Chimera Developer Considers Dropping It

The Infamous Grimace writes "Chimera's developer is seriously considering dropping it, since 'Safari has already won.' This would be unfortunate, indeed. I still use Chimera at times, although it's true that Safari has become my browser of choice." I cannot use Safari regularly, it lacks too many features and has too many bugs. Of course, how long will this remain so? But even if Safari adds tabs and fixes bugs, will they add all the features I need from Chimera/Mozilla, like remembering form passwords, site navigation bar, more fine control of security and privacy? I guess there is always Mozilla if Safari doesn't fit the bill ... but Chimera is so much faster and Mac-like. Update: 01/22 19:54 GMT by P : The web site has been updated: "Chimera's not going [away], regardless of whatever I post on this blog."

Comments

Safari musing

[Matthias Wiesmann]

As for work on Chimera, I understand the feeling of the Chimera team. I agree that Safari is missing many features, it is overall more finished that Chimera. For instance Chimera does not support services well and on my machine it tended to crash a lot.

While some feature will certainly make it to Safari, others will not. It would be nice if Apple would open-source the whole Safari, but I doubt this. Instead, what would be smart from Apple would be to have the browser support plugins, not only for displaying content, but also for controling network operations and maybe some aspect of the GUI. This way people could customise Safari.

As for tabs (the topic of probably 95% of the posts on this post), I don't think is such a good solution. While they are usefull, I feel they are not complete, mostly because the relationship between tabs is unclear: are they at the same level? On the same site?

Most of the time I used tabs, it was to explore some hierarchy and load in parallel multiple branches (say multiple links). What I really would like is something that displays this tree structure, with some options like "pre-load branch" and "attach link as branch". This structure could also use the relationships defined by the link tags. In fact this thing would simply expand the notion of hierarchical history (and in fact include future links). If done well, Safari could use the same panel interface for the hierachy as mail.

Re:Safari musing

[octover]

I admit that I am not your average 'web surfer', I'm a web developer. I love tabs. Why? Because at any given moment I have three to four different pages loaded. Tabs make it very easy for me to switch back and forth without have to go up to a menu to see what is even open. It keeps my screen cleaner which is nice. The other great thing about tabs is that my mom can use Mozilla and never even see them. What is it with the whole tabs are too complex crap? Tabs aren't a default thing on any browser I've come across.

Oh and the relationship between tabs is that they are both 'documents' the browser has/is rendering. That is it. There is no other relationship than that, and I hope that no one gets it in their head to make it more than that (I'm thinking JavaScript and dom stuff).

Re:Safari musing

[Twirlip of the Mists]

My opinion on tabs is well known. I'm not picking a fight here; just offering a counterpoint. I'm well aware that lots of people disagree with me, so don't bother posting just to say that you're one of 'em. Constructive criticism, on the other hand, is welcome.

Because at any given moment I have three to four different pages loaded.

You accidentally point out the biggest flaw of tabs here: they're self-limiting. Depending on window size, you can only fit between four and eight tabs across the window before they have to be truncated. If you can't read the titles, the advantage of tabs evaporates.

With multiple windows, on the other hand, you can have as many pages loaded at once as you want. Multiple windows are not self-limiting.

Tabs make it very easy for me to switch back and forth without have to go up to a menu to see what is even open.

While the usability advantages of a menu over a row of tabs have been discussed thoroughly, it's hard to beat the ease of use of command-` for cycling through an application's open windows. Tabs are useful for up to 4-8 open pages; they are not useful for more than that. Similarly, command-` is useful for about the same number of open windows.

It keeps my screen cleaner which is nice.

On the other hand, it prevents you from looking at two pages side-by-side without jumping through hoops. (Choose the tab, control-click, choose "open page in new window.) Multiple windows can be used in a clean-desktop way (command-M for minimize), but let you arrange your pages however you want.

Oh and the relationship between tabs is that they are both 'documents' the browser has/is rendering. That is it.

