Mozilla gets an aqua makeover!

[AmbitiousLemon]

A lot of people have been complainig about mozilla being ugly so i thought i would share a mozilla skin i came across recently at http://homepage.mac.com/kgerich/pinstripe.html

[Beej]

It's still ugly :(

I love the tabs for the windows, though. It's a mighty fine feature.

[Ensign Paris]

I like Omniweb because of its look and wicked features.

I personally prefer the smaller version of buttons etc... (Take a look at the attachment:

Let me know if you like it smaller or bigger.

Ensign

[AmbitiousLemon]

i liked omniweb for a long time too. but its soooo slow. i mean i moved from ie to other things because ie was slow. every comaprison ive seen shows omniweb as slower than ie. also omniweb renders pages incorrectly about 50% of the time. that just makes it unusable to me.

mozilla is fast and now it looks like any other aqua app so im very happy. i havent found a page yet that it renders improperly and updates come frequently (unlike omniweb that hasnt released a new version in months). frankly i think omniweb is dead. as dead as ie. it was good in its day but it is yesterday's news. with the mozilla code reaching version 1.0 and macho/chimera builds demonstrating blazing speeds and frequent updates i think omniweb is dead. chimera .2 will be the death toll for omni im afraid.

beej... ugly? its just calling the graphics from osx. these arent someone's own drawings they are just being called from osx. im not sure what you see as ugly unless you are saying aqua is ugly.

EDIT: wow i just noticed this so i thought i would add it. i was originally using a macho build of mozilla which is always blazing in speed but when i applied the pinstripe theme to the normal build of mozilla .99 i found that it seems to speed up opening new windows and such. perhaps this is because osx is handling the graphics? any ideas?

[kishba]

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon
(unlike omniweb that hasnt released a new version in months). frankly i think omniweb is dead. as dead as ie. it was good in its day but it is yesterday's news. with the mozilla code reaching version 1.0 and macho/chimera builds demonstrating blazing speeds and frequent updates i think omniweb is dead. chimera .2 will be the death toll for omni im afraid.

ummm omniweb isn't dead..... they release builds of the next release almost daily and they get better all the time

check it out at http://www.omnigroup.com/ftp/pub/software/MacOSX/.sneakypeek/

i love omniweb, mozilla would be nice if it rendered text like omniweb and had a better aqua look... until then omniweb is my browser of choice

[Hemingray]

I have to agree with Beej. It needs work.

[chmorley]

I am using it already.

Thanks, AL.

So it doesn't use Quartz rendering. I would rather have something fast than something pretty (although I would eventually like both). I use a Mac because it works better, not because it's prettier.

Chris

[MacAztec]

is sooo slow. Try going to the apple store in it. It takes me about 15 seconds on a cable modem! I switched to Mozilla, and now it takes like 2 seconds.

[MacAztec]

I am using Mozilla 0.99+ and it says that the theme was made for a different version. Do I need 0.98?

[AmbitiousLemon]

nope. im using .99 and it worked just fine. installed well in mozilla .99 and mach-O mozilla .99+

i really dont understand what you people who say it is ugly are talking about. its just aqua. its not like some guy tried to make it look like aqua, all he did was use osx's built in theme. its as aqua and as good looking as any part of osx.

what i meanth by omniweb is dead is that they havent released a single update in months. they have been in 4.1b forever with no signs of ever coming out with something new any time soon. they cant render pages properly and they are one of the slowest browsers around. all they have is looks. and with chimera being updated quickly and being the fastest browser available for osx i was saying that omniweb is dead. because they arent keeping up with the competition.

[MacAztec]

When I try it in 99+, the program quits. I reboot it, and it has a netscape type look to it.

[AmbitiousLemon]

hm, i dunno what to tell you. the guy who is working on it is pretty friendly and responds quickly. maybe he can give you some pointers.

