omni Group Announces OmniWeb 5.0

[Brendan Sweeney]

On Jan 1, 2004, Phill R Kenoyer wrote:
>> 	Now on your comparisons to other browsers: I am not sure what you 
>> mean by "sane settings" on other browsers, but as a web developer I 
>> can say that OmniWeb does a good job on this. (Other than Safari) It 
>> does a good job of not following a specific browser (IE is what I 
>> think you are thinking of), and instead tries to write to the 
>> standards (such as they are).
>
> If you were a web developer you would know what I'm talking about.  
> All other browsers set the default for borders on image links to 1.  
> When creating pages, if I forget to set the border=1 then I don't 
> notice until I go to another browser or the customer complains about 
> it.  Sometimes I will forget to set the border at all and it will not 
> show on OW but show on all other browsers.  I know that the standards 
> are open on that setting, but it should at least match other browsers. 
>  There are a few other things that bug me also that I can't recall 
> right now.

>> Regarding cookies, OmniWeb 5.0 includes a completely new cookies 
>> interface including a 'passive cookie prompt' in the new browser 
>> status bar that allows you to manage cookies for a particular site 
>> without having to open preferences or have prompting turned on all 
>> the time.
>
> I have suggested before, and I'll suggest it again.  This is what I 
> would love to have in OW.  Reject all cookies by default (no need to 
> add them to a database that will get huge and slow things down).  Then 
> when I go to a site that I want to allow cookies I can select from a 
> menu item or hot key to allow cookies for the site I'm viewing.  This 
> would be perfect!
>
>> I am sorry that you are so disappointed with OmniWeb.  Hopefully 
>> OmniWeb 4.5.1 will address some of the issues that you have, and I 
>> hope that you will also give version 5 a try when it is released.

You want OW to have 'sane' settings for unspecified attributes, or at 
least follow what Win/IE does, and then you want it to default reject 
every cookie?  If you're that paranoid about them it takes one change 
in the well-laid out preferences to reject them on default.  Having OW 
reject cookies on default would break so many websites' functionality 
and leave so many customers confused and bewildered they'd be swamped 
in bug reports and irate emails to their list (much like this one).

You complain about OmniGroup's choice for the defaults that they 
choose, and blame them when you don't specify the behavior you want and 
then don't even bother to take a look at the page your developing for 
"customers" in different browsers.

OmniGroup's business model makes it hard for people trolling the 
mailing lists to get much sympathy.  You're free to review the program 
in full working order (unless you're disappointed in it's ability to 
select a start page).  So if the $30 ($20 for students) is that dear to 
you take a couple days to review the product and then decide if it's 
worth the money.  Or at least learn from your first purchase and hold 
off on the second.   4.5 was a complete overhaul of the rendering 
engine given to 4.0 license holders for free.  And as OG has said many 
times, they are releasing bug updates for 4.5 even after the release of 
5.0.

~BS