That's not really good enough, in my opinion. For example, if tabs were implemented in some way that dealt with #1 problem (truncation), you really ought to be able to drag a tab from one window to another. That's a complicated thing; you have to implement your NSView subclasses as application instances instead of directly associating each NSView subclass with an NSWindow subclass. The current implementation, in which a tab is tied not to an NSView but to an NSWindow forever, kinda sucks. It would make more sense on a large scale for "tabs" (that name is becoming less and less appropriate) to be global network session objects, and for any window to be able to display the output from any "tab." But that poses huge usability problems; how does one instantiate a new "tab?" Should the application manage it for you, creating an autorelease pool of tabs automatically every time you open a new site (by clicking a bookmark or typing a URL or clicking a link that takes you to a new site)? Trying to implement "tabs" right opens more questions than it closes.

But basically my opinion can be summed up in what I've been saying all along: "tabs are a bad solution to a problem that we don't have."

Re:Safari musing

[dumbArtMajor]

Wow, I couldn't disagree with you more, my friend.

Depending on window size, you can only fit between four and eight tabs across the window before they have to be truncated. If you can't read the titles, the advantage of tabs evaporates.

If I understand correctly, you assume that people have absolutely no short-term memory to figure out what pages they've visited. If they understand the tab concept and they're using it, they're also well aware of which pages they've visited, and in roughly what order they opened new tabs. You're telling me this tab I'm reading Slashdot in loses all benefit because the title of the tab only reads "Chimera Developer Consid..." instead of "Chimera Developer Considers Dropping It"?? That's ludicrous.

On the other hand, it prevents you from looking at two pages side-by-side without jumping through hoops.

What hoops? I open another window without opening a new tab, and put them next to each other. Am I missing something?

I'm not saying they're perfect (I don't like Chimera's use of History as a tab-based object, it seems to work better in Mozilla) but they do add tons more options for the power-user without getting in the way of lesser users.

Re:Safari musing

[drsmithy]

If you can't read the titles, the advantage of tabs evaporates.

No it doesn't, because of things like locality and muscle memory. I *know* that in my monitoring window, the 5th tab from the left is alway the Big Brother firewalls page. The third tab is always the fileservers page. The 7th tab is always WebDNS. Etc.
The primary functional advantages of tabs are a) speed of access, b) organisation and c) a reduction in window clutter. And, as I've stated before, since OS X's task-switching paradigms still all suck, (c) is in IMHO one of the most important. Tabs facilitate these advantages by being always accessible, fixed in position and contained within a single window.

Multiple windows are not self-limiting.

Yes they are, because they fill the screen with wasted space and are difficult to navigate between in large numbers. On my 1600x1200 screen - already an above average resolution - any more than about 5 - 6 active windows becomes difficult to manage simply due to being obscured (and having no quick & easy way to switch between individual windows). 5 or 6 open windows is _nothing_ for a power user.
Discrete windows also lose out because they cannot be collected together into organisational groups under OS X. A bunch of browser windows are always in a simple stack and cannot be ordered or collected together _at all_ (and remain useful), even by kludgish methods like opening them in a specific order (like you can in Windows). Unless you have truly massive amounts of screen real estate (multiple monitors at 1920x1280+ resolution).
Even when I had a Powerbook and ran a spanned desktop at 1152x768 (or whatever it was the PB ran at) + 1600x1200, I still didn't have anywhere near enough desktop real estate to keep just my active terminal windows all accessible, let alone those plus all the other junk that's running.

Tabs are "self-limiting" in that the titles printed in them can become obscured - however, that is only self-limiting if you always need to read the title of a window/tab before you switch to it - something that is not always necessary with a tab because its location is fixed.
Multiple windows are "self-limiting" because after a certain number they become time-consuming and frustrating to task switch between.

[...] it's hard to beat the ease of use of command-` for cycling through an application's open windows.

No, it isn't (at least for browsers), and tabs do so easily. The problem with your solution is the "cycling" part - to get to a specific browser window I have to step through all the others that come before it in the stack. With any more than about a half-dozen pages constantly being referred to, this becomes unworkable and frustrating.

Tabs are useful for up to 4-8 open pages; they are not useful for more than that. Similarly, command-` is useful for about the same number of open windows.

