On Monday, Omni released beta 1 of its upcoming OmniWeb 5.7 web browser. The new version, a 16.4 megabyte download, adds the following fixes and changes:

General:
-OmniWeb is now based on the WebKit stability branch (This is the same or nearly the same version in use by Safari 3).
-On first launch your favicon database location will be set to our custom default. Favicons may initially disappear, but should now persist between launches/restarts once repopulated.
-Use Leopard's new code signing technology to sign OmniWeb, so you can be prompted just once to give OmniWeb access to your keychain (rather than being prompted each time you download a new version).
-Images blocked by ad-blocking and then loaded, will no longer show the blocked image badge.
-Refetching in the source view will once again refetch the page's source content from the server, rather than just reverting to the content from the corresponding browser window.
-Pages with framesets should now draw properly.
-Some blocked content (such as Flash plugins) were getting their "blocked image" placeholder drawn in the lower left-hand corner of the window.
-Ad blocking should no longer prevent Javascript redirects.
-License files will no longer be created with the "execute" permission enabled. (The files were never actually executable.)

Interface:
-We now display these release notes on launch if they've changed since they were last viewed.
-Most toolbar icons have been updated for Leopard.
-JavaScript will no longer show the toolbar if it's normally hidden.
-When downloads are in progress, OmniWeb will now prompt to ask whether you want to quit or continue downloading.
-The Load All Images button in the status bar should now display for blocked content on the current page. When pressed it should load blocked content and disappear.
-Added "Mail Contents of This Page" to the File menu. (Also renamed the neighboring "Send Link" menu item to "Mail Link to This Page".)
-Added checkbox in the Display preference panel to decide whether to display PDF's inline, or download.
-When Software Update finds an update with the same major version as the currently licensed application (e.g. OmniWeb 5.x), it should now correctly indicate that the update price is free.
-The license window will no longer continue to display "No license available" after a license is added.

Localizations:
-Updated French and Italian localizations.
-Fixed an issue where drop-down menus in the preferences were changing their widths inappropriately, making localized versions hard to read.

PDF Display:
-When Pressing the Back button while viewing a PDF should actually take you back now.
-While viewing PDFs, the download button available on the HUD display will now download the PDF to your default location.
-PDFs should now always get the proper context menu.

Performance and Stability:
-Fixed a crash sometimes seen when closing tabs (which could also happened when restoring a workspace from a snapshot or quitting).
-Reduce OmniWeb's memory footprint and CPU usage by only rendering tab thumbnails when they're needed rather than rendering a thumbnail every time a page updates whether or not it's currently being displayed anywhere.
-Worked around a bug on PowerPC's running 10.5 which sometimes caused a hang when manually checking for updates.
-Fixed a crash that could occur when using Load All Images.

Keep in mind that this is a beta and still in development, so head in with a bit of caution.

OmniWeb 5.7 requires Mac OS X 10.4.6 or later to install and run.

If you've played with the new version and noticed any major improvements or shortcomings, let us know in the comments or forums.