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."

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.

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.

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 ;)