[kishba]

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon
what i meanth by omniweb is dead is that they havent released a single update in months. they have been in 4.1b forever with no signs of ever coming out with something new any time soon. they cant render pages properly and they are one of the slowest browsers around. all they have is looks. and with chimera being updated quickly and being the fastest browser available for osx i was saying that omniweb is dead. because they arent keeping up with the competition.

i'm telling you omniweb is NOT DEAD... in fact they update the browser a whole heck of a lot... check out their sneaky peaks--they are usually stable and they are much faster than the public release (i posted the link to the sneaky peaks in a previous post--PLEASE go check them out)

[chmorley]

Originally posted by kishba


i'm telling you omniweb is NOT DEAD... in fact they update the browser a whole heck of a lot... check out their sneaky peaks--they are usually stable and they are much faster than the public release (i posted the link to the sneaky peaks in a previous post--PLEASE go check them out)

When all of this started, Kishba, it was AL who was the OW supporter. Having exchanged a few posts with him on this, I know that he has checked out some fairly recent sneakypeeks. The thing that makes OW look as if it is dead is that a) even with the latest sneakypeek (which I downloaded yesterday), it is still much slower than Chimera (http://chimera.mozdev.org/), which is only at ver 0.2 (soon!). The only thing OW has had going for it is that it's the only browser using Quartz anti-aliasing. Chimera (which runs on the same Gecko engine Mozilla uses, so it's fast as hell) promises to add this with v 0.2). With a fast browser adding Quartz, OW (a slow browser) must make huge strides to catch up.

I still root for OW. I have read all about their development team and believe they can make OW the browser it can be. They have a long uphill struggle, though. Look at how long it took for Mozilla to be viable.

You're right, Kishba--OW isn't dead at all. But when Chimera 0.2 comes out, it will have to fight to be the standard browser for those who like pretty and fast software.

Chris

[Beej]

OmniWeb may be slow, but it's pretty. And that's the main thing.

If I wanted something fast, I'd buy an Athlon.

But I like pretty things, that's whay I own a Mac, use OS X, and like OmniWeb.

Don't flame me, I'm just joking ;)

Kinda...

[kishba]

i also use ow because it's pretty.... i use the web to read and appreciate the antialiasing it provides

(and i do use a different browser--ie--when visiting the apple store because ow is slow at rendering it)

and i do hope ow & chimera compete... competition is what the world needs... that's why i love os x--it gives the little guys the ability to catch up to the big guys (that's why omniweb has a chance to be better than ie)

.02 is very, very valuable.... pretty soon macrumors.com will be worth trillions...

[sparkleytone]

ow is fast and looks great. if you wont check out the sneakypeeks, then shut the hell up aboout lack of updates and OW being dead. We have all tried to pull your head out of the sand, just look at other threads. I like you AL, but you gotta shutup about OW. They are hardcore programmers and are working their butts off. I run sp58 right now and its SOOOO close. Java is perfect now. HTML is close. The Apple store is an anomaly that is documented in the changelogs as being a focus. Some things you gotta do yourself, like flash Plugins, for best performance. I'm willing to learn a little here. Remember i came from the PC world and was pretty knowledgeable of Linux as well. You seem patient, but you are running out of patience with a product for lack of updates without validity.

Check my thread in Software rumors for the link.

[cleo]

I just downloaded Mozilla to see what all the fuss is about. I usually use OW 4.1 beta (how do you get the sneaky peaks?).

My first impression of Mozilla is that it is like greased lightning. This thing renders pages sooo much faster than OW.

BUT. I will continue to use OW. First, I appreciate the hard work the Omnigroup folks are putting into creating a Cocoa browser, and I want to support that development. But more importantly, for me it just doesn't make sense to trade the aesthetic appeal (not to mention standard OS X preference panes and all the Cocoa goodies like spell check) of Omni for a faster yet bulkier (and certainly uglier, even with the pinstripe theme) browser like Mozilla. Chimera looks promising, and maybe 6 months from now may be my broswer of choice, but for right now, OmniWeb is the best I've seen.

