Chimera 0.4.0

[chmorley]

Chimera's latest nightly lists its version as 0.4.0. It continues to become more stable and responsive. I swear its faster.

If you're interested, check it out here (ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/chimera/nightly/latest-trunk/). If you're not, don't.

Chris

[whfsdude]

They have been doing that for awhile now. :D

[mmmdreg]

I downloaded a few of the earlier nightlies based on .30 and the toolbar favourites had gone and all other settings too...i got .3 back and it was fine so I'll just stick with that till .4

[sparkleytone]

it was officially released today. wonder how long its going to stay open sourced?

[AmbitiousLemon]

im using it right now, and you know what? that annoying spacebar bug is gone.

sparkley, you think it wont remain open source? you been talking to dave, or is this just speculation? i was pretty surprised when dave was hired by apple.

[alex_ant]

I like how I can change the fonts now. :)

In the past, whenever I've downloaded Chimera and tried it out, there has been something or other that has caused me to close it and go back to Mozilla within 5 minutes of using it. But I've been using it for 3 minutes now and it seems good so far.

The tab bar needs a close button... and the tabs need context menus... well, there are still a lot of little things Chimera needs, but it's making good progress.

Alex

[AmbitiousLemon]

yeah, although i love chimera and think it will be really terrific one day i too usually switch back to mozilla after a few minutes. i dont think they will ever add a button to close the tabs, sicne there has been much discussion on that already and the developers seem to be against it. although the developers seemd to be opposed to having the close tab option in the file menu, and they were opposed to having command-w close tabs and all those changes have been made, so who knows. now if only they woudl enable mosx's spellchecker i would be lovin' this.

[sparkleytone]

cmd+w closes the window. its a general mac command. as far as the opensource thing goes, theres a reason its being so vigorously worked on. basically its a project netscape has quietly put alot of emphasis on with some really good programmers, and they have given mike pinkerton a team of engineers to work with. while i think they are in general his peers, he is the owner of chimera right now, and netscape is his employer. i remember talking to dave hyatt a while ago and him saying something to the effect of chimera becoming netscape's OSX browser. hopefully they don't add the bloat. if they indeed continue on the current track, and apple doesnt jump into the browser market (i doubt they will), then Navigator will easily be the browser of choice by 1.0. that is my opinion of course.

[chmorley]

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon
im using it right now, and you know what? that annoying spacebar bug is gone.
I was noticing that with the last nightly. It's feeling more and more polished--more stable, less buggy, even faster.

I still switch back to Mozilla after about 10 minutes, though. I find it begins to lag a bit when I open a number of tabs--even after I close them it still seems slower.

Progress, though...

Chris

[sparkleytone]

yeah its still definitely a memory hog, but i find it no more an offender in that area as mozilla. just check out your top process when mozilla is supposed to be idle. i have used chimera as my primary browser for a few months now and am really happy with the progress. i will never forget flaming AL for his recommendation of Chimera .1.2 , but i will say i held my word and tried it as soon as it had font AA. I am excited for the future of Chimera, and all that really needs to be done now is a bunch of UI additions, and pleasepleaseplease pull back to the mozilla 1.1b branch for a SIGNIFICANT speed increase.

[AmbitiousLemon]

Originally posted by sparkleytone
and pleasepleaseplease pull back to the mozilla 1.1b branch for a SIGNIFICANT speed increase.

now that would be nice, but they did say they dont plan to go back until chimera hits 1.0...

[sparkleytone]

i know, but i really think chimera has hit its performance ceiling with the codebase it has. so either start hacking at the core engine, or pull up to date.

[chmorley]

Originally posted by sparkleytone
cmd+w closes the window. its a general mac command. as far as the opensource thing goes, theres a reason its being so vigorously worked on. basically its a project netscape has quietly put alot of emphasis on with some really good programmers, and they have given mike pinkerton a team of engineers to work with. while i think they are in general his peers, he is the owner of chimera right now, and netscape is his employer. i remember talking to dave hyatt a while ago and him saying something to the effect of chimera becoming netscape's OSX browser. hopefully they don't add the bloat. if they indeed continue on the current track, and apple doesnt jump into the browser market (i doubt they will), then Navigator will easily be the browser of choice by 1.0. that is my opinion of course.
I am glad they switched to cmd+w. I had gotten used to cmd+y, but never thought it made much sense. I understood the reluctance (cmd+w=close window; we were closing a tab), but without a standard "close tab" command, cmd+w made the most sense (and is easier on the hands).

