OmniWeb Editor's Review

'OmniWeb' is a commercial Web browser based on a Safari engine, Apple WebKit.

This browser brings an interface that is more ergonomic than the one provided by Safari. The tabbed browsing behaves much better. OmniWeb doesn't use the 'classic' positioning of the browsing tabs. It uses a side panel placed on the left of the browser's window. You can also place that panel to the right side of the window. It takes some time to get used to it, but it's efficient.

The browser brings features such as ad-blocking, session saving, site preferences, built-in news feed reader, HTML editor, auto filler, and search shortcut. These are common features for the browsers found on the Mac OS X platform.

When I tested this browser, the rendering speed was good. After an hour, it started to move a little sluggish. I checked the memory usage and it was high. Maybe I got this because it's a beta version. When opening the same web pages in the tabs, OmniWeb used more memory than Firefox and it had a higher CPU load. I am looking forward to the final version, because this one has some deficiencies.

The support for the Web standard is good. Since Apple's engine was the first engine that passed the Acid2 test, this browser has the same support for the W3C's Web Standards.

Pluses: It's a fast and efficient browser. It uses Apple's WebKit, which is a very good engine. It has an interesting tab placement.

Drawbacks / flaws: This version has some memory problems, which can cause high memory usage and high CPU load. The producer said that there is a session saving functionality. Well, where is it? I looked into the 'Preferences' panel and I couldn't find anything about this functionality. It doesn't work by default.

In conclusion: This is quite a good browser, better than most that I have tested under Mac OS X. But there are two strong competitors: Firefox and Opera, which can do the same things as OmniWeb. However, these other two programs are free.

version reviewed: 5.5 .4 Beta 1