OmniWeb Help

OmniWeb Help : Reference : OmniWeb Preferences

OmniWeb Preferences

Preferences Screenshot
The OmniWeb Preferences window

The main preferences window in OmniWeb allows you to easily cycle through all of the various preference panes using the Previous and Next arrows. Click 'Show All' to return to viewing all available preferences. The right hand side of the top portion of the window is a shelf where you can drag your most frequently used preference panes for easy access. Simply drag an icon into a new position to reorder it, drag an icon off to remove it, or drag an icon from the Show All view to add it.

Each preference pane has a Reset button. Clicking the Reset button in the lower left corner of any preference pane will return all the settings in that pane to their "factory original" configuration. Hold the option key and the button toggles to Reset All which will return all of your preferences in all preference panes back to their default state. Holding option and shift together when clicking the button will wipe OmniWeb's entire preferences domain including settings you don't modify with the preferences window to their default values. Be careful!

The preferences are divided into two categories: Application Preferences and Global Site Preferences.

Application Preferences

Application Preferences are those preferences that affect the whole application such as your Start Page (often called a home page), how bookmarks are handled, and how the downloads window behaves.

The following Application Preferences panes are available:

Global Site Preferences

Site Preferences, also called site-specific preferences, are preferences that you can change on a site-by-site basis. For example, you might find the text on the New York Times website to be a bit too small. With site preferences you can specify that for that particular website, you would like the text to be larger every time you visit the site.

When adjusting these preferences in the main preferences window, you are setting the default preference for all websites. Settings in these panes affect all web pages you visit, unless you override them by setting a preference specific to a particular site.

The following Global Site Preferences are available:

Site Preferences


The Site Preferences panel displaying the Page Appearance Site Preferences.

The Site Preferences panel allows you to set all site-specific preferences for a particular website. This panel acts upon the current site, and it's tab is always titled Preferences for domain.com. The panel can be used when on a web page, as well as in the bookmarks interface when you have a bookmark selected in which case it operates on the site that the bookmark points to.

When you are on a website that has site-specific settings, a Site Preferences icon will display in the status bar ( ) and can be clicked to display the Site Preferences panel.


The Site Preferences icon on the status bar (at the far right) indicating the current site has custom preferences.

When you adjust a preference on a site-specific basis, a blue dot will appear next to the preference control to indicate that the value or setting is different from that which is set at the global level. This allows you to easily identify the exact settings that differ for a particular site. Clicking the blue dot will return that one setting back to the default as set in Global Site Preferences.


The Site Preferences panel indicating with the blue dots that the settings for text zoom and inline image loading
have been modified from the default settings in Global Site Preferences.

The bookmarks interface includes a special Collection called Site Preferences that displays all sites for which you have custom preferences set. When one of these special bookmarks is selected, the Site Preferences panel can be displayed to edit the preferences for that particular domain.

The Other Site Preferences

The Site Preferences panel contains one extra tab that is not also found in the main Preferences window: Other. This pane contains settings you can only set on a site-specific basis, as well as a few other settings normally set in Application Preferences.


The 'Other' Site Preferences panel

The following settings are available here:

Identity to web servers and scripts as: Need to pretend you're using a different browser? Use the Identity setting to spoof websites and servers and they'll think you are using a different browser.

Some sites explicitly check the name of the browser you’re using when you first come to visit their site. If it doesn’t match one of the browsers that they’ve approved for use on the site, they’ll actually block you from visiting.

What they’re really trying to do is be sure that when you visit their site, you’re seeing things the way they want you to see them. You can design your site to ask the browser about specific features that you need and then make a decision on that basis, but a lot of designers take the shortcut of figuring out which of the big browsers work the way they want, and just ask for those. It's not as flexible, but it works more often than it doesn’t, and for some folks, that’s enough.

The Identity setting allows you to specify what browser OmniWeb should say you are using when a JavaScript script on a page asks, or when communicating with web servers. In both cases, you can choose from a pull-down menu of settings we've predefined and found useful, or you can type in your own favorite strings by choosing Other....

Helpful hint: If you find while browsing that a specific site calls for a browser other than what you have set up, and you change the settings in this panel, but the site still is not working, you may need to exit the site or even the browser completely and begin again for the "browser change" to appear to take effect. Sometimes websites will store a cookie (sort of like a preference) containing the browser they have found you to be using, and they will no longer pay attention to what OmniWeb reports itself as. See Cookies for more information including how to delete cookies that a website has set without restarting the browser.

Open links to other sites in: This setting allows you to set behavior on a site-specific basis. See General Preferences for more information.

Download files to: This setting allows you to set behavior on a site-specific basis. See Downloads Preferences for more information.

Always save submitted forms for AutoFill: This setting allows you to set behavior on a site-specific basis. See AutoFill Preferences for more information.

Always save form text for autocompletion: This setting allows you to set behavior on a site-specific basis. See Autocomplete Preferences for more information.

© 2004 The Omni Group