As the above was the single thread I checked every day in the old forum, I’m reopening this here now. I hope that at some point we will be able to see all the old posts on this subject here, but before that we might even have some discussion and/or updates on OW6 here?
And now just replying to myself, this was the last entry in the old forum - pretty accidentally by myself - that I’d like to be not forgotten :)
[quote]So far no crashes for me. Just out of interest - whose bug was it in the end? I mean, if I’m not mistaken, both Google Chrome and Safari use the same piece of code, don’t they?
I’m happy now to see that OW does not crash anymore. Thus there may be some hope that some fine tuning and polishing can take place now? Loading speed is still a bit of an issue, in particular when loading large workspaces (and unfortunately little feedback is given telling me that OW is still in the process of loading a page).
Did I mention that I’d be willing to pay $100 for an OW license if it should go commercial again?[/quote]
I love the dedication but nowadays it is really hard to monetise a browser.
See: Safari; Chrome; Firefox. Even ones that are free are not as successful as the price warrants it to be (Opera; Camino).
Out of curiosity – what is so good about OmniWeb that created such a loyal(?) fanbase?
OW is still the only browser that deals well with a very large number of open tabs. I usually open my browser in the morning and close it in the evening. I have 40+ tabs that I visit every day, thus they remain open. What OW does far better than others is (a) vertical tab bar which is space-efficient and (b) workspaces. The latter deserves a few more words. Each workspace is a set of open tabs. You can save workspaces and assign them to keyboard shortcuts. Thus you can configure yourself a workspace for mail, one for news sites, one for sports, one for forums etc. As OW frees the memory for unused workspaces after a while you can effectively have a lot of tabs open while your browser consumes memory only for those in the workspace that is actually open.
For me this is just the OW killer feature that I have not found with any other browser.
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For what it’s worth, there’s a Chrome extension called Session Manager that works beautifully for this.
Granted, it’s not as smooth as OmniWeb’s implementation, but it makes Chrome fairly tolerable.
But AFAIK there’s no option to open workspaces by keyboard shortcut, is there?
I’m just curious as to how OmniGroup will potentially monetise OmniWeb.
As said, the browser sphere is pretty saturated at the moment, with the three major browsers – Safari, Chrome and Firefox (with the latter haemorrhaging market share) – taking the majority of the market share.
The browser space is pretty boring as well (like (e)mail clients, for example), so it’s unlikely that people will go out of their way to use a new app (see: Opera Coast) if what they have already works perfectly.
As such, this begs the question – how would OmniGroup monetise OmniWeb?
Development time isn’t free, obviously. And it wouldn’t make sense for OmniGroup to spend time (basically money) to develop OmniWeb, just to release it for free (as a hobby project, or perhaps to use it as a ‘halo’ app, to draw other people into the OmniGroup ecosystem).
If, on the other hand, the browser is paid… It simply won’t take off.
I wouldn’t be so quick to declare it improbable to monitize Omniweb - sure for most people Omniweb is just ‘another browser’ - but for others its an exemplary browser with seemingly simple features that make a big impact on our daily workflow. We don’t need to get into sales curves but I think selling at a low price ($5-10) or instead being free with the option to buy/unlock additional features is a comfortable balance between being easily and cheaply available while allowing OMNI to at least obtain some revenue for their work…
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Well, I started this discussion, but I do understand that just getting “some” revenue might actually make things worse rather than better for Omni. I am a software developer myself, and from experience I know very well that in the moment you take money for something, no matter how little, you need to support your product. Now let’s assume that 1000 people buy OW for $10, how many developers’ hours can you pay with what is left oft that money after taxes etc.?
Still I’d like to stress that I’d be willing to spend some money on it. Maybe we can think of a different model? Something like a donation system? Once people have donated enough to finance some serious work on it, Omni goes ahead. On can even bind donations to feature requests.
Maybe something to think about :)
Continuing the discussion from Continued: 64-bit test builds of OmniWeb now available:
Thing is…
I hate to sound so dismal, but as said, web browsers are boring, and there isn’t really any reason for the general public to purchase a web browser, when there are already many quality ones that are available free of charge – Safari, Firefox and Chrome.
Similar situation with email clients. Outside of enterprise (which is mainly chained to Microsoft Outlook and Exchange), there’s not much need to purchase an email client when you can either 1) Use it online – webapp version, or 2) Built-in (Mail.app on OS X, or Mail on Windows 8.1).
That may be the case for some people. My personal perspective is a little different.
I spend my whole working day in front of a computer. The web is an integral part of my work. Thus the way I use a web browser does make a difference in terms of productivity.
When I switched to the Mac platform I was an Opera user. I found that Opera on Mac was extremely unstable. After months of suffering (I really liked Opera and found its features indispensable) I started exploring different others. Firefox is rather slow on Mac, and it does not feel well. Chrome used to be very fast and stable, but its lack of a vertical tab bar and rather huge memory consumption made it unusable for the number of tabs I keep open all day. Safari was fast and stable, but just too spartanic for my needs. OW was just the one browser that did it all right.
I feel it totally reasonable to spend money on a software tool that I use all day and that makes some difference on my daily productivity. And I would not be too surprised to see that others come to the same conclusion.
Continuing the discussion from Continued: 64-bit test builds of OmniWeb now available:
I’m not saying whether it’s reasonable for me or you – I have no qualm with paying a significant amount of money (investing) in terms of tools (hence why I like OmniGroup’s suite of tools),
The thing is, whether the general public would.
I don’t think they would, as I espoused above.
And the two sales from us two – $20 or $40 (depending on the price), does not justify the significant costs of developing the software.
