Rumored Future of Chimera

[chmorley]

So it's been two weeks since the last update of Chimera was released. For most software (even beta), this is not a long time. For Chimera, it is. Sure, they took about 3 weeks to integrate Quartz rendering into v 0.2.0, but that's about the longest they've taken. Combine this with it being in the dock (and actually running in the background) at WWDC, it makes me start thinking...

People have guessed (or prayed) in the past that Apple might develop OmniWeb through to a more complete version. With OmniGroup being a fully functional software company, this always seemed unlikely. Now here comes Chimera, part of the Mozilla project, not making any money....

I am wondering if Apple has started to develop (or will soon) Chimera.

What do people think? Any chance?

Chris

[Taft]

I don't think its likely that Apple will jump into open source so thoroughly. They seem to prefer the FreeBSD style of licensing (whch doesn't force them to give up their source for all derivative products).

Given the fact that Mozilla is GPL and Apple would have to relinquish the source to any completed product using Mozilla code, I find it pretty unlikely. I think that Omniweb is a far more likely choice for them (though even that is unlikely IMO).

Taft

[MacManiac1224]

I think it is very likely that Apple would develop Chimera, becasue they really can't do it in the public's eye, for the fear of retaliation from Microsoft, so they worok on Chimera behind the scenes, and slowly build it up to be on equal footing with IE, then include it with every operating system, leave IE in the dock on startup, and just put Chimera as a pre-installed application in the Applications folder, therefore leaving Apple in good standing with MSFT.

[AmbitiousLemon]

Not Apple... Netscape. We all saw recently that Apple had dropped ie from their ads to be replaced with netscape in the dock. Also Chimera has moved into mozilla.org which implies to me that it is now being developed for Netscape (keep in mind i have little to no understanding of the organization at mozilla.org/mozdev.org). Also Apple and AOL have demonstrated a relationship with the unveiling of iChat and AOL is Netscape. I think we can expect "Navigator" to be a Netscape Product perhaps bundled with Jaguar, demostrating Apple's new relationship with AOL. This would also explain the release date of Jaguar in the late summer... after the m$ deal is over... no more need to bundle ie.

[Taft]

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon
Not Apple... Netscape. We all saw recently that Apple had dropped ie from their ads to be replaced with netscape in the dock. Also Chimera has moved into mozilla.org which implies to me that it is now being developed for Netscape (keep in mind i have little to no understanding of the organization at mozilla.org/mozdev.org). Also Apple and AOL have demonstrated a relationship with the unveiling of iChat and AOL is Netscape. I think we can expect "Navigator" to be a Netscape Product perhaps bundled with Jaguar, demostrating Apple's new relationship with AOL. This would also explain the release date of Jaguar in the late summer... after the m$ deal is over... no more need to bundle ie.

That's some serious speculation you got going there. I think its plausible that Netscape would pick up something like Chimera, but its far more likely that they'll continue to develop and refine their existing product.

And I'm still not sure Apple is betting the farm on Netscape. I think its possible that Apple would buy out another firm for a browser. In such a scenario, I think Omnigroup might be high on their list. They've got a lot of great products there that Apple could use to battle their evil foe.

Taft

[AmbitiousLemon]

yes i enjoyed reading my wild speculations as well.

omni group is a sweet lil company. im so in love with omnigraffle. VERY mac like in everything they do.

but there is something weird going on with chimera/netscape

its likely apple is just using various browsers because they dont have to use ie anymore. so they are just messing with a bunchh of stuff.

[sparkleytone]

i think it may be a powerful statement that Schiller is using Chimera being that he seems to be the head honcho with Software.

I'm not so positive Apple would be allowed to bundle it even if they worked on it, due to the Open Source roots it has and the fact that OS X is indeed not free.

CVS updating has picked up this week with Mr. Pinkerton picking up some slack.

Only time will tell.

[jelloshotsrule]

interesting theory about netscape...

it would kinda fit, what with it being called "navigator" now...

i had been wondering if chimera would have had to get the ok/pay netscape to use that name....

[chmorley]

Surely showing my ignorance here, but why would it be a problem for Apple to bundle free software with OS X? They do that already. Granted, it's not open source, but why would that create a problem? Taft, you seem to be describing a legal and/or technical issue that I don't understand. Is it that Apple wouldn't want anyone else messing with their software? Couldn't they set up a Netscape model, in which their software is based on the open-source Mozilla project, but still be able to make their own browser based on it? Certainly, there could be other (non-Apple) variants of it, but why would that be a problem?

The Netscape thing is interesting, but it doesn't fit. Netscape has never put Mac software at the top of their list. Besides, they have always wanted their software to look the same across platforms. I can't imagine that is going to change.

I'm not sure I buy my own Apple wish, either, but I think it's more likely than other possibilities discussed here.

Chris :rolleyes:

[sparkleytone]

they would have to ship the source code right along with it. it adheres to the GPL license. Not something Apple is too known for.