I've seen you over there on the Chimera board, Sparkley. Good to see someone in the know.

As far as it being 0.4.0 "for awhile", it can't have been too long. The last nightly I had d/l'd was less than a week ago, and it was 0.3.0. Perhaps this was a signal.

Chris

[AmbitiousLemon]

hm, i decided to try using chimera as my defualt for awhile. working out well, but i am having problems with bookmarks. i am using mozilla 1.1b and can not seem to export my bookmarks. i go to manage bookmarks, then export bookmarks get the window asking me where to save it. click save and the save window disappears but it never creates the bookmarks file. anyone else have this problem? any other way to get the bookmarks out of mozilla?

[chmorley]

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon
...any other way to get the bookmarks out of mozilla?
I tried to export them, with the same results. Strange. Luckily, there is no reason to export them. They exist in a file called bookmarks.html, located in ~/Library/Mozilla/Profiles/default/pe7x7brx.slt. Do a Sherlock search for it. You'll find it. You can import your bookmarks to Chimera from there. That's what I did, anyway.

Chris

[AmbitiousLemon]

worked like a charm. i havent tried to export in awhile, i wonder how long it has been broken.

[mac15]

man chimera is getting better, can't wait for a 1.0 release

but the pages look crap, the fonts look so thin and crap

[chmorley]

Originally posted by mac15
man chimera is getting better, can't wait for a 1.0 release

but the pages look crap, the fonts look so thin and crap
You can adjust the fonts in the Preferences pane now. Give it a go.

Chris

[AmbitiousLemon]

well i just switched back to mozilla. chimera seems to ahve some downlaoding issues. the file i downloaded would never show up. also the spacebar problem still exists on other sites (versiontracker). going to be hard switching back to moz though. i got really used to the outside apps opening a new tab instead of a new window feature. very nice.

[chmorley]

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon
well i just switched back to mozilla. chimera seems to ahve some downlaoding issues. the file i downloaded would never show up. also the spacebar problem still exists on other sites (versiontracker). going to be hard switching back to moz though. i got really used to the outside apps opening a new tab instead of a new window feature. very nice.
Not sure why Chimera is acting differently on my machine. I have actually been impressed with the downloading. It now shows the progress, and actually has a better throughput rate than any other browser I have used (which I don't understand at all)--about 20% faster (60k/sec vs. 75k/sec.).

Also, I don't have the typing bug at VersionTracker (or anywhere else). Did you definitely use 0.4.0?

It still doesn't render ESPN.com correctly, but seems great with everything else.

Chris

[AmbitiousLemon]

well that is odd. i was pretty surprised when the spacebar bug came back at vt. are you using the official release or a nightly?

the download thing is weird. makes me feel like im windows. it looks like it downloads but then the file isnt where i saved it to.

[chmorley]

Using the official 0.4.0. The vt thing is odd, too.

Just to ask a stupid question, after the d/l isn't where you saved it to, have you done a sherlock search for it? Is it on your hard drive?

Chris

[AmbitiousLemon]

you know actually i havent. ill try to reproduce the bug and see if i can find the file.

[AmbitiousLemon]

no file found.

[chmorley]

Very strange.

FYI, I have downloaded 5 or 6 files tonight. They have all ended up on my desktop (where I had directed them).

Chris

[mmmdreg]

I've used Chimera for my main browser since .30 due to its speed and cool interface...of course there are some things that don't work sometimes so i have a copy of IE to do that sort of stuff for me...

[chmorley]

I just changed my browser preference to Chimera. I also find that there are a few things that don't work, but I have Mozilla for that.

Besides, it has finally become stable enough to do work in. The only thing holding me back before was frustration from the app quitting when I was in the middle of work.

Anyone know about Chimera's encryption? Is is secure enough to do financial transactions and such?

Chris

[jelloshotsrule]

as a pretty avid chimera user for a few months... what's the "spacebar problem"?

there are some bugs for sure, just wondering which one this title belongs to....

word.

[AmbitiousLemon]

well the spacebar problem was bug with typing in text fields (like typinga reply here at MR) where when you pressed the spacebar the screen would scroll up and down, jumping as if you had clicked scrollbar to jump down a notch. it was very frustrating and we had only really noticed it as a problem here (tested at other forums but didnt have the same problem). but i seem to be having the same problem when typing replies at vt as well even though the problem is gone here at MR.

[jelloshotsrule]

yeah, i got that problem too (of course). i figured that's what you meant. but when i type, i ignore it so i never knew 100% for sure that it was only the spacebar....

sucks that it's still there at all....