Tabbed windows confuse me, anyway :)

Just my $.02 :)

[AmbitiousLemon]

Originally posted by sparkleytone
ow is fast and looks great. if you wont check out the sneakypeeks, then shut the hell up aboout lack of updates and OW being dead. We have all tried to pull your head out of the sand, just look at other threads. I like you AL, but you gotta shutup about OW.

dude talk about someone needing to pull their head out of the sand. dude try reading the thread before you attack someone. as chmorely pointed out all this started with me raving about ow. i download sneakypeaks on a very regular basis. im saying they are dead because they havent released anything for the public and even their "sneaky" updates dont compete with the competition. the onlt thing ow has going for it is quartz and soon they wont be the only one with that.

and as long as we are encouraging people to pull their heads out of the sand why dont you do so also and check out all the more secret parts of chimera and mozilla. mozilla is fully aquafied now (which incidently makes it much faster). chimera .2 builds make it much more usable. and mach-O builds are amazing (especially with an aqua theme). perhaps you should get your head out of the ow haze you are in. i was there once but i opened my eyes and saw that there are better options available to me.

i use mozilla and/or mach-o builds now. (dont even have ie installed anymore). with the aqua front end its really fast and not a pain on the eyes as the modern theme was.

ow is cool because it was the first browser to really take advantage of osx. in fact it was one of the first apps out there for osx. pretty amazing. i really like some of the options and preferences in it. but development has stagnated. sure they have "sneaky" updates but they havent given the public anything in quite some time. if you read my list of osx bugs and ideas on hwo to fix them you will notice i refer to solutions ow used a number of times. ow is truly something to learn from as far as good programming is concerned. but in a world where every other browser renders pages correctly 99.99% of the time while being 3 ot 4 times as fast there just isnt any room for ow on my computer anymore. ill check it out every couple of days to see if things have improved (guess i still hold oyut some hope that things will change) but even with ow's head start on the competition it seems the mozilla monolith has caught up and left ow spinning its wheels.

[sparkleytone]

i'm excited about chimera, BUT. a big but. i will not try it until it utilizes quartz. until then i cannot go back. omni just looks too good and i am spoiled. if chimera can pull off the AA, have a passable skin, and still pull off blazing speed, then I'll switch. Simple. I restate that I will NOT downloads another browser until there is one with quartz rendering and AA.

[kishba]

Originally posted by sparkleytone
i'm excited about chimera, BUT. a big but. i will not try it until it utilizes quartz. until then i cannot go back. omni just looks too good and i am spoiled. if chimera can pull off the AA, have a passable skin, and still pull off blazing speed, then I'll switch. Simple. I restate that I will NOT downloads another browser until there is one with quartz rendering and AA.

my thoughts exactly... ow is just really really spiffy

[chmorley]

Just thought that was funny.

Really, though, OW does keep getting faster. The latest sneakypeek is noticeably faster than the last. Of course, it's still half as fast as Mozilla and 1/3 as fast as Chimera, but it's continuing to show promise.

AL, I couldn't follow the link you posted for the weekly builds of Mozilla. Are these as fast as mach-o?

Chris

[AmbitiousLemon]

well there are daily builds of mozilla at www.mozilla.org or more specifically at http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/nightly/latest/mozilla-macosX-trunk.smi.bin but what i have been using is at: http://homepage.mac.com/risc_abacus/ which is macho-o. i used the riscky's personal mach-o builds, but with the speed increase in mozilla since i installed the pinstripe theme i havent been using mach-o much. there was supposed to be a new weekly build today but it seems it hasnt been posted yet. he seems pretty good but seems to work on it only if people email him so he knows people need his builds.

(btw the pinstripe link at risky's place is OLD, dont use it)

[blakespot]

Slow is OmniWeb running on my NeXTStation Turbo Color (68040 @ 33MHz). That's slow.


blakespot

[AmbitiousLemon]

for anyone who is interested the pinstripe theme has been updated so that people who had problems with it on a .99+ build of mozilla can use it problem free.

also i tested it with the latest mach-o .99+ build and it works like a charm.

