This is sad. There's a new, ultra fast, Cocoa and Gecko based browser in development for the Mac, and some people's first reaction is to try to piss on it.
It's a pre-alpha technology demonstration release, and it's already pretty darn cool. It may crash a lot right now, but it's faster than anything else avaliable for the Mac, as well as better looking than everything except perhaps OmniWeb (and it renders pages WAY better than OW).
[quote]I said nothing bad about your mother<hr></blockquote>I know that and I never accused you of such. I only said that we could keep her out of this. That is all.
[quote]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<hr></blockquote>Cool thing about the Internet: people are judged based on their ideas and ideas alone. Bad thing about the Internet: written word can be misinterpreted and very easily taken the wrong way.
Perhaps I should have changed "fonts look like crap" to fonts are smoothed poorly, but I certainly wasn't bitching. I seriously wanted to know how a pure Cocoa app could behave in the way that Chimera does.
You say...
[quote]I was not trying to start a flame session about a browser that I am very excited about<hr></blockquote>
but then you say...
[quote]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.<hr></blockquote>I didn't make any comments, only had questions. If you look at my post - two sentences and a fragment - all three were questions.
[quote] I am sure you would be happy about someone pissing on a subject you were excited about.<hr></blockquote>I, like you, would not find that fun. I am sorry my original questions were taken the wrong way.
[quote]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.<hr></blockquote>So you started this thread so that the Chimera developers could use it as feedback? Did you email them the link? What did they think? (seriously)
[quote]Thank you everyone else for keeping the comments civilized and professional.<hr></blockquote>Well the following wasn't very professional: [quote]Originally posted by starfleetX:
I'm guessing your mother isn't a developer? Well, not a smart one, at least. <hr></blockquote>Despite that, it was starfleetX who finally answered my questions. Thanks again.
Moving on...
I think if they can get the Cocoa AA-scheme in there and either Aqua or a consistent, non-Windows-like UI in there, it could turn out to be great. I tried it out only briefly, had no crashes, it was pretty fast, and the tabbed-browser mode was cool.
I am not now, now was I ever, trying to piss on this thread. Read my post above. I had legitimate questions which, while they might not have been written the most happily way possible, were still legitimate question - legitimate questions which took 15 more posts to answer (thanks again starfleetX).
Just when I was starting to think you were Bill Gates in disguise, you turn around and pull a very cool "I see how you might have taken it wrong" viewpoint that I really appreciate and respect. I thank you very much for seeing how I was feeling and were decent enough to let me know what your intentions were. I am glad that we could clear this thing up as this forum was starting to lose its fun factor for me. Again thank you. And to everyone else I will plea to you that we keep it cool, professional, and civilized so that we can all have fun without anyone feeling bad and make them not return to this thread and lose their valuable insight.
Honestly as of right this second, no. I did not start the thread as a development forum but had thought of doing that untill our little trouble started. But as soon as I am finished typing.... off it goes.
As you said moving on...
I find the best way to use Chimera in its current form is to start from the Untitled:Blank screen to use a bookmark, and to go on from there. It seems to hang around for a little while longer.
In fact if you do try out Chimera, time it. Let's see how long it can be kept up for.
<strong>Link has been sent and I hope they visit to maybe answer questions or to reap some great ideas we could come up with.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Just something that popped into my head... if I recall correctly, I believe some of the Omni guys post over at the MacNN boards.
On my machine, it is a bit faster at e.g. window resizing. Then again, that could just be because there's much less running behind the interface; I dunno if it'll slow down when they get more of it working.
If Omniweb got tabbed browsing, though, I'd take it home and love it forever and ever.
<strong>Link has been sent and I hope they visit to maybe answer questions or to reap some great ideas we could come up with.</strong><hr></blockquote>
<strong>uhm, where exactly is this browser faster than omniweb? </strong><hr></blockquote>
We're talking about page rendering, not window resizing or scrolling, which are another matter.
IE uses it's own page rendering engine, which is great on the PC, but slow on Mac OS X.
OmniWeb uses it's own page rendering engine, which is very 'OS X friendly' but slow and has problems with some pages.
Mozilla based browsers (including Chimera) use the Gecko layout engine, which is both fast and standards compliant. Fizilla uses a Carbon based port of Gecko, which is quite fast, while Chimera uses the pure UNIX Gecko back end, which is as blazingly fast as something really fast covered with cooking oil sliding downhill on Jupiter.
