Mac OS X Developers The Omni Group Announce New Version of Premier Web
Browser, OmniWeb 4.1
Increases support for web standards, improves user experience
Seattle, Washington — June 24, 2002 — The Omni Group, developers of Mac
OS X applications and game ports, announce the latest version of OmniWeb,
the only web browser built specifically for Mac OS X. OmniWeb uses Mac OS
X’s graphics engine to produce great looking smooth text that looks like a
printed page, takes full advantage of multiple processors for extra speed,
and is truly designed around the Aqua user interface, with drawers, sheets,
customizable toolbars and more.
OmniWeb provides a wide array of unique browsing features: the ability to
disable JavaScript popup windows, flexible cookie preferences, bookmarks
that can check themselves for updates, a source view window that can edit
as well as display source, very customizable ad-filtering preferences, and
a powerful feature called Shortcuts which lets you visit favorite web
pages, do search engine queries, and other handy tasks using just a few
keystrokes in the address bar. OmniWeb also has an intuitive History search
that allows users to search their browsing history by text, rather than by
URL or page title, and a built-in spell checker that works in all web forms.
“We’ve put a lot of thought into improving the way people interact with
their web browsers, and I think it shows. In this point release we’ve
greatly improved the downloads interface, added speech recognition,
improved keyboard navigation – and, of course, made everything faster,”
said Ken Case, Chairman of The Omni Group and OmniWeb Lead Engineer. “Our
users have been telling us that they love OmniWeb’s interface and just wish
it rendered every page they visit so they can use it 100% of the time, so
most of our effort over the last year has been spent improving our support
for plug-ins (including Flash 6), Java, CSS, and JavaScript. We haven’t yet
reached our ultimate compatibility goals for OmniWeb (such as complete
support for all W3C-endorsed web standards), but in the last year we’ve
made significant progress toward that end.”
“OmniWeb has around half a million users right now, and this release is for
them,” added Wil Shipley, President of The Omni Group. “Our share of the
browser market has been steadily increasing since Mac OS X started
shipping, because OmniWeb is the only browser designed for Mac OS X
exclusively. For example, OmniWeb uses sub-pixel positioning to render
text, so web pages look like printed pages. Mac people notice the
difference.”
More information and a free trial download are available at
http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/.
New Features since 4.0:
Increased Compatibility:
* Greatly improved Java support
* Improved JavaScript support
* Improved CSS support
* ‘Compatibility’ settings which allow you to masquerade as a different
web browser for gaining access to websites that restrict users based on
browser
* Support for Netscape-style browser plugins including Macromedia’s
Flash 6 browser plugin.
* Many browser plugins, Flash included, perform better in OmniWeb than
other browsers since we give them dedicated processing time
Easier to use
* Improved preferences interface
* Software Update built in which notifies you when new versions of
OmniWeb are available
* ‘Send Feedback’ Item in Help menu allows user to easily send us
feedback email
* Integration with the Dock to display the number of updated bookmarks
overlayed on the dock icon
* Improved downloads window
System Improvements
* Speech Recognition allows you to surf the web and perform many
operations in OmniWeb using voice commands
* OmniWeb honors your System preferences for proxy servers
* OmniWeb ships localized into 17 languages; new to 4.1 is support for
Greek, Icelandic, Korean, Portugese & Brazilian Portugese, and Russian
* OmniWeb now features support for AppleScript allowing users to script
the application as well as providing support for third-party bookmark
and history managers such as URL Manager Pro
OmniWeb 4.1 Licensing and Pricing
OmniWeb 4.1 can be downloaded as a free trial. An OmniWeb 4.1 license
retails for $29.95. OmniWeb can be downloaded here:
http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/download/
About The Omni Group:
The Omni Group, founded in 1993, develops Mac OS X applications and ports
games to OS X. The Omni Group has produced OmniWeb, the only web browser
built specifically for Mac OS X, and the winner of two 2001 Apple Design
Awards. The Omni Group also is the developer of OmniGraffle, a diagramming
program that won two 2002 Apple Design Awards, and OmniOutliner, an
outlining and organizational tool. OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner have been
bundled on Power Macs and PowerBooks since January 2002. The Omni Group is
located in Seattle, WA. More information on The Omni Group is available at
www.omnigroup.com.