[foofan]

i just downloaded omniweb to give it a try. infortunately when i went to update my homepage at apple itools, a message from apple says" this browser isn't supported". that really sucks! i guess it's back to IE

[Taft]

To AmbitiousLemon...

While I agree that Mozilla renders much faster than OW, rendering speed is not the only issue a person has to deal with on a daily basis.

Take Java. Mozilla will frequently crash when using Java applets, especially media streaming Java applets

Take compatibility. While Mozilla is better than OW, MOZILLA HAS RENDERING PROBLEMS!!! No matter what propaganda you push on me, I still go to pages and have it render it improperly. And your claim (though probably exaggerated) that OW doesn't render correctly 50% of the time is just ridiculous. Try 5%.

Take Aqua. Mozilla doesn't fully support Aqua. Try scrolling with arrow keys in Mozilla and look at the scroll bar. It flickers and wobbles. Not a real Aqua component, just a pic (of sorts) of the component drawn by Mozilla. No beautifully drawn text, either. Chimera brings the dream of an Aquafied Mozilla into view, but a full release with *full* compatibility is a ways off.

Finally, back to speed. The fact is that except on *extremely* large pages, Mozilla is only faster than OW by about a second. And the gap has been closing for quite some time. And other functions in Mozillaare simply lagging OW (like scrolling, for example--brutally slow--Pinstripe is better, but still slow).

TWO POINTS...

First, I agree that Mozilla is a great browser with great potential. But it has not yet realized its full potential. Chimera is also a great effort that will hopefully bring all of the speed and developing force behind Mozilla to Mac OS X proper. I am truly excited about these efforts and what might come from them.

Second, DON'T UNDERMINE THE EFFORTS OF THE GOOD FOLKS AT OMNIGROUP!!! You act as though the browser is completely useless. Nothing could be further from the truth. With the sneakypeeks, I can use OW almost 100% of the time and it almost never crashes or needs to be restarted nor renders pages incorrectly (I've never had it render a page unusable). Thats about as good as I can say for IE and better than I can say for Mozilla--just try extensive Java use!. And it looks absolutely beautiful with a minimal lack of speed--speed is comparable to that of IE (maybe better).

For me, Omniweb (sneakypeek, that is) has the most complete set of features with the look and feel I want from a browser. Aesthetics are important to me--once you go antialiased you never go back! Omniweb is good and is consistently and rapidly getting better...JUST LIKE MOZILLA IS!

I appreciate your points, Mr. Lemon, but your constant attacks against Omniweb and your overzealous trumpeting of Mozilla is really getting on my friggin' nerves.

Matthew

[Taft]

I thought I'd pull a Columbo. :)

The download manager!!!!

I absolutely hate the separate-window-for-each-download concept in Mozilla/Netscape. I love having a static window where all of my downloads are and I can abort them and restart them.

I love this feature in both IE and Omniweb.

Matthew

[AmbitiousLemon]

wow talk about rage. you need to chill out bro. you go and dig up a long dead thread to go on that tirade? jeez id say someone has a serious problem. did mozilla eat your baby or something?

as i said many times i started off using ow. i still download the sneaky peeks as soon as they come out. but for me the browser is useless. it renders nearly every page i visit incorrectly. i have never had mozilla render a page improperly and have never had to use another browser when using mozilla. alos mozilla is faster. and just like you said once you go AA you cant go back well once i touched real speed i couldnt go back, everything else just feels laggy to me. dont attack me for letting people know about mozilla because most people havent heard of it. most people hadnt used pinstripe (and yes those are real aqua components so dont make that argument) and most people dont know about Mach-O builds and mozilla's nightly builds. im just sharing information and sharing my experiences so no need to blow your top at me.

what it really boils down to is i try omniweb and just cant use it. it feels slow to me and despite the nice AA and spellchecking (boy do i need that) if i cant view webpages or if webpages are all distorted its just not worth it. im glad that some people have lower standards and find ow useful because they get to use some great features that i dont, but dont attack me for sharing the better alternatives.