You seem to be stuck in the mindset of a single window full of tabs vs lots of windows. This is a waste of an excellent resource. Think in terms of multiple windows full of tabs, with each window carrying a certain type of page. Suddenly you have 3 or 4 windows x a half dozen tabs each. With tabs you can often skip directly to the window you want. Windows' taskbar has the same advantage. (Its keyboard controls for task-switching are also much more usable. IMHO - most "window-oriented" and less "application-oriented").

On the other hand, it prevents you from looking at two pages side-by-side without jumping through hoops.

Which for some people (like me) is an operation performed so rarely as to make the "hoops" not even an annoyance, let alone a frustration.

But basically my opinion can be summed up in what I've been saying all along: "tabs are a bad solution to a problem that we don't have."

Tabs are a good work-in-progress solution to the problem of managing and efficiently accessing a large number of active web pages. In all honesty, if you truly find multiple discrete browser windows not only more usable, but workable at all under OS X, then I can only assume you rarely have a significant number of active windows open at any time.
There some features it would be nice to see in tabbed browsers - the ability to drag & drop tabs between windows and within the same window (to reorder them), for example. But, on the whole, they are a good solution to a problem faced by many users. This may not be the problem faced by *you*, but I would suggest you are in the minority in that. Thus far, the only real criticisms I can see you have made of tabs is that:
1. they make comparing two already-open webpages side-by-side a somewhat fiddly affair - not a scenario I would call common and one that could be easily addressed simply by allowing an easy way to migrate tabs between windows.
2. they are limited to about 4 - 6 at once due to the size of the window. Yet you also say your preferred method is similarly limited.

Managing large numbers of windows is one of only a few glaring faults that exist in the OS X UI, IMHO (the others being file management and keyboard accessibility). It is something Windows handles *much* better, I think. I've been using OS X since the public beta, and it's always appeared to me to be a UI only really meant to handle a small number of concurrent applications and windows.

Re:Safari musing

[Twirlip of the Mists]

The primary functional advantages of tabs are a) speed of access, b) organisation and c) a reduction in window clutter. And, as I've stated before, since OS X's task-switching paradigms still all suck, (c) is in IMHO one of the most important.[windows] fill the screen with wasted space

I do not know what the hell you are talking about here. How do you waste screen space with multiple windows? If you want to use all of your screen for a single window, go for it. Windows are resizeable. If, on the other hand, you only need to see something small, make the window small and put it in the corner or something where you can see it behind your main window. Wasted space? What?

[windows are] difficult to navigate between in large numbers

First, the OS provides you with no fewer than four different ways of dealing with windows. One, the Window menu. (Menus have been proven time and again in useability studies to be easier to use than in-window widgets, both for the disabled and for mundanes.) Two, the dock menu. Works the same as the window menu, but it's accessed by control-clicking the application icon in the dock. Three, minimizing windows to the dock. This also addresses the oft-cited clutter issue. Four, the command-` and command-shift-` shortcuts for cycling and toggling. Very handy, those.

And finally, as demonstrated elsewhere tabs are completely unacceptable in large numbers. Depending on window size, the tab labels start to get truncated at four to six open tabs, and by the time you get to 10 or 12, chances are fair that they're completely obscured. And because applications like Mozilla have no tab-based equivalent of the Window menu or the dock menu, you're stuck clicking to find or cycling through tabs. Terrible.

Discrete windows also lose out because they cannot be collected together into organisational groups under OS X.

You can stack your windows however you like. Here's a quick taste test. Open a Chimera window with four tabs. Now move two of the tabs to another window. We're trying to stay organized, right? So put two of the tabs in one window and two in the other. Oops. Can't do it without opening a new window with two tabs and cutting-and-pasting some URL's. With windows, on the other hand, I can make a pile in a corner of my screen or whatever, stacking and restacking to suit my purposes.

I still didn't have anywhere near enough desktop real estate to keep just my active terminal windows all accessible

I don't know what to say except, "maybe you were doing something wrong."

Multiple windows are "self-limiting" because after a certain number they become time-consuming and frustrating to task switch between.

That's simply bogus. Sorry, but it's true. As I said, the OS gives you no fewer than four ways of getting from one window to another, and that doesn't count the simple expedient of point-and-click. All of these methods scale to a practically unlimited number of windows; the Window menu and dock menu, for example, can show you any number of window titles without truncating their names. (Well, you have to truncate past about 80-100 characters, but that's only because screens are only so wide.) I don't know why you have a problem dealing with open windows, but it's not the fault of the OS or the application.

