OmniWeb 5 Mac browser

[ktinkel]

After using OmniWeb 5 for a while mostly to preview web pages I decided to pay up ($30) and try it for real, and it is not bad.

It is very similar to Safari, with most of the same limitations. Neither program is fully compatible with the rich text editor here (and not at all with the one on CIS forums). They insert B or I codes at the cursor (wherever it sits), but do not show the result onscreen, and do not let you format selected text and have result show on-screen (you see the code).

And like Safari, OmniWeb hides the bottom of the Get Posts / New Posts dropdown here. Wonder what that is all about?

It has an interesting take on tabbed browsing (I haven’t exactly figured it out yet, in fact). It has effective (so far) ad blocking (both iFrames and Flash). It will save sessions and open up the page exactly where you left it, including screen position, URL, etc. And it has a handy “site preferences” setting that lets you change the type size and otherwise set details for selected sites. And a bunch of other stuff that I haven’t explored.

A new version is due out shortly; not sure what is in it. Since it competes so closely with Safari, which is free; and doesn’t really compete fully with Firefox, also free, I would expect OmniWeb to continue to beef up its features and functions in order to justify any payment, even as modest as it is.