[chmorley]

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon
<snip>...Also Chimera has moved into mozilla.org which implies to me that it is now being developed for Netscape (keep in mind i have little to no understanding of the organization at mozilla.org/mozdev.org)... </snip>
Sorry, AL, but I'm not sure what you mean. I checked, and the old Chimera.mozdev.org (http://chimera.mozdev.org/) site I've always gone to still works, and I don't see Chimera listed among the Mozilla.org's projects. What are you seeing that I'm missing?

Chris

[TiMacLover]

So I like chicken, whats wrong with that?

[chmorley]

Originally posted by TiMacLover
"We don't need computers Woz,
we need Blue Box's."
"Boxes", clover.

Chris

[Kid Red]

There's a thread at MacNN that the developement for Chimera has stopped for now. The main develeoper will be out of town or something until July or so according to a poster. I asked for the link where he read it, but if true, it'll be 2.7 for a few months.

[Taft]

Originally posted by chmorley
Surely showing my ignorance here, but why would it be a problem for Apple to bundle free software with OS X? They do that already. Granted, it's not open source, but why would that create a problem? Taft, you seem to be describing a legal and/or technical issue that I don't understand. Is it that Apple wouldn't want anyone else messing with their software? Couldn't they set up a Netscape model, in which their software is based on the open-source Mozilla project, but still be able to make their own browser based on it?

The issue is that Mozilla is licensed under the GPL. This means that anyone can get the source code for Mozilla and create their own products using the existing code. The catch is that you must make the source code for any such project available to the public and that source code must be GPL'd. So if Apple makes a browser based off of Mozilla code, they must release the source code for that browser to the general public.

Why do I think that Apple wouldn't do that? Well, Apple is embracing the Open Source movement. But they are not embracing the GPL. Instead they chose to license Darwin (their open source project) under the FreeBSD licensing scheme. Under this license, new products can be based on old source code without distributing the source code to the new product.

The FreeBSD seems to fit Apple's business model better. Apple likes to be more closed and proprietary with their products. FreeBSD allows that to happen: the base system in OS X is open source and contributions from the general public are allowed, but the GUI and everything else on top of that base system is closed and proprietary. This is exactly how Apple probably wants it.

So my point here is that basing a browser off of Mozilla code wouldn't exactly fit with Apple's past actions. They would have to release the source code to their browser. This would allow the browser to be ported to Linux, Solaris and *gasp* Windows. Software is one of the big reasons people choose Macs. Allowing software to be ported to other platforms would take that advantage away.

I think if Apple was going to build their own browser, they would make it very Mac-like (user friendly and elegant) and very proprietary. That is the pattern of Apple-past and I don't see them breaking it.

Taft

[Taft]

Originally posted by Kid Red
There's a thread at MacNN that the developement for Chimera has stopped for now. The main develeoper will be out of town or something until July or so according to a poster. I asked for the link where he read it, but if true, it'll be 2.7 for a few months.

This is exactly what I was afraid of!!

This project needs more contributors. And fast.

Taft

[AmbitiousLemon]

"David Hyatt" <mozdave@hotmail.com> wrote:

I'm on sabbatical until July 10, and since I'm the only one who can really
do Chimera builds (given the huge patch that exists only in my tree), I
doubt there will be any builds for a couple of months. I also won't be
working on Chimera again until July.

I could post the patch to a bug, but then someone will have to do the
(rather difficult) work of understanding how to merge the patch to the trunk
as changes occur.


Dave

that was written 5/16/02. Since then many people have offered to take over and it has all been ignored (as usual with the chimera guys).

[sparkleytone]

1. Apple starts an aggressive anti-windows/Microshaft campaign
2. Jobs testifies at Microshaft trial
3. Chimera shows up an Apple downloads
4. Chimera shows up at Apple's Xserve introduction
5. Couple of days later Dave says he is going on sabatical untill July 10th
6. MacWorld is July 15th

Did I miss anything?

I might be streching, but is this all coincidence? Or are we looking at
Apples new browser of choice.

interesting to say the least. i grabbed this off the Chimera newsgroup.

Who knows EXACTLY when the M$ deal ends??

[AmbitiousLemon]

chmorley: the chimera team has been in the process of moving from mozdev to mozilla.org for about a month now, currently all the bugs have moved to bugzilla, but the move continues. as with everything with these guys communication is poor and progress is even slower, so i am not sure why or when the move will be completed.

but this among many things is a lot of people's reason for thinking netscape may be interested in the project. aol/netscape being a favorite of apple and the apple/m$ deal over very soon i think it would not be unreasonable for apple to bundle a netscape branded navigator at some point in the future.

in fact many people suspect that dave's "sabbatical" until july is more evidence of this (mwny being when he comes back), although id guess the guy is just taking a vacation like he said.


cnet (as usual) has their own spin on things link (http://news.com.com/2100-1023-915480.html?tag=fd_top)

but if you guys are really interested you should just subscribe to the chimera list serve. thats where im getting all this stuff.

