OmniWeb 5.7
OmniGroup
Price: $14.95 (free trial, family pricing available)
Pros: Visual tabbed browsing, auto-recovery of open windows after a crash.
Cons: A price tag in a market full of free options.
by Tim Billings, Capt, USAF
Mac users, both new and old alike, enjoy web browsing with Safari, but there seems to be something missing. A certain je ne sais quoi, if you will. Well, The Omni Group has answered with OmniWeb 5, an extremely powerful web browser that lets you see the internet the way you choose.
The first feature that I absolutely loved was the tab browsing. The tabs appear in the "tab drawer" and actually give you a thumbnail picture of the tabbed page you are looking for. This really comes in handy when you are viewing a lot of websites. In other browsers, you get a tab with the title of the page which is often some cryptic, truncated message. The thumbnails really do come in handy. Also with the feature, you have the ability to drag and drop links into the "tab drawer". So if you are at your favorite news site and several top stories interest you, just drag and drop the link to the "tab drawer" and it will open a tab for that link; a green check mark will even appear when the page is done loading so no longer will you need to click to look at a link, wait for it to load, read it, and then click back to get to the home page.
Another great feature is the search shortcut. If any site has a search function in it, you can add it to the applications search menu. What this allows you to do is search while browsing. The only thing that I don't like about this feature is that it does not open a new tab for you. So you must open a new tab and do a search so you don't lose your current page. Other than that, it is a very fast and efficient way of looking up information.
The next feature I have mixed feelings about. It's the Ad / Pop-up blocker. There are times it did come in handy, but at sites that I use like ESPN, ABC, NBC, CBS, etc. that use pop-ups for shows and game updates, it was a little frustrating to have to go in and change the preferences. I know it's a feature that some people like – the ability to change exactly how you want to view each website is a feature I'm sure will come in handy for me someday. Of course, as soon as I disabled the Ad / Pop-Up blocker, I kept getting those annoying "Win a Free Wii" ads. Oh well. That's the internet, not the browser.
The one bittersweet experience I had was with the "Auto-Save" function which I had to rely on about five times in two weeks. Unlike Safari, OmniWeb automatically saves every webpage you have open and restores them if OmniWeb or your Mac crash. Is this an indication of the stability of OmniWeb? Maybe. Bit it could be my browsing habits.
Overall, I feel that OmniWeb 5 is an excellent program. Is it worth the $15 when there are free options like Safari and FireFox? That is totally up to you. But I will tell you that I made the switch from Safari to OmniWeb 5 in the first day. I highly suggest at least downloading the 30 day free trial to see if OmniWeb is right for you.
System Requirements:
* Mac OS X 10.4.8 or later