OmniGroup makes several apps freeware

I also love OmniWeb for the side tabs. To recreate in Firefox, look for the "Tree Tab" extension, which is even better as side tabs are hierarchical in nested "trees."

OmniWeb is by far my favourite browser.

- per site preferences from font size to how it presents itself (mimicking FF, Safari, IE), to ad blocking to security...
- workspaces, I can't stick with any other browser compared to how this is implemented.
- side tabs, much prettier.
- additional search shortcuts in the toolbar, i've about twenty sites in my search box, I can put the same search to Amazon, Wikipedia, Yahoo, Tuaw, or indeed any site with a search box.
- nicknames as mentioned above, as well as just typing anything that might be included in the page title of bookmarked sites. Type in 'Irish Film" and OmniWeb finds www.irishfilmboard.ie in my bookmarks. Safari pops up a Google search box.
- g for google as mentioned above.
- It's the same webkit as Safari, no speed difference that I notice and stable for me, stable a long time.
- Expandable text entry boxes. You can drag text entry boxes out to whatever size you want. Easier seen than explained.
My gumption is that Omni do see a future in OmniWeb but have released it as freeware in the hope that it's market share rises and their Google earnings will rise.

In which case I hope they keep developing it.

I'm trying Safari again after much use of OW and I'm desperately missing:

* The ability to set my browser to never open links in a new window. Never. Unless I specify.

* Being able to line my Bookmarks 'toolbar' with web site icons and no text (by creating a bookmark, saving it on the toolbar and then deleting its name)

* Being able to search in things other than Google, and being able to set up ultra-fast search shortcuts such as 'g' for Google, 'w' for Wikipedia and 'yt' for YouTube.

* Being able to permanently increase or decrease the size of type on a web site, without affecting any other sites.

There's Firefox, but I love the ability to press Control-Command-D over any word to get its definition, certainly much more than Firefox dictionary extensions I've tried. And text looks much better on OW/Safari than Firefox.

What to do? Each browser has its ups and downs. I wish OW would suddenly take off and convince site developers that it represents an important segment of the market and that they'd better include OW support if they wish to be relevant. I know. I know...

I have always liked OmniWeb. I preferred it to Safari in the Safari 1-2 era. But, unless The Omni Group are going to put some serious muscle behind it, they are not going to be able to compete with Apple, Mozilla, or Opera.

I think they should focus on apps like OmniGraffle, OmniPlan, and even the humble OmniOutliner. All three are great applications among, if not the best, in their class.

But, more free software never hurt anybody.

There are some things that OmniWeb gets very very right:

* The ability to use knicknames to access a website. Not as useless as you might think, I can assign an acronym or keyword for, say, a forum site (many I visit begin with "forums." so that's no shortcut. (I was going to use TUAW as an example but, um, fail on that.

* The "save workspace" ability. If I have 10 tabs open and I quit the program (or, more likely, it locks up and I have to force quit it) the same set of tabs open the next time I launch. Very handy. Or a pain in the ass if one of those tabs was the reason it was always locking up.

* Speaking of saves; it would also save text in a field entry if I quit the program and then reopened it later. E.g., a forum post.

* Side Tabs; I always preferred this over the top tabs. And I can't seem to get used to the tabs as currently in use in Safari 4. I agree that it's a better use of the space (i.e., in the title bar it doesn't eat into the window/website space) but I guess I will.

Those are the things that jump to mind. As noted, there was a time it was the king of browsers (it was one of the first browser releases for OS X, as it originated in the NeXT days, if I remember correctly); it was faster than anything else I used. Lately, it's been locking up rather consistently, and hanging an awful lot here and there.

And with the income Omni's finding in apps like OmniFocus (esp on the iPhone) I can see why they're redirecting resources. (I'm also a big fan of their OmniGraffle program for flowcharts and org charts; beats the hell out of my clients' Visio created crap.)

One thing I would hope for is maybe a Pith Helmet (?) kind of add-on for Safari from Omni, adding the stuff I mention above.

Darren: As defined in OmniDictionary:
3: (used with count nouns) of an indefinite number more than 2 or 3 but not many; "several letters came in the mail"; "several people were injured in the accident" [syn: several(a)]

So the usage is just fine.

Mat Lu: I beg to differ about OmniGroup ("For my own part, I can't help but think that OmniWeb's day has passed"). OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner are two of the best products of their kind. Their solid and have a strong community following. Sure, they are a little pricy, but they do way more than their counterparts.

I don't use OmniPlan (don't have a use for it), but have started looking at OmniFocus as an GTD app since I am really bad about getting things done and remembering what I need to do. I had purchased the program a while back but just didn't have the time to start working with it.

OmniDiskSweeper and the non-professional version of OmniOutliner came with my MacBook and Mac Pro when I first bought them. So they were free in a sense. I liked both tools so much that I got the Pro version of Outliner and paid for DiskSweeper.

I'm a little sad that OmniWeb, Dazzle and OmniDiskSweeper are free now since I paid for them earlier, but I have certainly got my money's worth out of Dazzle and OmniDiskSweeper.

Shouldn't that be a capital E for English?

Oh please where did you learn english, four is not several, four is a few.

Omnigroup makes really good stuff. Most of it doesn't quite feel as Mac-native as other apps, but most of it also feels more customizable than most mac-native apps. The team offers really good support too - they actually responded to my feature request and told me its priority, and I recently read it's appearing in the next version!

A utility as simple as DiskSweeper should have always been free. Nevertheless, it's handy.