New Browser for OS X......Chimera!!

odinn5

All browsers for OS X have their own merits and some are better than other for their own reasons. I use Mozilla Mach-O most of the time. It is (well was) the fastest browser out there. However I did happen to stumble across a new browser out there. It is called Chimera. It is a fresh off the boards browser being developed by the same community that is doing Mozilla. It is being developed as a pure Cocoa application. I must say this browser is THE FASTEST HANDS DOWN BROWSER AVAILIBLE!!!! However it is still at version .11 so it is buggy, will crash, not all the standard functions work. But as a preview of the speed, design, and future ease of use this browser will provide, it rocks. This browser has features like Tabbed browsing, a slide drawer (like in Maill.app and OmniWeb... I have to say the Chimera slide drawer is smoother and more responsive than OmniWeb) The slide drawer contains, bookmarks, search engine & history. The interface is a clean Aqua design and easy on the eyes (nothing cluttering the browser). It launches quickly and speeds through pages like a rumor of an Apple PDA through the Mac Community. Now the bugs, as this is a FIRST release it is nowhere near complete. It WILL crash, my longest time without a crash is about 90 min. , but unlike OmniWeb it does't take a mineut or two to crash, but clears out quickly. Some links do not respond. QuickTime, no. Java, not that I have seen. Fill in spaces are a no go. There are a few other bugs to be worked out. My hope is that it will one day take advantage of the Quartz engine (this is what makes OmniWeb reneder pages so well and clear) but without any speed sacrifice. I will now give you the link and hope that everyone will give it a try.



<a href="http://chimera.mozdev.org/"; target="_blank">http://chimera.mozdev.org/</a>;



If you like what you see and want to help or tell the develpoers to keep up the great work their e-mail adresses are on the page as well.



I hope everyone who likes it will write in and tell them that the work they are doing is appreciated and that we look forward to the new releases.



Did you download it? What did you think?

ghost_user_name

I tried it a few days ago and must say that it is insanely unstable!! It's got awesome potential and I greatly look forward to its progress.



I'm sticking with Moz0.9.8 and OW4.1sp42 for now.

eugene

I thought the mozilla license forbid people from making publicly available binaries with the gecko engine like that.

crawlingparanoia

If it is being developed as a "true Cocoa application" as you say, then how come the fonts look like crap and their is no scrool wheel support? And how come we still get the ugly Windows-style and buttons and such? No Aqua?

odinn5

"If it is being developed as a "true Cocoa application" as you say, then how come the fonts look like crap and their is no scrool wheel support? And how come we still get the ugly Windows-style and buttons and such? No Aqua?"

----------------------------------------------------



Did I not say that this is only v.11 ? Come on give it a rest, it is not even Beta! It does not yet use the Quartz engine as it might do in the future. Lets see they have been working on it for only 21 days! Read my post, read the website. I was talking about the potential of the browser, not trying to start a crap fest of someting that the developers only released as a preview only 4 days ago so that people can know about it and hopefully attract some support for. I guess you only see the glass half empty as there was not even one constructive comment there just crap. Didn't your mother say that if you don't have anything nice to say, shut the hell up.



[ 02-17-2002: Message edited by: Odinn5 ]</p>

guitarbloke

It looks like it has a lot of potential; gotta love tabbed browsing.



I'll be keeping an eye on this one, but as of now it's not really worth more than drooling at the screenshots

eman

I'll try it out when it's actually stable.

sizzle chest

I've enjoyed trying out Chimera.... for ten seconds at a time, between crashes!

crawlingparanoia

[quote]Originally posted by Odinn5:

<strong>Didn't your mother say that if you don't have anything nice to say, shut the hell up.



</strong><hr></blockquote>



No, but my mother taught me that Cocoa apps don't need any extra work to use Aqua. She taught me that all windows in a Cocoa app need no extra work to take advantage of scroll wheels. She taught me that Cocoa apps use the Cocoa aa scheme and not the one in Chimera.



And quit being such an ass. I was asking legitimate questions.

thinkingdifferent

The last thing I need is YAB, Yet Another Browser.

corvette

[quote]Originally posted by ThinkingDifferent:

<strong>The last thing I need is YAB, Yet Another Browser. </strong><hr></blockquote>



No, but the first thing you need is the best browser. And right now, IE sucks and all of the other browsers are not perfect.

rocky racoon

[quote]Originally posted by crawlingparanoia:

<strong>



She taught me that all windows in a Cocoa app need no extra work to take advantage of scroll wheels.



