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Mozilla-Based Browser Sports Cocoa Front End
Aqua OS X writes: "Looks like there is a new project over at mozdev.org. The guys are working on a new gecko-powered Mac OS X browser, Chimera (not to be confused with the X11 browser which bears the same name), built using Mac OS X's Cocoa API. It renders well, and scraps the bulky Mozilla/Netscape UI. Supposedly, version 0.2 should support Quartz rendering." Most excellent. XPFE (cross-platform front-end) has been my biggest problem with Mozilla on Mac OS, and perhaps my biggest obstacle to long-term adoption of Mozilla as my primary browser.
Has anyone seen the newest version of opera?
http://www.opera.com/
I use the Opera 6 beta in Linux at home and under Windows at work and IT WORKS GREAT. I normally wouldn't use anything other than IE5 (generously provided by The Beast) except that the Opera 6 beta gives me ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING I LOVED ABOUT IE...
They have a version for the MAC OS, and I recommend trying it today.
Wow! This must be a PERSONAL letter, just for me!
Well I've found Chimera to be innovative as far as interface goes. It uses a tabs within a window to allow you to look at different pages between tabs. Certainly is very useful at eliminating screen clutter that an active web user can end up with while visiting 10 sites at the same time. It also seems way faster than netscape on OS X. I think Chimera breathes some air into mozilla on OS X.
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Have you had problems with copy'n'paste in the Linux 6.0 beta? I love it too except for one tiny and incredibly annoying bug. I often have several websites open at once and copy text from one to another (e.g. webmail, /. posts etc.) and if you don't get the order exactly right what pastes is the URL! Even if I'm copying a URL from a page into the address field of the same page! (Have to delete the existing url text before copying and pasting.) Is this just some messed up library on my system perhaps?
Sorry for the OT post... (And my undying gratitude to anybody who's run into this and knows how to fix it!
OmniWeb. It isn't open source like Mozilla (or presumably Chimera), but it runs quickly, is relatively small and EXTREMELY fast, and (even better) fully uses the Aqua interface rather than its own, like Mozilla (?).
My two personal favorite features, though, are image filtering and JavaScript checking. Blocks ads and popups almost perfectly, in my experience.
TANSTAAFI: There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free iPod.
I don't use Opera, but it sounds as if you need to read about the X11 selection mechanism.
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
It renders slashdot about twice as fast as IE, and the tab feature is Great! (tab between slashdot, email, and apple.slashdot) and I couldn't find any problems rendering any site, except it wouldn't accept input in text fields. As long as your going on a click-fest, and don't need to enter anything, it's pretty swell.
Chimera is definitely beta, though. I've noticed three bugs already.(I'm using it right now to make this post, so they're not major bugs)
All in all, it is really nice, though. It is already much snappier than Mozilla. I'll be following this one.
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very nice so far - beats the current mozilla for looks and function. this is for precision and speed where I thought mozilla woulw be by now - i still dl it and delete it regularly - no release has made me want to stick thus far. this one'a a keeper even in beta.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Ok, I admit it. Maybe I'm not a part of the most average type of web-user. But I like to have a lot of tabs/windows open, not just 1-3 like a lot of people seem to have. We're talking about at least 5, and often around 15. iCab under OS 9 never had a problem with this. OmniWeb 4.0.6 got pretty slow with a lot of windows open, but the newer sneaky peaks haven't been. Opera kept it's pace with 15 windows being used, but it increased the probabilty that it would crash.
Mozilla though, is an entirely another story. On my iBook500 with 320 MB RAM, or a 500 MHz UltraSparc II w/ 256 MB RAM, it crawls as soon as I've got either a few tabs or a few windows open. By the time I've got 8-9 tabs or windows open, it's unusably slow, often taking 1-5 *seconds* just to open a new window!
One of my biggest complaints with Mozilla in the past was that it took so damn long for new windows or tabs to open. As a person who is always cmd-clicking to open links in new windows (so I can continue reading things in the last page, I read many pages at the same time, non-linearily), Mozilla is a pain in the ass to use.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
When you highlight something with the mouse in X11, it automatically copies it to the X clipboard.
When you press the middle mouse button, contents of the X cliboard are inserted at the cursor position.
In other words, you don't need Crtl-C Ctrl-V in X to do simple copy/paste operations (though there is nothing wrong in doing so).
Unlike in Windows, you DO NOT highlight what you want to be replaced, because as soon as you highlight it get copied to the clipboard, replacing whatever you had there that you were wanting to paste.
In Konquueror, there's a button next to the URL field that clears its contents. For example, if I wanted to highlight a printed web addess somewhere and paste it into Konqueror's URL field, I would highlight my selection, click the clear button next to the URL field, (left) click inside the URL field to give it focus, then middle-click in the field.
Hope this helps!
Happy *n*xing, (Linux, BSD, OS X, etc.,...)
Tyson
Dirk
One of the best things I've seen in a browser is the scrapbook in IE for MacOS. This isn't even in the Windows version of IE and I really have no idea why.
I'd love to see this in Mozilla, or any of the front-end browsers. It's very convient when you order something, to just toss the reciept page in the scrapbook so you can refrence the tracking number without hassle. Or when I'm looking at a professor's website for his notes, just scrapbook what I have to read and read it offline(i'm on an ibook)
This looks like a nice browser so far. But how does one close the tabs? I don't like the icons much, I'd like something a bit more cartoony (yes, it's a really small problem). It's far from feature filled, but it's on it's way! Good job guys! :)
It really ruins the otherwise pleasing asthetics that aqua gives. The features of this program that work are very cool though.
just to note that I've been having the same rendering problem w/ IE, where portions of a page will disappear until I scroll down and back up or resize the page...