This is what we are excited about (oh, and the Cocoa based Aqua wrapper too )
Ok, addressing some of the comments/questions above.
Chimera can be thought of as being divided into two parts: the front end and the embeddable browser control. The front end is pure Cocoa, and the back end is a mixture of Carbon and Cocoa. Specifically we're using NSQuickDrawViews, Cocoa objects that enable you to get to a GrafPtr for Carbon-style drawing.
Right now we're having to start with a current snapshot of Gecko. That means it has all the objectionable problems that Mozilla has, namely a lack of Quartz rendering and ugly form controls. We are actively working on solving both of these problems.
(1) Lack of scroll wheel support and key event support is because the Gecko widget back end is being ported to Cocoa, and it isn't finished yet. I just got scroll wheel support working today, so expect that in the next downloadable build.
(2) Quartz rendering. I have the browser up and limping with Quartz rendering, but the implementation is suboptimal, and the speed hit is unacceptable. I'm not going to turn this on until I'm convinced that the speed issues have been resolved. (Speed first, style second.)
(3) Scrolling. Right now scrolling is sluggish because I'm running into what I believe is a bug with NSQuickdrawView in Cocoa. It doesn't seem to honor the scrollRect function on NSView (it just blits white). I'm either going to have to fall into Carbon to solve the problem or try to figure out if this is my fault or not. Anyway, until this is fixed, scrolling is repainting the entire visible area when you move, and that's why it's slow.
(4) Form controls. The short term plan for form controls is to use nsITheme to do native rendering. However, Mozilla is about to pick up a new set of form controls, and we didn't want to waste time converting the old ones to look right when new ones are just around the corner. So we're waiting for the new ones to land, and then we'll make them look more like Aqua.
Remember, as far as the layout engine is concerned we are working with a thick cross-platform codebase and if we want to stay in sync with Mozilla and pick up changes/improvements to the engine, this is a constraint we simply have to work with.
You may think it's inane/insane that - for example - Gecko manages its own scrolling and clipping, but the payoff is that the rendering is incredibly consistent across multiple platforms. IMO that's a good thing and well worth a couple of megs of code bloat.
Finally ,this is just a preview that I released only after many people complained that there were no builds. We're well aware that the browser isn't really usable as yet..
OmniWeb uses it's own page rendering engine, which is very 'OS X friendly' but slow and has problems with some pages.</strong><hr></blockquote>
i've never encountered problems with displaying pages (except from ones with iframes) and it renders faster than the pages load. at least it's fast enough for me
and there just isn't any browser which tops omniweb in style (i'm talking about the latest 4.1 sneakypeeks, not 4.0x) <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" />
what's exactly the difference between chimera and mozilla? the cocoa-wrapper?
Pretty much, yes. I'm using Galeon right now... same idea. It's the best browser for linux/gnome. It yanks out Gecko, and puts it in a native widget set, which has less ram/cpu overhead (using system GTK libs instead of drawing it's own). It also tosses out the bloatware... the Chatzilla, mail, web page editor etc. "The web, only the web" is Galeon's slogan and it's a phenomenal, hella fast, stable, attractive browser. Incidentally, 'tabbed browsing' appeared first on Galeon, and was later adopted on mozilla after people realized what a dope-ass idea it is.
If I were running OSX, I'd be all over Chimera like a pedophile on a playground.
<strong>uhm, where exactly is this browser faster than omniweb?</strong><hr></blockquote>As it's been pointed out, rendering is MUCH faster than OmniWeb. Just try any large thread at ArsTechnica or Slashdot that is really big and uses lots of tables.
[quote]<strong>i've never encountered problems with [OmniWeb] displaying pages (except from ones with iframes) and it renders faster than the pages load.</strong><hr></blockquote> <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> I guess you never visit sites that use CSS, complex tables, or JavaScript!
Oh, and thanks for the insider info, hyatt!! :cool: I'm glad I was mostly right in my assumptions.
I agree with robo's sentiments here... this project has so much potential to become the undisputed king of os x browsing; that is, unless M$ decides to rewrite IE6 in pure cocoa, with a rediculously fast new rendering engine ... <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />
<strong>IE uses it's own page rendering engine, which is great on the PC, but slow on Mac OS X.</strong><hr></blockquote>Actually, no, the Mac version and Windows version use two completely separate rendering engines. I think some Microsoft guy addressed this point a long time ago on the MacNN forums.
