OS X browser test, fourth edition

Omni just posted on your own blog about this (http://blog.omnigroup.com), and apparently they're also puzzled by it being faster than the other webkit browsers (looks like they didn't even know it was faster before your post...) They suspect it might have something to do with garbage collection (the way they manage memory usage if you don't know the term).

As for those complaining about Opera not being mentioned... IE wasn't mentioned either. This is about *popular* browsers, Opera is so rare on mac systems the author probably decided it doesn't deserve mentioning. Either way, I doubt Opera performs well under Mac OS X compared to OmniWeb or even Safari, as far as I know it's always been one of the slower browsers on the mac platform (just like firefox, which is extremely fast under windows and linux).

If Opera followed a few more of the Mac OS X UI guidelines (even FireFox does a half decent job), it would be on the list.


Re: Re: #13. Not cool posting that info publicly

Anyone who's a member of the omnigroup forums has access to the sneaky peeks, and a quick google search will show omniweb's own website instructs people to join up if they wanna use it. I don't think they mind much.

10. Ran the Acid2 test here...

Passed: Shiira, Opera, Safari, WebKit

Failed: OmniWeb, Firefox (2.0 b1rc3), Camino

WRONG!
omniweb passes, what kinda drugs are you on?

Omniweb is still using your monitor profile as the default for viewing images, instead of sRGB. sRGB is recommended by w3c and is what most digital cameras use. I'm not buying until they fix this.

Ok.. wow.. I thought I was losing my mind... I fired up this 'brilliant speedy browser' and got the longest loading times I had ever seen for a web browser application. Once it actually launched, page rendering time was AWFUL.

I might have missed this in the article, but Intel Mac folks - you need the BETA (5.5) available here:

http://www.omnigroup.com/ftp/pub/software/MacOSX/.sneakypeek/

The file is password protected and that password is available in the Omni Forums to any registered user (free signup):

http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=527

I don't care if Omni Web is fast. I just wish 3 weeks could go by without it crashing. We don't sparkly cursors. We need Rock Steady browsers. I used this product when it was a NeXT app and have to say its got more bells & whistles but it's not as reliable as it used to be!

what about FLOCK??????????????????????????

19. Re: #13. Not cool posting that info publicly.

Quit your whining. All you have to do to get the .dmg password is sign up for the OmniWeb forums (free, one click in your email like any other). Once you do that, the password is right there in plain view for anyone who wants it. So I imagine they aren't tooo worked up about it being posted on TUAW.

Firefox would have to be unbelievably slow to counterbalance the volume and usefulness of Firefox extensions.

They are loading the image and HTML files from a local hard drive. So it doesn't really matter that Omniweb can load a 12MB HTML file in 7 seconds because over the internet you'll be getting the file much slower than that. It would be interesting if they tested how the browsers render large files with latency factored in.

I heard that all browsers have the same engine, base on Mycrosoft's early development results in this sphere. I doubt, but may be this is partly true?

What about opera/firefox g4/g5/intel optimised builds?