[kungfu]

hey get this... if you go into the about panel in chimera, at the very bottom after it scrolls for a while it says: "special thanks to: apple computer software engineering"... hmmm?

[j763]

hmmmm.... all very interesting! Here's my 0.02:

Apple won't buy OmniGroup or any of their products, the guys at Apple talk fondly of OmniGroup as a great example of some third-party developers making great products. Apple wants to encourage third-party development on OS X... They can't make EVERYTHING on their own. As for GPL, sure, they don't like it, but unless they reach a special deal with satan (aol) or *build their own browser from scratch* both of which I think are unlikly, they're stuck with GPL and well, i don't think they'd really care too much if people saw the source code for an Apple browser. So, Chimera is the most likely... If apple made an 'ibrowser' that would piss microsoft off in the extreme, so apple might just help the folks at Chimera out by taking them to v1.0 or something. that would be a massive improvement considering we've got v0.2.7 now. and advertise chimera on their site...

well, we'll just have to wait and see...

[jaykk]

Microsoft is already upset.. here is the excerpts from osopinion regarding Apple and AOL tie up.

" Late this week, CNNMoney reported that the folks at MSN are a tad bitter at Apple for choosing AOL's technology, and at AOL for offering Apple that which it had refused Microsoft.

CNN reported that MSN director Bob Visse said, "Looks like AOL is picking out another weak stepsister to interoperate with."

Where does MSN get off taking jabs at Apple, of all companies, for its lack of enough business skills to establish partnerships with America Online? This attack was totally unwarranted, and, if nothing else, shows MSN's attitude toward its Mac customer base.

With an attitude like that, it's no wonder that MSN has failed to offer any real competition against AOL's huge subscriber base "

read full story here
http://www.osopinion.com/perl/story/17819.html

[mmmdreg]

there's no reason apple needs to work on chimera behind the scenes...maybe they can take over if the going becomes too slow but until then, whoever is doing it right now should manage for a while...why don't people here go and help out?

[mmmdreg]

I was on the Chimera mailing list and someone asked how long it'll be till the next build...the guy went on holidays or something so he said although he will be making new builds, they wont be released a maybe a few months...

[britboy]

There was an interesting article about the possibility of an 'iBrowser' on theregister recently. If you're interested, check it out (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/25451.html). It does seem like a strange set of coincidences, what with Apple proclaiming Chimera as the browser of choice for OS X, and the main developers (David Hyatt) reported as being a 'mac-nut'.

I don't think it would be a bad thing at all, for apple to come out with their own browser. What would it be called? iNet? :)

[mmmdreg]

Originally posted by britboy
There was an interesting article about the possibility of an 'iBrowser' on theregister recently. If you're interested, check it out (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/25451.html). It does seem like a strange set of coincidences, what with Apple proclaiming Chimera as the browser of choice for OS X, and the main developers (David Hyatt) reported as being a 'mac-nut'.

I don't think it would be a bad thing at all, for apple to come out with their own browser. What would it be called? iNet? :)

I think this has been referred to...however, if it did come out...iweb? iSee? iBrowse? iExplore?

[sparkleytone]

new build and also build location of chimera. WHEEEEE!

Chimera Directory (ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/chimera)






edit: well that was anticlimactic eh?

[britboy]

At last, you can check the progress of a download! That had to be the single most annoying feature of previous releases.

Who's been working on this one? I thought the developer was on a sabatical?

[AlphaTech]

Just for S&G's I downloaded the freeware update/version of chimera... 100% crappy frames support. Most of the sites I visit have frames as a important part of them, so poor support there means that the browser is useless to me.

Maybe they will get it right with the next release, but I won't hold my breath.

BTW, here is the version I am referring to update (http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=14326&db=macosx)

[AmbitiousLemon]

i think we can all ignore IGNORANT posts from alpha like that.


this was a great update for me. see can see they are starting to make pref panels. downloads have progressbars now. you can rearrange your bookmarks. autocomplete is finished.

lots of little things made it in. if every update was like this i would gladly wait a full month.

as far as who has been developing (dont you people read the page before clicking download?). dave is only one of the developers. the concern was that dave was the only one who knew how to apply a very important patch and he was going on sabattical (like most of the netscape guys now that they have 1.0). the rest of the guys kept working on it, but no builds could be put out without dave and his patch. but the patch was up there an available and i guess someone (Brian Ryner) figured out how to apply the patch... so we got a build.

[AlphaTech]

You know something AmbitiousLemon, I say something critical of one of your beloved alternate browsers (an actual observation btw, based on FACT) and you get all pissy. Never mind that I would give the next actual release a shot, but the current one doesn't suit MY needs. If you like the way if doesn't handle frames, then use it. If you don't go to sites that use frames, then you mustn't be going to all that many different, or recently updated, sites.

