Mac OS X software developers The Omni Group today announced the release of OmniWeb 4.1, the latest major update to their popular Cocoa-authored Web browser for Mac OS X.
OmniWeb includes a long list of unique features, according to the developers — the ability to disable JavaScript-based popup windows, for example; flexible cookie preferences; self-updating bookmarks; customizable ad-filtering preferences; and much more.
New features in OmniWeb 4.1 include:
The Omni Group’s chairman and OmniWeb lead engineer Ken Case said that the company put a great deal into improving how users interact with browsers. The new version sports numerous improvements to the interface, adds speech recognition, improves keyboard navigation,and has improved performance too.
“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,” said Case.
The Omni Group president Wil Shipley counts about half a million OmniWeb users, with what he calls “steadily increasing marketshare” since OS X started shipping. He attributed OmniWeb’s success to being the only Web browser designed exclusively for OS X.
“For example, OmniWeb uses sub-pixel positioning to render text, so web pages look like printed pages. Mac people notice the difference,” he said.
OmniWeb costs US$29.95, though it’s available for download as a free trial.