I agree that Chimera shows some promising signs. Using it, I get the same "this could be great" sense I used to get using OmniWeb. I feel that OmniWeb made great strides to get about 95% of the way toward its potential, and then stalled. Here's hoping Chimera keeps chugging along all the way to the finish line!
Comments
It's a pre-alpha technology demonstration release, and it's already pretty darn cool. It may crash a lot right now, but it's faster than anything else avaliable for the Mac, as well as better looking than everything except perhaps OmniWeb (and it renders pages WAY better than OW).
Some people..
-robo
[quote]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<hr></blockquote>Cool thing about the Internet: people are judged based on their ideas and ideas alone. Bad thing about the Internet: written word can be misinterpreted and very easily taken the wrong way.
Perhaps I should have changed "fonts look like crap" to fonts are smoothed poorly, but I certainly wasn't bitching. I seriously wanted to know how a pure Cocoa app could behave in the way that Chimera does.
You say...
[quote]I was not trying to start a flame session about a browser that I am very excited about<hr></blockquote>
but then you say...
[quote]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.<hr></blockquote>I didn't make any comments, only had questions. If you look at my post - two sentences and a fragment - all three were questions.
[quote] I am sure you would be happy about someone pissing on a subject you were excited about.<hr></blockquote>I, like you, would not find that fun. I am sorry my original questions were taken the wrong way.
[quote]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.<hr></blockquote>So you started this thread so that the Chimera developers could use it as feedback? Did you email them the link? What did they think? (seriously)
[quote]Thank you everyone else for keeping the comments civilized and professional.<hr></blockquote>Well the following wasn't very professional: [quote]Originally posted by starfleetX:
I'm guessing your mother isn't a developer? Well, not a smart one, at least.
Moving on...
I think if they can get the Cocoa AA-scheme in there and either Aqua or a consistent, non-Windows-like UI in there, it could turn out to be great. I tried it out only briefly, had no crashes, it was pretty fast, and the tabbed-browser mode was cool.
I am not now, now was I ever, trying to piss on this thread. Read my post above. I had legitimate questions which, while they might not have been written the most happily way possible, were still legitimate question - legitimate questions which took 15 more posts to answer (thanks again starfleetX).
Just when I was starting to think you were Bill Gates in disguise, you turn around and pull a very cool "I see how you might have taken it wrong" viewpoint that I really appreciate and respect. I thank you very much for seeing how I was feeling and were decent enough to let me know what your intentions were. I am glad that we could clear this thing up as this forum was starting to lose its fun factor for me. Again thank you. And to everyone else I will plea to you that we keep it cool, professional, and civilized so that we can all have fun without anyone feeling bad and make them not return to this thread and lose their valuable insight.
In resopnse to your question...
--------------------------------------------------
So you started this thread so that the Chimera developers could use it as feedback? Did you email them the link? What did they think? (seriously)
--------------------------------------------------
Honestly as of right this second, no. I did not start the thread as a development forum but had thought of doing that untill our little trouble started. But as soon as I am finished typing.... off it goes.
As you said moving on...
I find the best way to use Chimera in its current form is to start from the Untitled:Blank screen to use a bookmark, and to go on from there. It seems to hang around for a little while longer.
In fact if you do try out Chimera, time it. Let's see how long it can be kept up for.
[ 02-18-2002: Message edited by: Odinn5 ]</p>
<strong>Link has been sent and I hope they visit to maybe answer questions or to reap some great ideas we could come up with.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Just something that popped into my head... if I recall correctly, I believe some of the Omni guys post over at the MacNN boards.
If Omniweb got tabbed browsing, though, I'd take it home and love it forever and ever.
<strong>Link has been sent and I hope they visit to maybe answer questions or to reap some great ideas we could come up with.</strong><hr></blockquote>
<a href="http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=8300945231&m=7860966473"; target="_blank">Do you mean this one over at that place we're not supposed to talk about?</a> I think it would be good if he (hyatt) did read the comments here also.
But do us all a favor if he(they) do(es) come here...
nobody be an @ss.... its an chance to give honest feedback to a real live developers... dont run 'em out of town...
<strong>uhm, where exactly is this browser faster than omniweb?
We're talking about page rendering, not window resizing or scrolling, which are another matter.
IE uses it's own page rendering engine, which is great on the PC, but slow on Mac OS X.
OmniWeb uses it's own page rendering engine, which is very 'OS X friendly' but slow and has problems with some pages.