[Taft]

I'm just cranky cause this thread was so anti-OW--and I didn't dig it up. It showed up on the front page thanks to foofan. And this is the second time we've gotten into this...

Anyway, I've got only one question for you...can you point me to a site OW renders incorrectly? I simply don't have that problem.

And BTW, I resent the accusation that I have lower standards because I use Omniweb. If you would have taken the time to read the whole post above, I give what I believe to be the pros and cons of OW and Mozilla. In the end, I believe OW to be the better browser. If anything, I'm passing up Mozilla because I have higher standards.

Matthew

[AmbitiousLemon]

http://chimera.mozdev.org/

ok i just thought it would be funny it use that as an example. there are a lot more... let us not for get apple store

[Taft]

I guess this is why I don't find anything wrong with Omniweb...

I've been there before and didn't notice anything wrong. I had to compare it against a Mozilla rendering to see any difference. And while Mozilla does it right (and Omniweb doesn't), its not like the page is unreadable. I guess I don't take that much of an objection.

Matthew

[Taft]

I've been secretly using Mozilla off and on for the last week or so. I want to like it, I really do.

I hope Chimera can bring me everything I want from a browser. What I think will happen, is that Omniweb and Chimera will end up being very in speed/functionality someday.

Matthew

[AmbitiousLemon]

i have to agree with you here. althou omni renders most pages in correctly you can usually still use them. the apple store is a glaring exception to this and there are others but for the most part it just garbles things a little. sometimes it will just ignore blocks of texts so if you dont know its missing you wont notice. or it rearranges items and ignores dynamic portions of websites. i have to admit its usually not an issue for me. but since mozilla does it right and does it faster i dont bother with omniweb. still i love the look and the spellchecker... ooooh the spellchecker. i also really miss tabbed window browsing when using omni. if omni had tabs i might be able to use it. but mozilla speed is very addictive. so i hope you can see i go back and forth a lot on this stuff. but i end up taking functionality over looks. i just tested out sparkleytone's build of chimera. damn its fast. hard going back. and if you use Mach-O mozilla builds again, damn thats fast browsing. but again i choose functionality. chimera and Mach-O builds just have too many issues. So its mozilla. i think the best thing about mozilla is i never need another browser. so many people who use omniweb keep ie around just in case but i trashed ie a long time ago. never need it and thats enough reason for me to go mozilla. but from that sneak peek at chimera [now navigator] i think the .2 build will make it the best browser and maybe i can get rid of mozilla. navigator will kinda be all the best features of mozilla and omniweb—now how can we say no to that?

[alex_ant]

If you're really looking for speed, how about iCab? Kinda buggy, but there's no way it isn't by far the fastest OS X browser there is.

:eek: *Ducks*

Alex

[AmbitiousLemon]

Originally posted by alex_ant
If you're really looking for speed, how about iCab? Kinda buggy, but there's no way it isn't by far the fastest OS X browser there is.

:eek: *Ducks*

Alex

as far as fastest we dont know. the speed tests on the chimera website are our best guess but they dotn do opera, lynx, or iCab. an iCab test apparently cant be done because iCab claims to have pages loaded before it loads images. Still from my experience Chimera is faster, but it again not really far since chimera isnt yet a usable browser as iCab is.

[alex_ant]

When people say "fastest," what do they mean? Page rendering speed? I guess I meant that iCab had by far the fastest page scrolling speed (i.e. dragging the scroll elevator). Not that its rendering is slow either, though. I haven't seen those test results, but why didn't whoever was conducting the test just time how long it took for iCab's little car icon to stop animating rather than to take iCab's word for when it was done loading the page?

Alex

[sjs]

Good News! OmniWeb read this thread and today released a new beta version: 4.1b2. Now maybe we can all just get along;)

[sjs]

BTW. I have all the above mentioned browsers on my mac and pretty much everything thats been said is true. I keep coming back to OW because it looks so good and I'm so shallow.

Incidentally, Dr. Lemon, I was wondering...you mentioned blocks of text being left out by OW...could that be due to the Preference setting that blocks certain ad-type sections of a page?