April 7, 2002

4:37 AM

Chimera 0.2.0 for Mac OS Xis now available for download. If you prefer using Mozilla to IE5.x/Mac but dislike the lack of an Aqua GUI, then this is the browser for you. Chimera now supports Quartz rendering and is based on the Gecko engine which means it has great standards compliance. There are still many features missing, but this browser is showing great potential.
posted by crayfish (21 comments total)

ummm, chimera is great, but its not ready to replace mozilla or nn6 (or ie) for daily use just yet - maybe save the front page post for version 1.0?
posted by sawks at 4:54 AM on April 7, 2002

It *is* coming along rather nicely -- although CSS rendering appears to be somewhat uneven, which is surprising given that this is the Mozilla engine. That said, it's pretty nifty seeing sites in Quartz that would ordinarily smash OmniWeb.
posted by donkeyschlong at 5:24 AM on April 7, 2002

Thanks for the update; I've been keeping my eye on this one. I'm looking forward to seeing what comes of it.
posted by mcwetboy at 6:46 AM on April 7, 2002

OS X's secret shame has been the lack of a working Quartz web browser. This is really beautiful. Keyboard shortcuts for switching between tabs are the icing on the cupcake.
posted by sudama at 11:22 AM on April 7, 2002

OmniWeb is a functional Quartz web browser, no?
posted by n9 at 12:26 PM on April 7, 2002

OmniWeb is a (slow, CSS-impaired) functional Quartz browser, yes. (Version 5 reportedly addresses these shortcomings, but it's a ways off.)

A Cocoa-developed Mozilla-based browser (zippy, beautiful, multithreaded) is quite a revelation. Chimera 1.0 is going to kick some serious ass.
posted by donkeyschlong at 12:41 PM on April 7, 2002

OmniWeb slow? CSS-impaired? Sez who? It's not my primary browser -- has a couple of minor DHTML bugs and I do a lot of DHTML development -- but for regular daily surfing I find it much faster than either IE or Netscape, and haven't seen any CSS problems... I haven't done thorough stress-testing or anything, but what are you basing that statement on?
posted by ook at 1:26 PM on April 7, 2002

ook, here's a quote from webstandards.org's Browser Upgrades page:

"Unfortunately, Omniweb’s support for important web standards like CSS1 and the DOM is so poor as to make it unusable. See Omniweb & Standards for a review of Omniweb’s performance in CSS and DOM tests, using version 4.1b1 (released in late December 2001), or read Cocoa Browser Missing Important Features for an assessment of the previous release. Omniweb is an innovative browser with great promise, but, because of its botched handling of essential web standards, we cannot recommend it at this time."
posted by bcwinters at 2:02 PM on April 7, 2002

Heh. Interesting. (Wish the "a list apart" article linked to the actual test pages along with the screenshots; I'm curious why my own experience with the browser has been so different.) Well then, please revise my earlier comment to:

OmniWeb? Slow? Sez who? [...etc...] :)
posted by ook at 2:29 PM on April 7, 2002

OmniWeb 4.1b2 has much better CSS support than b2. Its JavaScript still needs some work, though, and it crashes too much, and oh yeah, it also needs an implementation of tabbed windows that works exactly like Opera 6 on Windows. (Mozilla's attempt does not really come close.)

Chimera is not bad, but OmniWeb is way ahead of them in UI features, and those are not quite as easy to add as many people assume they are. I'd say the race is just about even at the moment.
posted by kindall at 3:37 PM on April 7, 2002

OmniWeb 4.1b2 has much better CSS support than b2.

... than b1, of course.
posted by kindall at 3:37 PM on April 7, 2002

Wow. The tabbed windows thing is so great. I need that right now: I've got nine browser windows open. Does Opera on Mac do it, kindall, and is it planned for OmniWeb?

Okay, I should probably just check their sites. Off I go then.
posted by D at 3:44 PM on April 7, 2002

I keep telling everyone with a mac ICAB
ICAB ICAB ICAB

Or cyberdog

or NCSA Mosaic or or or or or or or uhh
posted by Settle at 3:51 PM on April 7, 2002

Bah, screw iCab. Whadya say to that? ;)

So I just downloaded it and I'm very impressed. All I did was load up my personal website, and that was enough to show off how beautifully it renders text. My jaw dropped.

So is this a benefit from being a native X application using the Quartz layer? Anyone else notice the amazing text quality?
posted by jragon at 4:43 PM on April 7, 2002

Wow. When Chimera hits 1.0 it's going to rock... jragon, you're right, the quartz rendering is su-poib, it's faster than IE, and that google drawer is a great idea.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 4:50 PM on April 7, 2002

has anyone one else had problems installing it? I have OS 10.04 - it unstuffs and appears as a hard drive image...when I double click on the icon, no dice...weird. Does it only work under 10.1?
posted by ayukna at 12:30 AM on April 8, 2002

hey ayukna - how big is the .dmg file after you unstuff it? (should be 10.7 mb)

did you double check that the drive image didn't show up on your desktop (if you have disk image validating disabled, this would of been almost instant)

also try gunzip instead of stuffit
posted by sawks at 4:30 AM on April 8, 2002

So is this a benefit from being a native X application using the Quartz layer?

Precisely.

If you want to see OmniWeb choke, check out Xspot (my OS X weblog) and then compare to IE or Mozilla. Many table-free CSS layouts don't render properly in the latest version of OmniWeb I've seen. (Not sure if this is 4.1b1 or b2 or what.)
posted by sudama at 8:49 AM on April 8, 2002

Wow, 4.1b2 does a much better job with CSS. Now if only Blogger Pro would let me in....
posted by sudama at 8:32 PM on April 8, 2002

Chimera does two things, it kills the mozilla/NN6 XUL in favor of a native GUI and it does a good job of showing off what Quartz rendering in any Gecko app on OSX will eventually do.

If the only thing bugging you about the former is appearance, then grab a recent mozilla nightly and check out this pinstripe theme.

On the Quartz stuff - its in the early stages and has some work to go. Even with applying the available patches to a mozilla build there are some rendering problems that don't exist in builds without it. A good place to start looking for more info might be Bugzilla Bug 121150. Or just do a bug search for open "ATSUI" bugs.


As for OmniWeb, I can't say its CSS support is dissapointing me, because I really will not put it through the paces before 4.5/5.0 releases (based of my previous communications with their dev team). They have made a lot of strides recently, enough for me to take it seriously again*, but still doesn't compare to IE/Mac or Moz 0.9.9 in HTML, CSS2 or DOM/JavaScript support.

A 5 minute run through a few sites (1, 2, 3) shows the following bugs: No support for IFRAME or overflow:auto, wacky rendering of the table CAPTION tag, no CSS :hover, no CSS background positioning, no CSS letterspacing, no (or broken) getElementById, No use of the onerror javascript event. and then I stopped because I started feeling like I was testing NN4 again. Neither the Anti-MS sentiments or the use of Quartz just are enough for me to consider using in even small doses it at this stage.

*When I first tried it my pages were pink and purple because it didn't understand my CSS defined colors and the navigation on another site was totally missing.
posted by 10sball at 11:44 PM on April 8, 2002

wheee, 3.0 is out now, if anyone notices this :)

yay: they implemented the apple-~ (switch windows) from ie, its faster!

poo: i still cant type in a flash movie
posted by sawks at 4:42 AM on June 14, 2002