OmniWeb is the browser by The Omni Group that was originally developed for NeXTSTEP. It was released by Lighthouse Design on March 17, 1995, after only about a month of development.
As NeXTSTEP evolved into OpenStep and later became part of the foundation for Mac OS X, OmniWeb followed those platforms. After Sun Microsystems acquired Lighthouse Design, The Omni Group took over distribution beginning with version 2.5. From version 4.0 onward, development focused solely on Mac OS X, where the browser became known for deep integration with Apple’s native interface technologies.
OmniWeb initially used a proprietary HTML layout system based on standard text components, but that approach was slow and had limited modern web-standards support. Version 4.5 adopted Apple’s KHTML-derived WebCore engine, and later releases used a customized WebKit. Its distinctive vertical tab drawer, workspaces, site-specific preferences, and strong Mac integration made it especially notable among early OS X browsers.