I even posted a link to the version I downloaded... if you have the next one after that, and it has better frames support, good. If not, then take it like a man, and don't claim I am "IGNORANT" because I don't put chimera up on a pedestal and consider it to be an über browser.

If they ever get it to work as well as the others, for support of frames and such, then I would even seriously consider replacing ie and netscape with it. I will wait for that to happen, if it ever does.

[AmbitiousLemon]

hm :rolleyes: i wonder who the "pissy" one is :D

[icetraxxg5]

I agree with AlphaTech, Chimera doesn't have really any features and handles a lot of stuff like frames horribly. I don't what's up with AmbitiousLemon and horrible software cough* Adium cough* but its kinda weird. :rolleyes:

P.S. I rather have a nice fully featured browser like OmniWeb (the newest SP release that is) then a browser that has really no features, horrible plugins and crashes a lot but that is a little faster in page loading times. :cool:

[mmmdreg]

the point is that it's a work in progress so lacking features is meant to be expected hence Alphatec's "ignorance"...Just see howone browser can progress all the way through to v1.0 from now and you may think back on what you said...

[Taft]

Who says the browser wars are over??

They are living on in the MacRumors forums. I like what Chimera is trying to do, but its so far off from finished that I'm not going to hope. I'l try it from time to time, but Mozilla and OW will be my main browsers until its remotely usable.

Not trying to bash Chimera. Just stating facts. Chimera is not ready to be used as a full time browser for ANYONE who wants to do more than view html only web pages. Lets hope it gets past there someday.

Taft

[Rower_CPU]

I find myself in an interesting quandary when it comes to my choice in browsers.

I hate to support MS, and would love to use a different browser, but as a web developer how difficult it is to create pages that work/look the same on any browser.

I want to support the development of alternative browsers, but I also want to be sure I'm viewing a page as the author intended. Unfortunately, IE still gives me the best mix of speed and compatibility...but I'm anxiously waiting for someone to take that crown away. :D

[AmbitiousLemon]

:rolleyes: have you tried mozilla 1.0 rc3 or netscape 7 ?

[Rower_CPU]

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon
:rolleyes: have you tried mozilla 1.0 rc3 or netscape 7 ?

I'm waiting for Mozilla to go final.

I won't touch Netscape for all of the AOL junk bundled with it.

[AmbitiousLemon]

:) agreed on the netscape note. i really miss netscape, but i cant get over all the aol stuff either.

normally id say just try out the mozilla build, but with just weeks until the 1.0 id say go ahead and wait. one thing to keep in mind though is that mozilla will never be 'finished' like you think of most apps being finished. its a development project. the 'finished' product is netscape (or chimera, any anything made from the mozilla code). still i think we all know that 1.0 will probably be one of teh most stable apps available. one of the great benefits of open source development. o and make sure you dont download a 'nightly build' unless you actually want to de debugging, a lot of people download these and get angry that they are sometimes unstable. get the actual 1.0 release (u prolly knew this but i jus thought id make it clear JIC)

[AlphaTech]

Originally posted by mmmdreg
the point is that it's a work in progress so lacking features is meant to be expected hence Alphatec's "ignorance"...Just see howone browser can progress all the way through to v1.0 from now and you may think back on what you said...

First off... I was pointing out a flaw when Lemon went and got all bitchy about it. Try and go to a site with frames, and use them a few times and you will see what I am talking about. IF they ever get the bugs worked out, I will consider it. Until then, I will continue to use the browsers that I do.

Personally, I wouldn't release software that has flaws that will affect tons of people. To ME that screams that they are rushing things too much. Get the damned bugs worked out and THEN release a browser that at least will work with 95%+ of the web sites out there.

Part of being inside the Mac community is being tolerant of other people. From what Lemon has shown, he is not in that group when it comes to browsers. I won't place any other items on that list... yet at least, until he proves that they belong there.

Most intelligent people understand that what they need/like is not what other people should use. I don't tell people to ONLY use ie or netscape, that would be stupid... just as telling people to dump ie or netscape in favor of one of the other browsers, that also would be stupid. Or as you phrase it "ignorant".

BTW, I was hoping that the latest version of chimera would be more usable, but it proved itself to not be in short order. I refuse to suffer with software that doesn't pass initial tests, on the off chance that it might later, without a revision update. When they come out with the next non-beta release, I will probably give it a try.

I understand why the browser is based on something called "Fizzilla"... it fizzles instead of working with a rather important feature.

[Rower_CPU]

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon
:) agreed on the netscape note. i really miss netscape, but i cant get over all the aol stuff either.

normally id say just try out the mozilla build, but with just weeks until the 1.0 id say go ahead and wait. one thing to keep in mind though is that mozilla will never be 'finished' like you think of most apps being finished. its a development project. the 'finished' product is netscape (or chimera, any anything made from the mozilla code). still i think we all know that 1.0 will probably be one of teh most stable apps available. one of the great benefits of open source development. o and make sure you dont download a 'nightly build' unless you actually want to de debugging, a lot of people download these and get angry that they are sometimes unstable. get the actual 1.0 release (u prolly knew this but i jus thought id make it clear JIC)

I just tried out rc3 a little. Overall, I'm pretty impressed with the progress it's made.