The problem with your solution is the "cycling" part

If you don't want to use the shortcuts, then done. As I said, the OS provides you with no fewer than four separate ways to get from one window to another, not counting pointing-and-clicking.

Think in terms of multiple windows full of tabs, with each window carrying a certain type of page.

Doesn't work that way. Pages are opened by clicking links. When you click a link with Mozilla, your only choices are to open it in the current window, replacing the page you're currently looking at; to open it in another window; or to open it in another tab in the current window. You can't open a link in another tab in another window. So what you call a powerful organizational feature is really nothing more than the illusion thereof.

Tabs are a good work-in-progress solution to the problem of managing and efficiently accessing a large number of active web pages.

Exactly. Like I said, tabs are a bad solution-- "work-in-progress" doesn't begin to cover the ramifications of a UI design that hasn't even been throught out yet, much less implemented completely-- to a problem that we don't even have.

In all honesty, if you truly find multiple discrete browser windows not only more usable, but workable at all under OS X, then I can only assume you rarely have a significant number of active windows open at any time.

Ah, I see. "Your opinion differs from mine, so you must not be as sophisticated as I am." Very mature.

But, on the whole, they are a good solution to a problem faced by many users.

From my experience, which is not complete by any means but I think does provide some representative samples-- people who find tabs to be an enabling solution are handicapped by the fact that they don't know how to use the features that the OS already provides.

Thus far, the only real criticisms I can see you have made of tabs is that...

Your assessment of my criticisms is, unfortunately, not accurate. If you'd like to know what I'm saying about tabs, please go back and read my posts again.

Managing large numbers of windows is one of only a few glaring faults that exist in the OS X UI.... It is something Windows handles *much* better, I think.

How? How does Windows handle it much better? Because I'm fairly confident that you're going to say, "Windows lets you do X," and I'm going to say, "You can do the same thing, or something completely equivalent, under OS X by doing thus-and-so." Let's see if I'm right.

Re:Safari musing

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Nor do you need [an equivalent of the Window menu for tabs], if you keep your tabs organised by window as I do.

Somehow you've managed to spin a massive omission from the UI into an advantage. I salute your moxie. Didn't work, of course, but damn fine try.

And, as mentioned, just because the OS gives me several different methods doesn't mean any of them are any good for what I want to do.

It doesn't mean anybody else wants to do what you want to do, either.

Your argument-- with all the gross factual inaccuracies strained out-- basically boils down to this: "A car sucks because it can only leave the ground for brief periods of time, you can't drop bombs from it, and you can't get to and from an aircraft carrier with it." Gee whiz, Sparky, have you ever considered the possibility that you might be happier with a plane?

I'm having a problem because the tools in the GUI to do this are inadequate. And it is a problem of the GUI, because I don't have the same problem in the Windows and KDE GUIs.

Then I ask you, with all sincerity, respect, and politeness, to shut the fuck up and go use Windows or KDE. If the tool doesn't work for you, use another one. You are decidedly in the minority, to the tune of about 4,999,999 to one, plus or minus a margin of sampling error.

I'm sorry if you don't understand, but trying to claim a flat, unordered and dynamic collection of windows is is any way *more* organised is just plain wrong.

What does the top of your desk look like? Does it have papers and other sundries on it arranged in stacks? Or does it consist merely of a series of open bins that you can put things in? I would wager that your desktop is flat, just like everybody else's. And you get by by putting things in stacks, just like everybody else does. And yet, somehow, you are able to get through your day. Amazing, huh?

I do, and tabs are, thus far, the best available solution on my preferred platform.

As I said before, it sounds like a Mac is the wrong tool for you. Multiple tabbed monitoring windows that never change? Forty-plus terminal windows? I don't know what the hell you're doing, friend, but it's not typical desktop computer use.

I fail to see how the "your opinion is different to mine, so you're wrong" attitude you have is any different.

My attitude is, "Your opinion is different from virtually everybody's, so you're wrong."

Now we get to the good stuff. The point was raised that Windows does a better job of managing open windows than the Mac does. The question was posted: how? The responses:

It's faster.