</strong><hr></blockquote>



well, at least here she taught you wrong

crawlingparanoia

Well, for some strange reason my scroll wheel works in all of my Cocoa apps but only a few select Carbon apps, and not in any open/save dialogs of Carbon apps, even in those that do support scroll wheels. Can someone explain this to me then?

thinkingdifferent

[quote]Originally posted by corvette:

<strong>



No, but the first thing you need is the best browser. And right now, IE sucks and all of the other browsers are not perfect.</strong><hr></blockquote>



You speak the truth but I don't see where this one is going to improve the situation. Acoording to the author, this browser is only 21 days old. How long has Omniweb, IE and Netscape been in development?

ghost_user_name

[quote]Originally posted by crawlingparanoia:

<strong>No, but my mother taught me that Cocoa apps...</strong><hr></blockquote>

I'm guessing your mother isn't a developer? Well, not a smart one, at least.

ghost_user_name

[quote]Originally posted by ThinkingDifferent:

<strong>You speak the truth but I don't see where this one is going to improve the situation.</strong><hr></blockquote>How will it improve?

Let's see....



We've got Gecko: a fast, standards-compliant engine.

We've got a Cocoa interface that uses native Aqua goodies.

We'll soon have the smooth Cocoa-style AA text. (see bugtracker)

We'll soon have an improved download manager. (see bugtracker)

Even more?



Basically, it'll be an awesome competitor against OmniWeb. If you learned anything from your old high school economics class, competition is a Good Thing?.

crawlingparanoia

So I guess what you guys are saying, is that if I were to go write an app in Cocoa, that I would get all of those ugly Windows-style buttons to start, and that it would require extra work to get it to use Aqua? I don't think so. Maybe Chimera is a Cocoa app not using extras.rsrc or something? I don't know... I'm not a developer and you guys aren't providing any answers.



(I'd appreciate in the future no references to my mother, thank you)

havanas

I know its a full fledged web client vs just a browser.... but look at that cpu load.



Also notice the slighty 'nicer' rendering of macnn's tabs. Though without looking at the html its hard to tell what the coder intended(my guess is the chimera way).



I do however like the mozilla look over the native aqua. Using aqua widgets != good usability or design. I would prefer if the developers kept the client as it is in Netscape6, perhaps just using full aqua widgets in only the embeddable version of the browser. To allow styles(colors and sizes outside of aqua's range) in forms and such they should keep the gecko widgets, otherwise Chimera will NOT be as capable as IE is, and this project has every right to clean IE's clock.



I guess the question is whether Chimera is to be a full NS browser (supporting themes and styles) or just a tech-demo for this embedable browserView?









ps - drawers are a hellish ugly creation and I wish Apple could unmake them.(who knows... they deprecated docklets pretty well)

ghost_user_name

havanas:



I suggest you use Mozilla 0.9.8 rather than Netscape 6. If you don't like the Aqua look, simply apply the "Modern" theme to it and you get the Netscape look. Moz is currently MUCH better, IMO, than NS (and it fixes the rendering bug you pointed out). Also, I agree with you about drawers. Yuck. <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />



crawlingparanoia:



Well, you brought your mother into this to begin with. Anyway, what you are forgetting is that just because something is Cocoa doesn't mean it can't have Carbon parts or that it can't create custom widgets. QuickTime is Carbon, for example, yet it works fine in Cocoa apps. If I understand correctly, though I may be wrong, Chimera is like that. The browser itself is a Carbon implementation in a Cocoa interface. Besides that, the browser uses custom drawing procedures to create the buttons. As shown by the improvements in Mozilla, developers are working on grabbing images from the system for their widgets (although they are still not "native" widgets, they *look* like native widgets).



However, havanas does make a good point about keeping the windows-ish widgets *inside* the browser view so that themes can be applied per the pages' design.



It's all a complicated mess!! <img src="graemlins/surprised.gif" border="0" alt="[Surprised]" />



[ 02-17-2002: Message edited by: starfleetX ]</p>

crawlingparanoia

Actually Odinn5 brought her into this.



Anyway, thanks for the clarification.



But still, if it is a Cocoa app using Carbon parts, it still isn't a "pure Cocoa application" as Odinn5 originally said.

odinn5

I said nothing bad about your mother, I just didn't like the way you contribute your thoughts on what I thought I made clear was a very new and incomplete browser. Your comments ( a term I use very loosely, they are better termed as b*tchings ) could have been put in a more constructive form, as I was not trying to start a flame session about a browser that I am very excited about. I am sure you would be happy about someone pissing on a subject you were excited about. Thanks for the fun that you have provided in what I hoped what would be a great forum that the develpoers could use for suggestions. Thank you everyone else for keeping the comments civilized and professional.



[ 02-18-2002: Message edited by: Odinn5 ]</p>