Mozilla based browsers (including Chimera) use the Gecko layout engine, which is both fast and standards compliant. Fizilla uses a Carbon based port of Gecko, which is quite fast, while Chimera uses the pure UNIX Gecko back end, which is as blazingly fast as something really fast covered with cooking oil sliding downhill on Jupiter.
This is what we are excited about (oh, and the Cocoa based Aqua wrapper too
-robo
[ 02-18-2002: Message edited by: robo ]</p>
Chimera can be thought of as being divided into two parts: the front end and the embeddable browser control. The front end is pure Cocoa, and the back end is a mixture of Carbon and Cocoa. Specifically we're using NSQuickDrawViews, Cocoa objects that enable you to get to a GrafPtr for Carbon-style drawing.
Right now we're having to start with a current snapshot of Gecko. That means it has all the objectionable problems that Mozilla has, namely a lack of Quartz rendering and ugly form controls. We are actively working on solving both of these problems.
(1) Lack of scroll wheel support and key event support is because the Gecko widget back end is being ported to Cocoa, and it isn't finished yet. I just got scroll wheel support working today, so expect that in the next downloadable build.
(2) Quartz rendering. I have the browser up and limping with Quartz rendering, but the implementation is suboptimal, and the speed hit is unacceptable. I'm not going to turn this on until I'm convinced that the speed issues have been resolved. (Speed first, style second.)
(3) Scrolling. Right now scrolling is sluggish because I'm running into what I believe is a bug with NSQuickdrawView in Cocoa. It doesn't seem to honor the scrollRect function on NSView (it just blits white). I'm either going to have to fall into Carbon to solve the problem or try to figure out if this is my fault or not. Anyway, until this is fixed, scrolling is repainting the entire visible area when you move, and that's why it's slow.
(4) Form controls. The short term plan for form controls is to use nsITheme to do native rendering. However, Mozilla is about to pick up a new set of form controls, and we didn't want to waste time converting the old ones to look right when new ones are just around the corner. So we're waiting for the new ones to land, and then we'll make them look more like Aqua.
Remember, as far as the layout engine is concerned we are working with a thick cross-platform codebase and if we want to stay in sync with Mozilla and pick up changes/improvements to the engine, this is a constraint we simply have to work with.
You may think it's inane/insane that - for example - Gecko manages its own scrolling and clipping, but the payoff is that the rendering is incredibly consistent across multiple platforms. IMO that's a good thing and well worth a couple of megs of code bloat.
Finally ,this is just a preview that I released only after many people complained that there were no builds. We're well aware that the browser isn't really usable as yet..
Good things come to those who wait.
<strong>
OmniWeb uses it's own page rendering engine, which is very 'OS X friendly' but slow and has problems with some pages.</strong><hr></blockquote>
i've never encountered problems with displaying pages (except from ones with iframes) and it renders faster than the pages load. at least it's fast enough for me
and there just isn't any browser which tops omniweb in style (i'm talking about the latest 4.1 sneakypeeks, not 4.0x) <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" />
what's exactly the difference between chimera and mozilla? the cocoa-wrapper?
If I were running OSX, I'd be all over Chimera like a pedophile on a playground.
[ 02-18-2002: Message edited by: stimuli ]</p>
<strong>uhm, where exactly is this browser faster than omniweb?</strong><hr></blockquote>As it's been pointed out, rendering is MUCH faster than OmniWeb. Just try any large thread at ArsTechnica or Slashdot that is really big and uses lots of tables.
[quote]<strong>i've never encountered problems with [OmniWeb] displaying pages (except from ones with iframes) and it renders faster than the pages load.</strong><hr></blockquote> <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> I guess you never visit sites that use CSS, complex tables, or JavaScript!
Oh, and thanks for the insider info, hyatt!! :cool: I'm glad I was mostly right in my assumptions.
[ 02-18-2002: Message edited by: starfleetX ]</p>
I agree with robo's sentiments here... this project has so much potential to become the undisputed king of os x browsing; that is, unless M$ decides to rewrite IE6 in pure cocoa, with a rediculously fast new rendering engine ... <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />
<strong>IE uses it's own page rendering engine, which is great on the PC, but slow on Mac OS X.</strong><hr></blockquote>Actually, no, the Mac version and Windows version use two completely separate rendering engines. I think some Microsoft guy addressed this point a long time ago on the MacNN forums.