Demonstrably false. Move on.

It groups similar windows.

So does your Mac. See the application icon in the dock, and the "hide" and "hide others" functions.

It allows me to move quickly to *any* window by either mouse or keyboard.

Haven't you been reading? So. Does. Your. Mac. In five different ways, any one of which you can use on any occasion, depending on your situation, your mood, or the tides.

It allows me to order the tabs in the taskbar (only kludgily, but that's better than not at all)

I don't have any idea what that means. Sorry. Last time I used Windows, those little thingies-- what are they, anyway; icons? menus?-- appear in the task bar in the order that they were opened, and cannot be rearranged. This may be different in XP; I never noticed one way or the other. In any case, the Mac lets you drag icons around the dock to your heart's content, and leaves them where they were put until you move them again.

The placement of things in the taskbar is almost completely static

Apart from sounding like a contradiction of your previous point, this is substantively the same on a Mac. The placement of things on the dock is completely static until you move them, that is; they do not reorder themselves.

It allows me to completely maximise windows.

You win. Because the Mac doesn't let you do this, it must suck. I apologize for ever doubting you.

In conclusion: please stop interjecting your opinions, which thus far have been based solely on some highly specialized and absurdly atypical situations, into a discussion of the interface of a general-purpose application. Your opinions simply don't count, because the vast majority of users don't exist in an environment even remotely similar to yours. You are at the far end of the bell curve. You are outside the standard deviation. Your data point will be weighted completely out of existence. So the only possible outcome will be for those of us who listen to say, "Whatever, dude, go back to Windows if it makes you happier," and for you to go away frustrated and disenfranchised.

But what the hell, it's a free country, gripe all you want.

Nooooooo!

[MacAndrew]

Of course, I find something I love and *Apple* of all companies threatens to kill it, indirectly.

I've been using Chimera Navigator for months, forgetting altogether IE (the real villain IMHO). I suppose the sole question for the Chimera team on whether to continue is whether *their* shadowy objectives are being met. The results in the time frame of the effort so far has been impressive -- no, stunning -- much more than a build-a-brower this weekend kind of thing. It really is Mac software.

The single best thing I can say about Chimera -- and there are many nice things, more so now that I've gotten around to poking around with 3rd party mods like SpeedChimera and "PDF Plugin" -- is that I've mostly forgotten about it. That is, it works like the Finder or some other utility that you take for granted and don't give much thought. That's what I've wanted, not the fickle and feature-encrusted IE, just something simple and clean and fast. Safari will learn (has learned?) a few things from Chimera, which tells you something about the latter's value and why it would be a shame to lose the lead-by-example prominence of Chimera.

Don't take my Chimera!

[ahknight]

Please, please don't take my Chimera! Here's why:

Mozilla is bloated. It's slower than Chimera and includes a whole lot of things that are just not needed in a web browser.

Safari can't render well. For the time being, it's not a good solution for people who need standards-compliance or good CSS support. Chimera is.

Tabs, and Aqua-ness aside, it's really the best solution. Even after Safari came out I'm still clinging to Chimera. It still has it's uses and is still the best solution for the Mac right now. It's WAY too early to claim obsolescence.

Chimera wins.... for the moment

[mamahuhu]

Yeah - Chimera wins.... but only for the moment - Safari is almost there and it is a beta release. The biggy is obviously.... duh.... tabs - especially for slashdot, google news and new scientist..... but also the rendering.... if the next releases don't measure up then Chimera wins for sure - the speed is fine, the rendering fine and the tabs.... did I meantion the tabs..... how could anyone desing a modern browser without them ..... come on.... why spawn a window for every page.... duh

Rock on and hany out at Puy de Dome you might see a UFO or something....

But it might be the beer....

RE: Tabbed Browsing's "faults"

[binarysearch]

"If you can't read the titles, the advantage of tabs evaporates."

There are, in fact, some instances where the titles of tabs don't even have to be present in order for the tabs to function correctly. The most common instance of this type of situation would be looking at a series of images, where one opens a series of tabs, each containing one picture. The series of images can then be looked at sequentially, and when you're done, you're back at your starting location.