I first started using omniweb when I owned a NeXT color workstation. I came back to Apple when Apple bought NeXT because i loved (love) Omniweb. Farther down in this thread I see the issue of monetizing Omniweb when browsers are given away - though it wasn’t always like that.
I have an idea for marketing Omniweb! What distinguishes Omni from Firefox, etc. is the “View in Source Editor.” The little box is perfect for editing and building a web site—especially for a trial and error beginner.
In other words, Omnigroup should market Omniweb as a website builder that also happens to be the best browser in the marketplace!!! Yes there are lots of semi-automatic programs for website building, but they cost way more than $2.99 in the Apple store (My recommended sales price).
That is my marketing strategy for Omniweb - to turn our favorite browser also the only browser people pay to use. . . . good slogan . . . . “The only browser in the marketplace people pay for.”
I am a poet not by any stretch a programmer but I built my website using the omniweb source editor.
One more issue thought. In earlier versions of omniweb at the far right in the toolbar there was a sot for Google and maybe some other search engines. How do I reestablish the search engine slot? It’s gone and I cannot figure how to get it back. Thanks in advance.
Playing devil’s advocate again, why pay when you can get it for free? Why pay for Sublime Text when you can get Atom.io?
Web browsers are commoditised (there’s a reason why Windows, a paid OS, is used more than Ubuntu, a free and open-source OS), much like email clients, and calendars.
There’s no way you can manage to extract a revenue source from a large number of people, other than either 1) Subsidising it from another business (E.g. Google Chrome → Google Search; Firefox → Donations; Safari → (Mac) OS X) or 2) Have ads in the browser, or 3) Lose money on development costs.
When you think about software development, yes, there’s the ideological/idealistic aspect of it – improving peoples’ lives, by making things either easier, or more efficient, thus increasing productivity. But on the other hand, there’s also the business considerations as well. OmniGroup is not a non-profit and they are not a charity. Yes, their products touch our lives and improve it by increasing our productivity, but the business aspect is still a consideration, even if its considerably reduced (make a good product → get customers → get sales → revenue), as opposed to chasing money for the sake of money.
In light of this, I fail to see how OmniGroup is able to focus on delivering OmniWeb, unless they are taking a developmental cost loss on themselves (possibly creating the halo effect, but is it worth it? Why bother to download yet-another-browser from a-company-you’ve-never-heard-of-unless-you’re-in-the-productivity-sphere, if you already have Safari built in your OS, or if you’ve heard of Chrome?).
This is in reply to savantier. Browsers are free, so why pay. True enough. Web site building programs are not free. The omniweb browser is the strongest, likely the fastest browser in the marketplace.
The idea is to market the source editor for building websites on your own as a trial and error newbie instead of spending a bundle on some program. The $2.99 suggested retail is really paying for a simple to read online manual on how to use the source editor.
Want to build your own website with your own trial and error design? omniweb is the most elegant tool to use. Yes a cheapskate could download the free browser and figure out how the source editor works but lots of people would pay.
Continuing the discussion from Continued: 64-bit test builds of OmniWeb now available:
As I linked to in my reply… Firefox is building this functionality/already has, and it’s free. Coda (if I’m not wrong), also has this feature.
Differentiating factors are important.
OmniWeb cannot survive as a paid app, and a free one will be a loss leader.
I am very interested in the Mozilla feature, but it looks to me it is not for the faint hearted - not for a newbie dummy like me though I have not tried it. i’m interested because i have a flash movie I designed (someone else wrote the code) and what ‘eye’ set out to do was / is years ahead of everybody.
The Mozilla app might be just what I (and my old flash programmer friend) need to smoothy migrate our movie into a download for all mobile devices whirled wide.
But you just cannot get off the stick with your anti omni attitude. Omniweb is better than Firefox. Way better! Omniweb survives regardless. My marketing idea is to charge $2.99 and that is for a simple written instruction pamphlet so a novice can use the source editor to build a website!
Obviously one could obtain the browser without the simple how to build your own state of the art website manual and figure it out for yourself. What a winning sales approach! Get the browser for free or spend $2.99 for the simple instructions on using the source editor to trial and error your own website. Maybe the ninjas would add a half dozen cool templates. Optiona,l and people will spend the $2.99 and then all the ninjas will be driving Jaguars.
A labor of love is not a loss leader.
Hats off to mbert!
There is no anti-Omni attitude here.
I love OmniGroup. There is no dispute about that.
Thing is though, development is expensive. It costs money to produce code for apps. If OmniGroup sinks in money to create a browser (even if its based off the open-source project ‘Webkit’), it costs money. If they are unable to recoup the money, that’s not ideal.
As said, OmniGroup is a business. It wouldn’t make sense for them to continue working on apps that have zero business viability (see: OmniGraphSketcher, OmniDazzle, OmniDictionary, …). It would be akin to charging into a battle that you’ll know that you’re going to lose.
But the Omni Ninjas, at least the omni founder have been working on “updating” omniweb so evidently the omni gang does not agree. Otherwise omni would not be updating omniweb. You are wrong. A company looking for a group to do some work has to be impressed with omniweb, regardless of sales, etc. It’s the best. The browser itself in a narrow sense does not have business viability in that people aren’t going to pay for what every body else is giving away but the browser is a living advertisement for a talented group of programmers!
My idea is to charge $2.99 for an online manual for source editor tricks of the trade enabling a person who is only starting out to actually hand build a cool website. So you download the browser and it’s yours to keep, but in the event you are a five year old with six months web experience you might want to invest $2.99. Maybe 500 people would do that every week. That’s all. Lunch money in the big picture.