Tabs are great for browsing porn and warez sites, this is going to be my favourite, I really miss my Galeon
funny how much the comments on this thread have nothing to do with chimera.
"have you tried opera?"
"how about omniweb?"
who cares? this is about chimera. and, though it is currently in pre-pre-beta probably alpha stage (hell, a good many of the basic features aren't even there yet), it is waaay faster than any browser out there - probably for any platform. check out the speed tests at chimera.mozdev.org. wow. and when you try it, you can see that it's true.
funny that the person raving about omniweb was saying how fast it is.. their benchmarks nail it as the slowest of the bunch (and i'd agree). omniweb looks great, but it ain't no speed demon. ie is much faster.
anyway, i check the development site every day to see if there are new versions released. each new release has been leaps and bounds better than the last. i'd say that this will be hands down best browser in a couple months if they keep pushing it forward at the current pace.
no one has commented on the sidebar yet - very cool. when they finish it, it will even have google search in the sidebar pull-out. hell yeah.. that's one of the few things i really like about opera (and the google toolbar for IE on windoze).
big round of applause for the fine folks developing this browser!
The lack of OS X-looking interface elements in Netscape is probably the biggest reason I still use IE. I don't have a very large "soft spot" for apps that think their own (slower, uglier) widgets are better than that of the OS that they're running on. This should be a good Mozilla-based remedy to that. (Besides the widgets, Netscape is just too bloated with the IM module, Composer, etc... I have seperate apps to do all of that stuff already, and they're better.)
Alcohol and Calculus don't mix. Don't drink and derive.
I like it a lot already. As much as I love mozilla's composer, I do not need another mail and news reader, and as far as that goes, I don't need an integrated IRC client either.
I will certainly follow this one closely. I'm using it now, and except for some minor MINOR bugs, it seems pretty good. Muche better than a 0.1 version would indicate.
Is it just me, or is Mac OS X really starting to get some pretty cool open-source apps? (I mean besides the ports of the linux stuff)
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question above. pls answer. much appreciated. :)
(see screenshot of the browser)
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Maybe I've just used mozilla so long I'm used to it, but I like the 'modern' theme.
... although I'm not sure how that adjective can be used to describe a software program.
Also, the XPFE makes an interface standard across platforms, which could make it easier for users to move from one to another without having much of a learning curve, as well as allowing for development of cross-platform apps using the Mozilla rendering engine. Anyway, it has so many great potential uses, I fail to see what is so bad about it. At least for me, it isn't "bulky"
The bottom line is this: If you like your programs to all have the same 'look,' that's great, good for you, and I'm glad someone is building a look for Mozilla that makes you happy. However, don't rip on the XPFE just because you don't use it.
I don't "rip on" XPFE just because I don't use it. I "rip on" it because it doesn't look like a Mac app. Mac apps should look like Mac apps. Mozilla doesn't look like a Mac app. Therefore it's bad (for those of us who value the concistency HIG principle, anyway). MSIE, on the other hand, is a fantastic app as far as looking and acting like a Mac app. However, it is crash-happy and from Microsoft. :-)
... bah!
In addition to looking wrong, it also doesn't act properly. At least it does drag and drop to the Desktop, but it lacks Keychain support, AppleScript support
I dig Mozilla, but not as a Mac app.
Chimera should try to become the Galeon of Macosx !
It also is a browser that uses Gecko, but with native widgets (GTK+) for Linux
It pioneered ( i think ) tabbed browsing for Linux, and has lots of nice features not found in any other browser. Nice search toolbars, autobookmark folders, nice fullscreen mode and lots more...
I really miss it on my Powerbook when I run OSX ( I also run YellowDog Linux ), and I consider it to be the best browser on earth. It has Gecko's rendering speed with speedy native widgets and alot of features !
If chimera could follow that design it's bound to be a success ( no mean feat though )
I really love Mozilla because of the speedy rendering and whatever platform I use, I always know there's at least one browser that fits all !! But on MacosX it hogs alot of memory and isn't up to speed with the Windows/Linux versions.
blaah !
This is the only glaring problem in an otherwise useable pre-beta.
then tell steve jobs to get his boys cracking on some bastardized version of mozilla. everyone else is doing it, why not apple? that way you can have your tabs, your aqua interface, and get it hooked into the system similar to IE w/ windows, and get some real speed.
'nuff said
I'm almost ready to switch to X. I'm really Really REALLY sick of Nutscrape 4.7.9 taking a big fat dump 5-6 times a day on my classic installation. I'm old school Mac & Linux and X is just too damned funky to please me right off the bat. I think I can force myself to suffer through it until whatever major changes Apple's bound to make to X in the future (too many people are having trouble and this is such a new GUI implementation to not make some major changes soon, maybe 10.5 or something). On X I can't justify using Mozilla. It's lack of decent javascript support is what's holding me back. I have to have that support. The web interface to my Packeteer won't work right without it. I do like Opera. I don't think I've tested the JS support in it yet though. Mozilla developers, if you're listening, fix the JS issues and you've scored at least one more user.