"it's hard to beat the ease of use of command-` for cycling through an application's open windows."

I'll tell you a secret: Goldilocks hates command-`; it's either too fast or too slow. If the Command key and the ` key are both held down together, then the windows cycle too fast for the eye to be able to discern what the content of each window is before the next one flashes in front of it. If the Command key is held down and the ` is tapped, however, it will take about a second per page to register the contents of each page. Tabs are random access; windows are serial access.

"tabs are a bad solution to a problem that we don't have."

Tabs are not a perfect solution, I'll agree. However, saying they're a solution to a problem that we don't have is rather... unthoughtful of you. Just because YOU don't have a certain problem doesn't mean others do not.

I suspect that the main problem tabs were developed against was that in most browsers, if you opened a link in a new window, the new window eclipsed the old one, forcing you to either abandon your old perusal, or fight the UI to get the right window back to the front. Now, yes, OmniWeb (and Safari) allow you to open new windows in the background, but there are still a few disadvantages to tabs here: even in Safari, opening a new window is slower and more resource intensive, as well as more distracting, than opening a new tab.

Re: Juxtaposition of windows

The central issue with this is screen space; most people are, I would think, browsing the web at a resolution very close to 1024 x 768 on a monitor that is maybe 17 or 19 inches. At these screen sizes, there really just isn't enough room to look at two web pages side by side, unless you make the browser windows unbearably small.

Screen space also crops up with multiple staggered browser windows, although since the multi-windows thing is really more personal taste than anything else, I'll not bother making any sort of argument about it.

You talk about "all tabs or all windows;" well, fine, it's all within the same browser. If you don't want to use tabs, you don't have to, but please, whatever other arguments you may make about the abstract shortcomings of tabbed browsing, please try to remember that millions of people find them a useful method of organizing their webpages.

Re:Safari musing/Tab pontification

[Twirlip of the Mists]

It would be interesting to know the ratio of tab-browsing freaks to those who run the browser full-screen, no?

Now that is an interesting thought. I can honestly say that I have never opened a browser window full-screen. My screen is way too big and the wrong aspect ratio for a single browser window. It fits three or four abreast very nicely, though. So for me, tabs are a terrible idea. For somebody who runs his browser window at full-screen, on a 768x1024 screen or something, they might make more sense. Maybe.

I think we're starting to talk about this in terms of the window manager rather than the application, and I think that's good. It would really piss me off if Apple decided to implement functionality that belongs in the window manager in the application. That's just not the Mac way, you know?

Re:Safari musing/Tab pontification

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

I think it comes down to a few weird little reasons... like, you can see how many tabs you have open at a glance. That's sorta nice. The instant-load thing, that's nice. But you know what it mostly is? (imho?)...

Those "little" reasons are are major reasons, they're basic GUI issues. Tabs are better than windows because all the tabs can be seen at once, and the user can see exactly what they want, and reach for it with a single click.
Cycling through each window, to see if it's the right one is a pain. If you fuck-up, you have to go though the entire cycle again! You cold always take it slowly, but that's even more of a pain.

...You don't have to re-size or move your new window

Yes, the user should not have to mess about with windows all the time, they should be using the app. When you find you self messing around with windows all the time, there is somethign wrong with the GUI. This is one of thing that I prefer on Win than Mac. All my apps open maximised, I never have to muck about with them untill I need to to some out of the ordinary.

...tab-browsing freaks to those who run the browser full-screen

What's so freaking about wanting to use all of you're screen space? Unless yoy need to view 2 windows at once, why waste space. What's freaking is people who have a 1600x1200 screen and have their windows so small that they have to scroll all the time.
Of course, if you mean full-screen as in the feature found on a few Win browsers which hides most of the GUI, then that is a bit freaky.

Yup

[Big Sean O]

If Safari's 1.0 release doesn't have better cookie management, a popup whitelist, and image blocker, then you will find some people going back to Chimera. I know I will.

I have a comfort in using open-source software that isn't quite satisfied by 'free as in beer' apps. It comes down to "if I really wanted to, I could fix it" (or with my paltry code-fu, hire someone to fix it). Scratching that personal itch is the reason anybody changes from a default browser anyway. It's probably the reason why 'the rest of us' are on the Mac in the first place.

