I’m running the latest public build of OW 6 (as noted in the subject) and it’s crashing on 10.14.4 to the point of being unusable.
I just updated yesterday to 10.14.4 and since then OW is so unstable that I’m going browser shopping as I need second browser (in addition to Safari) to keep personal and other stuff operate.
I see this error from the Console in the Crash Catcher window:
2019-04-30 12:12:36.002 EDT OmniWeb: DEPRECATED USE in libdispatch client: dispatch source activated with no event handler set; set a breakpoint on _dispatch_bug_deprecated to debug
2019-04-30 12:17:36 EDT (CrashCatcher activated)
Is there something I can do on my end to fix this?
I’ve trashed the OW6 Container (after backing it up, of course) thinking something in there was causing me problems, but that hasn’t helped.
Is this the end of OW?
Honestly, I’d be more than happy to pay for OW. I know that then commits OG to providing support, but I think there’s enough fans out there who would pay (like I’ve done numerous times) for a solid alternative to the “free” browsers out there that are invasive.
The problem here seems to be that WebKit 1 is deprecated and is no longer working very well. (Apple has been warning developers to get away from WebKit 1 for a while, so this isn’t exactly a surprise.)
I’m writing this from an internal build of OmniWeb that is built on top of WebKit 2 instead, and it’s stable and fast and renders well… but I’m not sure it’s a viable long-term direction. WebKit 2 does have some great improvements (and is better supported), but it’s missing public API for features I consider critical in a web browser, such as autofilling passwords. (The only way I’ve been able to get OmniWeb working as well as I have on top of WebKit 2 is through the use of a bunch of private API, which makes me uncomfortable.)
I’d love to get this back to a state where I’d feel comfortable putting out new public builds again, so I’ve been contemplating building on top of other engines—possibly the Firefox engine, but most likely the Chromium engine. Those engines seem to have all the public API needed to actually build a useful browser, which would certainly be an improvement. But that sort of migration seems likely to be a fairly big project, and I have a limited amount of spare time to work on it.
I’m not quite ready to write OmniWeb off as a lost cause, especially since I still use it as my primary desktop browser. (As I have for the last 25 years: 1994 - 2019.) But I’m afraid it’s not in a place where I’d recommend anyone else use it right now.
Yeah, I reported the same thing to the OW feedback address at the end of March. Having to use other browsers is driving me nuts. How can I help a working, publicly-available version of OmniWeb exist once more? Crowdfunding? Volunteer development? Whatever it takes. A world without OmniWeb is a significantly less productive and less enjoyable world.
I think @Tesseract nailed it: “A world without OmniWeb is a significantly less productive and less enjoyable…”.
I paid for OW (first at MacWorld NYC) and purchased new & upgrade licenses since. I’d be willing to pay again for the privilege of having the pleasure of using OW.
I’m really struggling to recreate my OW-based environment in another browser. It just isn’t working.
@kcase: You know you’ll never get OW into the App Store using private APIs (note: this is a joke, OK? I know Ken is well versed with App Store guidelines). However, for distribution to the rest of us, I’m OK with their use since I know you’ll disclose that and that it could break at any moment.
One more comment-I thought that OW 6 was linked to WebKit (2?), rather than having it baked in like earlier versions of OW.
And a question: I’m assuming that if built on top of a different rendering engine, we’d still have the OW goodness that makes it unique & productive, like the tab drawer (or whatever that morphs into), rather than tabs across the top like every other browser.
So, to put this into a semblance of a back of napkin sketch: an interim test release on WebKit 2 (with all the requisite disclaimers that the lawyers love) with a longer term direction of migration to another engine.
I’d be happy to contribute to funding of Ken’s time spent in whatever form that might take.
