For you Mac users out there, I am pleased to announce that my favorite browser OmniWeb is now available for free! It has a ton of cool features that I can’t live without. One of them is Workspaces, which are saved collections of open web pages that you can easily switch between. These workspaces can be automatically saved while browsing, so if you need to quit the application (for example, if you need to restart), all of your open web pages will be restored the next time you launch. For someone like me who has multiple pages open at a time, this is a huge time-saver!
OmniWeb also has lots of preferences for ad blocking, and all preferences can be set on a per-site basis. So I can adjust the ad blocking for a particular site, or I can do tricky things like telling my banking site that I am using Safari so it doesn’t give me the “Your browser is incompatible” warning every time I log in. Set it and forget it.
My favorite OmniWeb feature is website shortcuts. For any site I visit frequently, I have set up a two-letter shortcut, so whenever I want to go to Penny Arcade, I just type “pa” in the address bar, and I go right there! You can also set up search shortcuts, so if I want to find a book on Amazon, I just type “am thomas sowell” and the search results show up. A Google search is “g”, Wikipedia is “wi”…you get the idea. You would not believe how much time it saves! And all of these are compatible with Quicksilver, so I can jump to Facebook from any application by typing “command-space, fb, enter”. It is really convenient.
There are a bunch of other little interface niceties that I probably just take for granted by now, like tabs with little thumbnail previews. But in any case, you can’t go wrong with OmniWeb 5.9. And it’s free. Go try it out.
