Chimera

to answer ruoy noitseuq i would have to yas tha chimera (now called Navigator) is by far the most impressive web browser created. when this thing gets finsihed there will be no intelligient person (meaning that approximately 5% of the retupmoc using public) still using any carbon browser. version .23 is amazing. its hard to believe the thing has only been in development for 2 months (and it sure shows those omniweb guys better get their act together).

but on a side note, i think i broke it it doesnt seem to open a new tab whem i apple-click anymore. anyone else have this problem? it seemed to happen about .22 time but i use it so seldomly i cant recall if .2 had the same problem. also changed recently is i installed mozilla 1.0rc1. im wondering if that had something to do with the problem. mozilla still opens apple-click items in a new tab and all my preferences in mozilla are set properly. well let me know if anyone has the same problem or has a fix.

[ps i wrote this while in chimera .23!]

 

I downloaded Chimera and had a look at it, but it didn't think it was quite impressing. I prefer iCab.

cu

 

You ok, AL?

Feeling a bit dyslexic today? Or is backwards spelling another feature of Chimera?

 

i'm really happy with the development of Chimera. it's coming along extremely well. iCab is all well and good, but I like my browsers to be pretty. And the only thing pretty about ICab is that its pretty damn ugly. .2.3 is the best so far and i can't wait to see where they continue to go. Plug-in support needs to come soon.

 

It's already my default browser. I think apple should devote some resources to helping this project along. It would perfectly compliment OS X as the default browser.

 

I Had some trouble with it.
I couldn't open a page, and you cannot adjust any settings, like proxy settings so I'll wait for next releases.
I have to admit though that it looks promising.

 

Well, i like pretty browsers too, but i don't think that iCab is ugly. Ever changed the default icon set?
I'd only like antialiased text rendering, but that should come soon (with 10.1.4 perhaps).

cya

 

this is a good time for me to state my belief that quartz rendering in carbon apps is NOT going to ever come. this causes way too many problems with text formatting/highlighting etc. as well as ridiculous print problems and more. the quartz implementation of every carbon app is bound to need a different approachl. just look at tinkertool turning this on. it doesnt look good at all compared to omniweb and such.

 

Re: You ok, AL?

no kidding! I thought I was just feeling a bit cracked out by work today...ha ha ha

anyway...I haven't been able to test it out yet...though I am going to soon enough...has anyone run any speed tests while using Chimera??

 

Chimera is good.

The reason these guys were able to do so much in so little time is that its pretty much just a wrapper to the Mozilla engine (obviously). But that takes very little effort for a *ton* of functionality. Also, plug-in support and other features like spellchecking and native aqua widgets in redered pages may be difficult to get working and working correctly. Its a good first effort and has done a lot, but I'm still waiting to see where it goes and not holding out too much hope for all of the features I want. Best not get my hopes up only to have them dashed.

You know what might be cool?? An Apple-made browser built off of Mozilla code. They would get the interface stuff right and not have to worry about the messy complications of rendering, CSS, and the other crap. Maybe I should send them a suggestion.

Taft

 

Re: Chimera is good.

I agree. Apple would get it right. Web-browsing is an integral part of the computer experience and this is one of the areas that they haven't covered with the iApps. At least users would have a choice unlike M$.

Chimera has much potential. If the team's goal is for small size and fast functionality, then I'm not getting my hopes up for anything stunning either. The Fizilla engine is the fastest that I've tried of any browser in X. They're definitely moving in the right direction. Imagine what 1.0 would be like if they ever get there.

 

Chimera .2.4 is out with quicktime and flash (kinda) supported. this browser gets better everyday and is now my default browser.

 

OmniWeb has had two updates in the past few weeks and has speeded up substantially. In fact its at least as fast as Chimera 0.2.3 and Mozilla 0.9.9

Still looks better and has better feature sets, too. Renders pages better than it used to with Java improvements.

Please don't say its slow unless you are up to version 4.1 beta 4. Try it; I noticed significant improvements.

 

it is awesome... no plugins yet, but it's faster than any other osx browser, more stable ... it's now my default, and only resort to omniweb whe i hit a page needing plugins.

i'm so enthusiastic, that i'm even reporting bugs!

 

sorry but OmniWeb is nowhere NEAR as fast as Mozilla or Chimera. Not even in the same ballpark. Plus the fact that it continues to have rendering problems after months of development. I have sp73 installed and while it is much faster than say, 4.06 it still cannot touch gecko browsers. I was once an OW diehard, then I realized that its not what its cracked up to be.

 

OmniWeb and Chimera

Yeah, I root for OmniWeb, too. But there's no way that it's nearly as fast as Chimera or Mozilla in terms of speed. While I agree that OmniWeb has gotten faster with each Sneakypeek and 4.1b release, it's still too slow. Given all the resources put into each project, though, this is shaping up to be the new browser war. I am a huge fan of Chimera, but we all know that competition is what spurs innovation. The two of these facing off will produce great things.

That being said, neither Chimera 0.2.4 nor OW 4.1b (or sneakypeek) is complete and/or stable enough to be my default browser just yet. I am sure they both will be--and soon. But each has annoying rendering, stability, and java problems that make them too much hassle to be my first choice. I am sticking with Mozilla for now. It's just the one that works best. I used iCab for a while, but it's not as fast or compliant as Mozilla.

People saying that Chimera has only been in development for 2 months is a bit misleading, though. Let's not forget that they are benefiting from the years of development that have gone into the Mozilla project. The folks at OmniGroup have been building a browser from scratch (more or less). Both are on the right track. Both already put IE to shame. And soon enough, we Mac users will be able to survive with just one browser on our computer! Can you even imaging such a thing?

Chris

p.s., the folks at Chimera did some benchmarks that were pretty impressive. You can find them at their web page. Here is the link. I posted a graphic version of it about 6 weeks ago, but can't find it. Because Chimera has since implemented Quartz rendering, though, it is slower than it was then. They acknowledge that Quartz rendering gave them a big speed hit. Still, this will likely give you some idea.