One thing jumped out at me: scrolling speed

While not technically a compatability or speed issue (since actual page loading is comparable), it's definitely noticeable.

Hopefully the final version addresses this somewhat.

[sparkleytone]

alpha we are all getting tired of your crap.

the reason they are putting out "unfinished" software is so that the installed user base (me) quits screaming for an update, and also in order to get feedback about options/bugs/etc.

when you begin developing software we'll begin to respect what you would and would not do relating to that field.

[AmbitiousLemon]

spakley - thanks.

alpha - you are not worth a response. i think your own words damn you more than anything i could say.

rower- yes, scroll speed is a pain in most browsers. iCab has amazing scroll speed. not sure how they do it. osx in general has bad scroll speed so ive gotten in the habit of clicking on the blue sliding thing (name?) and just clicking and dragging it to scroll (do this is all apps) and its smooth then. good news for everyone is that jaguar has excellent scroll speed (scrolling on my 333mhz powerbook is faster than on my 800mhz imac with 10.1.4 installed!).

[sparkleytone]

scrollbar ;)

[Rower_CPU]

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon
rower- yes, scroll speed is a pain in most browsers. iCab has amazing scroll speed. not sure how they do it. osx in general has bad scroll speed so ive gotten in the habit of clicking on the blue sliding thing (name?) and just clicking and dragging it to scroll (do this is all apps) and its smooth then. good news for everyone is that jaguar has excellent scroll speed (scrolling on my 333mhz powerbook is faster than on my 800mhz imac with 10.1.4 installed!).

iCab's built in HTML validation in a nice feature as well for checking pages, although DreamWeaver MX does this now, too.

I recently enrolled in Apple's Seed program, so hopefully I will get access to Jaguar before its official release. It's going to be critical for me to see how it performs on older video hardware in order to make purchasing suggestions at work.

[AmbitiousLemon]

is the scroll bar the whole thing or just the blue component? cuz now im wondering what the whole thing is called.

[chmorley]

Absolutely the litmus test, isn't it? I don't use OmniWeb because one of my favorite sites, cbssportsline.com, uses menus that aren't rendered properly in it. That and it's much slower than Mozilla. I don't use IE because it crashes more than any other piece of non-beta software on my computer. I know others say it's "stable" on their machines. It's not on mine.

I actually don't go to any sites regularly that use frames (yes, I am thankful that many developers left frames back in the 90's). That probably makes Chimera a better choice for me than some. However, while I like Quartz rendering and AA, Mozilla is the best choice for me right now. It is fast. It has tabs. It is very stable. It renders with the best of them. The only thing IE has over it is the WMP plugin.

BTW, I don't hate M$ so much that I wouldn't use their browser if I found it useable. If it were as fast and stable as Mozilla, I'd probably use it. This is not the case, so I don't.

Chris

[AmbitiousLemon]

Originally posted by Rower_CPU


iCab's built in HTML validation in a nice feature as well for checking pages, although DreamWeaver MX does this now, too.

I recently enrolled in Apple's Seed program, so hopefully I will get access to Jaguar before its official release. It's going to be critical for me to see how it performs on older video hardware in order to make purchasing suggestions at work.

im hoping apple will continue with developer's seeds and give developers some time to recode their apps. ive found A LOT (ok thats probably an exageration) of apps dont work in jaguar. most be some serious kernal changes.

[sjs]

AL loves the underdog browsers like Mozilla and Chimera. He extrapolates that because they are GOING to get better they are already better.

If you want an alternate to IE there is nothing that touches OmniWeb from top to bottom of the user experience. Mozilla has nothing unique, its not faster than OW and its UGLY! iCab is too primitive and Chimera probably will be the best of the bunch but its not there yet.

I just feel like being opinionated...but can we quit pretending other browsers are better than they are??? yeah, I'm rooting for Chimera and if Apple developed it that would be great.

AL: this isnt meant to be critical, just making an observation about your pulling for the new guys!

[AmbitiousLemon]

Originally posted by sjs
AL loves the underdog browsers like Mozilla and Chimera. He extrapolates that because they are GOING to get better they are already better.

:) true. i get excited easily, and dont like people who start doggin' my fun. i often assume people know im just raving, when they dont.

Originally posted by sjs
If you want an alternate to IE there is nothing that touches OmniWeb from top to bottom of the user experience. Mozilla has nothing unique, its not faster than OW and its UGLY! iCab is too primitive and Chimera probably will be the best of the bunch but its not there yet.

fair assessment. one comment. tabs. ahh, im so addicted, its quite sad actually.

[icetraxxg5]

Sorry if I implied that Chimera was horrible, I was just REALLY mad at it today because it was conflicting with OmniWeb and it crashed all the time! I think Chimera will NEVER get a full feature set because already you can see the developers are not as working on it as hard like they used to. I am all for OmniWeb, Its got TONS of features and is getting pretty quick.

