A notice from the editors: The model of Omniweb reviewed on this previous article predates the present Omniweb browser, rebuilt from the bottom up utilizing the KHTML/Webcore rendering engine to ship glorious requirements compliance.
Alongside the slew of present browsers obtainable for Mac OS X (see Mac Browser Roundup – Ed.) is a
relative newcomer, developed from the bottom as much as make the most of the
new Working System. Its identify? Omniweb.
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However how does Omniweb fare in terms of internet requirements? Earlier variations, whereas extremely praised for a sublime person interface and powerful assist of
worldwide character units, fell drastically brief in CSS and W3C DOM assist.
In line with Omnigroup’s FAQ:
At the moment, OmniWeb has an implementation of DOM stage 0. With our subsequent
main launch, model 4.1, we’re going to tighten up that assist a bit
– we wish to have assist equal to that which was in Netscape 4.5
for Mac. After we launch OmniWeb 5.0 sooner or later subsequent yr, we plan to
have the whole lot as much as DOM stage 2 absolutely supported.
Launched this week, model 4.1b1 guarantees:
- A lot-improved JavaScript and DOM assist, utilizing new “SpiderMonkey” JavaScript runtime from Mozilla.
- Quite a few HTML/CSS compatibility enhancements.
Let’s put this child by its paces and see if it lives as much as the
builders’ claims.
As a comparability, I examined Omniweb 4.1b1 and Mozilla 0.9.7 aspect
by aspect, utilizing the take a look at suite that comes with Mozilla. I began with
the very primary “CSS HTML Textual content Kinds” take a look at, which lays out textual content with a quite simple Type Sheet utilized.
As you possibly can see, Mozilla renders completely, however Omniweb falls over. Per the
Type Sheet, daring and daring–italic gadgets on the web page are supposed to have a strong background color; they don’t. The bullet listing gadgets and H3 tags
are supposed to have a background picture; they don’t. Not a great begin, is
it?
The second related take a look at includes CSS 2’s fastened positioning, mimicking a
framed structure with a header, footer, and a cut up space for content material and
vertical navigation in a sidebar.
Mozilla works. In Omniweb, the footer is on the high of the display, and
the header is nowhere to be seen. The content material flows beneath the footer
in a single slim column, and the sidebar has no background color.
The third take a look at makes use of the DOM and CSS to create three items of
textual content, “Crimson,” “Inexperienced,” and “Blue,” that bounce round on the display of their related colors behind a block of opaque textual content labelled, funnily sufficient, “Opaque.”
Mozilla? Take a look at these suckers bounce! However once more, Omniweb doesn’t fairly
reduce the mustard; in truth, solely the “Inexperienced” textual content confirmed up, and it wasn’t shifting. And most weird of all, the “Opaque” textual content confirmed up in an odd font.
Lastly, for an actual–world instance, let’s see how the 2 browsers
render my very own web site (in fact).
Mozilla reveals the location as I anticipate it to look: centered on display in a
single column. Omniweb has it 100% throughout the display, no matter my
DIV’s fastened width, and it fails to honour my hyperlink states for a:hover and
a:energetic. The antialiased textual content seems to be good, although.
Omniweb has nice promise; additional, its assist of Unicode and worldwide
character units is unparalleled (solely Mozilla comes shut). Nonetheless,
Omniweb has a lengthy strategy to go earlier than it could reside as much as its builders’ claims to any form of helpful or significant CSS and DOM assist. As a Mac OS X person, I’m excited by its potential and look ahead to the day after I
can use Omniweb each day.