Of course, once Apple releases a usable WebCore, I expect all sorts of browser projects to start. Hmm... Mozilla begat Phoenix and Chimera, Perhaps Safari will give birth to "Tarzan". Tarzan must be in the public domain, Disney made a movie about it...

Re:Yup

[Twirlip of the Mists]

If Safari's 1.0 release doesn't have better cookie management, a popup whitelist, and image blocker, then you will find some people going back to Chimera. I know I will.

Yes, of course, it makes much more sense to trade in a good browser (spell-checking in text fields alone is worth the price of admission) in for an also good but considerably less so browser based on features that really belong in the proxy anyway. Get thee over to the Privoxy home page and give it a download. Problems solved.

One big-ass caveat, though. The build of Privoxy that is available on their web site includes some OS X features of questionable worth. The installation package, for example, does some things that it shouldn't do, and the start scripts aren't technically compatible with Jaguar's new SystemStarter. (They don't cause a problem, they're just not technically right.) I have fixed these problems in the copy I got from CVS, but I have yet to submit my changes back to the project. So buyer beware and all that.

Two words: Auto Proxy configuration!!

[aqsalter]

(Well maybe three words ;)

Chimera just got Auto proxy configuration support so I can use it at work.... Trust me Apple will never release a browser that supports auto proxy configuration because it is not a standard its an MS implementation in the lack of a standard (I'm not knocking MS on this as big organisations needed auto proxy config)

Chimera and Mozilla do support it.

Enough said.

Finally, I'm not even sure I really like the look of Safari as a full time browser. AND Apple don't care about the "technofiles" (ie US) they are mostly after the average joe... so I won't be surprised if Safari _NEVER_ gets tabs.

Sorry guys. Even if Chimera doesn't get developed past today I'm probably going to be using it for quite some time to come. It works right now for everything I need.

Re:GNUstep?

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Is there any reason why Chimera could not be ported to GNUstep?

Sorry to give the obvious answer, but it depends on whether Chimera has any Carbon code in it. If Chimera is entirely Cocoa-fied, then a port should be pretty easy, modulo some AppKit features like the toolbar that I don't believe have counterparts in GNUstep.

Chimera's Great Contribution

[bdaehlie]

When I look at Apple's benchmarks and listen to the words straight from Steve Jobs' mouth, it becomes pretty clear that the reason Safari isn't a piece of crap is because Chimera gave Apple something to shoot for. If Safari only had to compete with IE, Apple could have released something a while ago.

I think Apple's new browser is great, but its not for me. I still use Chimera because its much more practical. There is a lot of room for improvement (build on the 1.2 branch!), and I don't think giving up is the answer. Chimera has pushed Safari to be what is is today, and now is not the time to stop upping the standards for available web browsers.

Re:Safari musing/Tab pontification

[Yagotta B. Kidding]

I, for one agree with you on the tabs issue. Snapback just seems a better way of handling this problem of multiple windowing, you get one window, can set any point to jump back to instantly and away you go without worrying about keeping track of what tab is what, especially when you can't reorder them and you have so many that the tab titles are comperssed to "Goo.."; "Th..."; "Form.." etc.

Snapback made sense after less than five minutes - a total boon for goole searching and gave me that dawning "ahhh.. so this is how it should be done" feeling that is all too rare in modern computer UI design (outside of the Mac world that is ;)

Keep up the good work Chimera guys!!

[w128jad]

I sincerely hope the Chimera team continues their work. Considering how bulky and slow the mozilla code is, chimera has always been a breath of fresh air. Chimera offers a (99.9%) standards compliant browser built natively for Cocoa and open source!! Its performance has not been bad. Considering Apple actually built the architecture it is no wonder their browser is streamlined to use it most effectively. This shouldn't discourage the Chimera guys (although I'm sure they are not entirely broken up about an Apple supported browser appearing). Chimera still has an opportunity to mature with time, hone in on the Apple UI standards, tighten up w3c standards, and pretty much present a good open source alternative. If for good or ill the Chimera Developers drop the project, maybe they could shift over to KHTML Development. :-) Either way I think thinks are looking up for Mac users!! w2^8me out.