P.S. Alphatech, The people that made chimera released it because they might of wanted to get other peoples opinions/suggestions/comments on it before it reached version 1.0, notice that it is currently at .2.X ;) I understand why you don't like Chimera though!

[swahilibill]

I downloaded Chimera and it was really good looking at fast, but I could not get the bloody thing to stay on my machine. Everything would become different and it wouldn't stay downloaded. Whatever, I am happy with Internet Explorer.

[sparkleytone]

actually development has been pretty feverishly high for chimera lately, its just that no one had the resources to create a build, and hyatt usually does the versioning.

[AmbitiousLemon]

Originally posted by icetraxxg5
Sorry if I implied that Chimera was horrible, I was just REALLY mad at it today because it was conflicting with OmniWeb and it crashed all the time! I think Chimera will NEVER get a full feature set because already you can see the developers are not as working on it as hard like they used to. I am all for OmniWeb, Its got TONS of features and is getting pretty quick.

yeah this release has to be the least stable its ever been. people on the mailing list are going nuts. kinda how development works, as feature sets come in things get buggy and take longer to debug.

as far as the development, its actually accelerating. more people are working on it now. problem is we are losing dave for a couple months, so i dont expect much until he gets back.

omniweb is getting very impressive. i am in so much need of that spellchecker too. if it had tabs, i jump the mozilla ship in a second.

with antialiasing in mozilla and a chimera skin applied, i think mozilla is a tough customer to beat. if anyone can do it its the omnigroup. they are amazing. omnigraffle has officially unseated adium in my book as the best osx application. just wish i had reason to use it more often, but when i do its a pleasure.

[chmorley]

Originally posted by sjs
Mozilla has nothing unique, its not faster than OW and its UGLY!
Just not so.

Check the benchmarks. Mozilla is faster. Not opinion, but well-demonstrated. And while tabs are not unique to it, they become difficult to give up.

OW is certainly pretty. The Quartz AA and Aqua icons are great. But do you really think this is ugly? (Mozilla with the Chimera skin)

[sjs]

I sorta just said Mozilla was ugly to get AL riled but he seems to be taking his medication properly now and nothing can ruffle his feathers.

You are so right about TABS... I sometimes use Chimera just for that feature.

I hate to add this, but there is no browser in Macdom that runs as well as IE on a PC.

Hopefully Apple will fix that with OS 10.2 and some time for OW and others to develop.

BTW - what benchmarks show Mozilla to be faster?

[chmorley]

That was funny. Sorry I spoiled your fun, but I take credit (rightly or wrongly) for turning AL on to Mozilla. He used to be a big OW booster. Remember this thread from January (http://www.macrumors.com/forums/showthread.php3?threadid=1478)?

Anyway, the whole sad truth about the lack of a *great* OS X browser is really a drag. It spurred AL's rant back in January, and remains true 4 months later. Hopefully it will change before the end of the year.

One piece of good news from that old thread, though--look at how many people are using browsers other than IE. To some degree I think this reflects the competitors' improvement, but I think it also shows that people on this forum are willing to try new things.

Chris

[AmbitiousLemon]

wow, that was a great trip back in time chmorely. i especially like this quote from me:

i havent spent a lot of time exploring it yet (havent even looked at the tabs everyone is raving about... could someone explain the benefits of these to me?)

laughed out loud when i saw it.


it was also neat to see the thread that introduced all of us to chimera. looks like that happened 2/21.

that was also back when alpha was a really cool guy.

boy have times changed.

pretty nice to see that most people have switched away from ie in the 5 months time between now and then. nice to see people exploring other possibilities. thats what i like about mac people, they are not afraid to go and try new things. woudl any of us know there was something wrong with windows if we never used a mac? wed just assume that that is the way computers were.


tabs - hahaha, sorry that quote still gets me.

[AmbitiousLemon]

o and the only fair speed test ive seen is this one

http://chimera.mozdev.org/showdown.html

BUT its way out of date, all the broswers now are much faster (except ie)

[AmbitiousLemon]

about:mozilla

try it.

funny.

[britboy]

Ok, i've been using chimera .2.8 for a couple of days now, and my opinion of this build has changed somewhat. I think it's crap. It's been unexpectedly crashing on me every half hour or so, i can't copy links, the page jumps around when i use the space-bar whilst typing responses on macrumors... the list goes on. What the heck have they done to what was looking to become a great browser???

I'm going back to ie and omniweb for the time being, until the next build of chimera is released. I thought it could only get better. I was wrong.

[AmbitiousLemon]

britboy: the crashing and what not has been tracked down, and they tell us the next build (.3) already fixes it. so dont get too discouraged. often one lil code error can screw everything up. dont the big disaster some make it out to be. this is the nature of development, as new fetaures come in so do new bugs, but they get squashed in no time... no need to worry.

o and the page jumping around — crazy isnt it, been like that for awhile. hope they take care of this one.

[britboy]

I'm not by any means giving up on chimera. Far from it. I merely find it bemusing that a later build can function worse than previous ones. Yes, i know that that's the nature of development.... i just wish it wasn't. A fix has been released already? That was quick :)

I just find some thing frustrating at times... you know?

[AmbitiousLemon]

totally understand.

one of the crashes that can be easily reproduced is the following:

open chimera.

close window.

click finder dock icon.

click chimera dock icon.

command-n

=crash

doesnt get much more annoying than that.

and the conflict with omniweb is really odd. dont know if they fixed that too.

but things seem to be moving quickly again, and there is a great discussion on HIG in the list, that makes me think we might see some great HIG changes — finally.

ive been talking to mike about it and he has been very cool. hes forwarding stuff to dave.

i guess thats one of the things that bug me about people who make comments like alpha did, they react violently and negatively instead of trying to help. its open source, the developers need teh feedback. if you find errors with frame and you REALLy feel its important then let them know and do so in a constructive manner. they are pretty cool about it. and it makes you feel good to know the peope who make the product heard you and are using your feedback. — ok nuf with my rant.

this is a very unstable build. but im hoping that since we are going to .3 instead of .29 it might be a big update (a fellow can hope right?)

[AmbitiousLemon]

i like this quote from dave he posted on the list:

Exactly.

Beta software means that the user should not expect anything to work.

Programming an application is kinda like working with a beanbag. When you
push at one spot, another spot pokes out. And often changes you make at one
spot will affect another place that you never thought would be affected.

This is the nature of beta software.

But submitting reproducible bugs is essential. If it isn't reproducible
then it isn't a bug. And even if you think someone else has mentioned it,
still submit it. That will give the developers an idea of the severity and
how many people are affected. Then they can focus on the 'most popular'
bugs first.

Cheers,
David

and from mike:

there was a refcount problem with the security images in 028. my fix should fix a lot of the random crashes.

it'll be in the next spin we release.

[britboy]

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon
i like this quote from dave he posted on the list:
and from mike:



Sounds pretty good. I'll be looking forward to the next release. I bet they'll have been inundated with bug reports this time round :p

Are you in contact with the developers regularly AL?

[AmbitiousLemon]

:) those arent personal ccommunications. they are emails from the listserve. mike and i have been emailing back and forth a little bit but for the most part im just pulling all this stuff from the list. its all archived, and a lot of it is also on the chimera board.

[Ringwraith]

Originally posted by chmorley

Just not so.

Check the benchmarks. Mozilla is faster. Not opinion, but well-demonstrated. And while tabs are not unique to it, they become difficult to give up.

OW is certainly pretty. The Quartz AA and Aqua icons are great. But do you really think this is ugly? (Mozilla with the Chimera skin)

Umm... how did you get the Chimera skin onto Mozilla? I would LOVE to have that!

[AmbitiousLemon]

http://140.107.24.64/mozilla/navzilla/

(much snappier too )

[Ringwraith]

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon
http://140.107.24.64/mozilla/navzilla/

(much snappier too )

Thanks. It makes Mozilla look a LOT better than that %@#* Modern interface. Talk about windows-ugly...

Also, another link on the page took me to a site with Pinstripe, also nice on Mozilla.

As for Chimera, I think it has a LOT potential to be a great Mac browser, but 0.2.8 is still pretty early.

[chmorley]

Whether you like Mozilla or not, it's interesting that so few PC users actually even try it. Some might argue that that's because they don't need to because IE is complete for Windows. Besides, using anything other than IE as the default browser caused some problems (and I believe it still does). Still, I'd like to think it's that they simply aren't into trying new things. I believe this is something that sets Mac users apart.

Here are the latest numbers for downloads at VersionTracker.com

Mac OS X
Downloads version 1.0: 14,408
Downloads all versions: 164,049

Windows
Downloads version 1.0: 676
Downloads all versions: 3,903

Especially impressive when you consider how many more Windows than Mac users there are.

Chris

p.s., as far as the "Rumored Future of Chimera", look for a big speed increase. With 10.1.5, they can achieve anti-aliasing in a more efficient way. So now the 45% speed hit they took when they added AA has been reduced to about 5%. Pretty cool, eh?

[foniks2020]

Just a quick comment.

As far as Versiontracker goes I'd like to see what sort of traffic they get in general. I'd venture to say that they receive a whole lot more traffic from Mac users than Windows users. Windows people seem to just go to Cnet cause that's what they are used to.

I'm gonna head over to cnet to check the stats there on Mozilla 1.0 I'll post the data here.

[foniks2020]

Cnet's Download.com

Windows: 3,014
OS X: 176
OS 8/9.x: 93
Linux: 19

Well at least the Windows traffic thing held up.

I'm actually surprised there weren't bigger numbers.

[AmbitiousLemon]

how many of you actually download THROUGH these kind of site though? although i would agree few pc users would try mozilla, i still think these numbers dont mean much. i think most people just go to www.mozilla.org so we would have to go there for real numbers.

[britboy]

Chimera has gone 0.3!


What's new:

The smooth text implementation now relies on new 10.1.5 features. It is now only 5% slower than the unsmoothed text, and about 30% faster than the smooth text feature in 0.2.8. You'll find that most operations (typing in text fields, resizing of windows, scrolling) are now much faster as well.

The build is much smaller because of a change in build process. This makes page loads a bit faster.

You can now edit bookmarks.

Many crash fixes. :) This build is much more stable than 0.2.8.

Brilliant! Now i can ditch ie again, and go back to the navigator i so grew to love :)

[AmbitiousLemon]

mmmm. i was really hungring for something new. i was thinking of downloading a nightly of mozilla but this will hold me out for awhile. :) thanks for the update britboy.

[AmbitiousLemon]

ok sorry for the double post, but i havent used chimera in awhile and damn is it fast. always blows me away.

hm... as i type this though im noticing they still havent gotten rid of the bug where when typing in a field (such as this) everytime you hit the space bar the screen jumps down a page so the whoel screen is jumping up and down while i type.

for those off you who use chimera as your default are you having this problem?

[britboy]

Just out of curiosity, what did you edit in my last post AL? I'm pretty sure there was nothing offensive in there :rolleyes:

I haven't encountered jumping whilst typing. In the past it kicked in after about an hours' use.... i'll come back and edit this if it starts later. So far so good though. :)

[AmbitiousLemon]

o i just fixed your quotes. the vb code was off so it didnt format the text as a quote.

[start quote] text [end /quote] is what was written. i delted the start and end so it quoted properly.


i know i have seen other report the space bar jumping bug, but i guess it isnt happening to everyone then. think ill head on over to the chimera board and see if i can get more info.

this was a very nice release.

[chmorley]

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon
hm... as i type this though im noticing they still havent gotten rid of the bug where when typing in a field (such as this) everytime you hit the space bar the screen jumps down a page so the whoel screen is jumping up and down while i type.

for those off you who use chimera as your default are you having this problem?
I have the same thing happen. A very annoying bug.

Chris

[AmbitiousLemon]

is it just here at MR or have you found other sites that do this. i started writing a new thread at the chimeraboard and noticed no jumping. i cant seem to find other sites that do this but i dont visit many forum sites.

[chmorley]

I don't visit other forums, so I don't know.

Chris

[britboy]

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon
o i just fixed your quotes. the vb code was off so it didnt format the text as a quote.

i know i have seen other report the space bar jumping bug, but i guess it isnt happening to everyone then. think ill head on over to the chimera board and see if i can get more info.



Ah, thanks for that :)

Whereabouts do you go on the chimera board for the info? Is there like a forum? I ask because i could only find comments posted by some people, with feature requests and bug reports; or is that what you mean by "chimera board"?

[AmbitiousLemon]

thats all i meant by the chimera board. figured i would see if anyone else had posted a thread about the bug and if not then i was going to create a thread of my own.

if you really want info you need to go to bugzilla. thats where you could see if anyone has files a bug, but i hate bugzilla so i avoid it at all costs.

[sparkleytone]

am i the only person who is completely unhappy with the new quartz rendering?? the new "poor-man's quartz" implementation is sloppy looking and measures wrong. i am still sticking with the last nightly before the change as the official .3 does not look anywhere near as good.

[AmbitiousLemon]

you know a lot of people arent very happy with it, but some people seem to think it looks better! im guessing if enough people complain we will have an option like we had before to turn on and off the AA. maybe just a choose your AA style.

[Ken-1]

I went to their Mozdev website, but nowhere do they give a way for feedback...
Do we just expect that they look at the message boards or something? :confused:

[AmbitiousLemon]

well if you really want to get heard head on over to bugzilla and file a bug about it and then head on over to the board start a thread provide a link to your bug so people can go and suport it so the developers get the idea.

[britboy]

Just as a note of interest AL, i'm experiencing the jumping around again whilst typing in MR. In fact, it's happening right now. Strange, it took a few days to start....

[AmbitiousLemon]

that is sort of odd. i cant recall when it started. a few versions back. i dont visit any other boards except the chimera board and it doesnt happen there. but if you guys find it happens else where come back and post here again.

i got confused for awhile with mozilla open with the chimera skin and chimera open. they look almost the same so if you arent paying attention... felt pretty stupid when i realized i was in mozilla and not chimera.

[britboy]

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon
that is sort of odd. i cant recall when it started. a few versions back. i dont visit any other boards except the chimera board and it doesnt happen there. but if you guys find it happens else where come back and post here again.



I've got it happening again on MR, so decided to try out another board when i sometimes post. It uses the same software as MR. No jumping around though. Is it something that's just particular to macrumors perhaps? It's possible.