[qyn]

I just switched to 10.2 on my main internet machine, but I can't find a browser I'm satisifed with.

Besides the fact that I want to avoid IE for political reasons, it has a lot of little annoyances (search this forum for supporting evidence).

Netscape 7 is nice, but seems to be a lot slower at launching (at least 10 seconds to get a usable window at launch, whereas IE is taking about 1-2 seconds) and rendering.

I love OmniWeb, except that it crashes on about 10% of the pages that I frequent.

Right now I'm using IE, but I'd like to ditch it. So what should I go for instead?

[Ryu]

One word... Chimera

[Sophus]

Originally posted by qyn:
I just switched to 10.2 on my main internet machine, but I can't find a browser I'm satisifed with.

Besides the fact that I want to avoid IE for political reasons, it has a lot of little annoyances (search this forum for supporting evidence).

Netscape 7 is nice, but seems to be a lot slower at launching (at least 10 seconds to get a usable window at launch, whereas IE is taking about 1-2 seconds) and rendering.

I love OmniWeb, except that it crashes on about 10% of the pages that I frequent.

Right now I'm using IE, but I'd like to ditch it. So what should I go for instead?

This question havebeen debated over and over again.
IE, Internet Exploder, is quite fast amnd okay, but it is not very stable, hence the nickname. It renders most pages acceptable. No tabbed browsing. Not very well carbonized. Made by the evil empire.

Chimera, is gecko of mozilla with a native cocoa frontend. Standards compliant. Renders fast an nice, but is very early in development. Unstable and lots of features lacking. Has tabbed browsing though. Will eventually be a very nice browser for OSX, but is not fit for everyday and general use just yet.

Icab have a terrible look. Don't know much about it, but the bad looks and that it is supposed to be fast. I personally am turned off by its looks and a few major bad experiences, but thats some time ago. Don't know if it has tabs now.

Omniweb, the most beautiful looking and rendering browser. It is also the only pure cocoa browser for OSX. It is however lacking in standards support. Not that fast either. Tends to hog the CPU a bit to much while rendering. Seems to be unefficient rendering engine. Does not work on many pages. No tabs. Will probably be a good chocie with the 5.0 version.

Mozilla, the former ugly duckling. Fast, stable and renders most pages correctly. Standards compliant. Quite long startuptime and uses a fair bit of memory, but this has improved and is likely to imrpove further. Has tabs. Can be dressed up to look nice and use OSX widgets. For this, install the pinstripe theme. Check for a thread that is named "integrate mozilla with OSX".

Mozilla with a custom pinstripe theme is my browser of choice. If you like Omni, then get this combination.

Well this was a very short look at the major browser to choose from. Try them out if unsure.

Sophus

[saltines17]

Try Chimera 0.5. Although it's clearly not finished nor is it very feature-rich, it's my favorite so far for rendering/general interface speed and compatibility.

[VRL]

Originally posted by Sophus:


Icab have a terrible look. Don't know much about it, but the bad looks and that it is supposed to be fast. I personally am turned off by its looks and a few major bad experiences, but thats some time ago.

Frankly, iCab has been the best and fastest I've used for general browsing. If I don't use it, I use OmniWeb.

[ambush]

chimera is already the best browser out there..

I used to use moz. 100% of the time but its interface is REALLY slow ( on my ibook 600 )

OmniWeb is a real nightmarefor my ibook anyways so hum.. I won't touch to it till 5.0 arrives ( trust me that will take a lonnng time )

[tetzel1517]

I've been using nothing but IE ever since I got OS X back in March 2001. But lately it's been doing one VERY annoying thing, and that's failing to display random words on Web pages.

I'll click on the spot where the word should be, and it'll show up, but another word on the page (or two, or three) will disappear in its place.

And if I highlight a block of text with missing words? I get an entertaining show of words disappearing and reappearing at will. Lovely. I deleted and reinstalled IE, and the effect didn't go away.

First, I tried Chimera: Loved the interface, seemed to render fast. Then I went to a chat room on Yahoo. It loaded fine, but anything I tried to click on would select the item about 1.5 inches up from where my mouse pointer was. Curious.

Then I tried Mozilla. The arrows on the scroll bars aren't working at all. This is unacceptable.

Finally OmniWeb: It likes to crash whenever it so chooses, sometimes after I do something so out-there as closing a window.

My conclusion: None of them are the best and they all suck.

[Sophus]

Originally posted by tetzel1517:

Then I tried Mozilla. The arrows on the scroll bars aren't working at all. This is unacceptable.

There is a known bug in mozilla 1.2A regarding the scrollbar arrows. You shouldn't use alpha quality for everyday use. Use Mozilla 1.1. It works (although there seems to be a problem with java on 10.2).

Bottom line, I agree with you. There is still no top browser for OSX. We have all we need, just to bad that it is divided between the different browsers.

Sophus

[UNTeMac]

I was a diehard Omniweb user since 10.0 but last week I downloaded Chimera 0.5. I've tried other versions of Chimera and it just wasn't an everyday browser.

This version changes that. Now, when I click a link on a webpage, it loads and renders almost instantly (Cable connection) It does as well or better than my friend's IE 6.0 on Windows and we all know that the browsing experience (except for popups) is superior in Windows.

Chimera is very compliant as far as I can tell and is SO fast. I love it and highly recommend it. Omniweb will woo me back only if it can match this speed.

[Ryu]

Chimera is awesome but still lacks in few core features...

Anyway, it's definitely my favorite browser for now... until Opera comes out with a new version.

By the way, I wonder why Omniweb just didn't chose Genko instead of inventing its own motor. After all, in the beginning, it was using Mozilla core anyway. I love its interface and all that but it's just too slow.

[superfula]

I've tried them all. I've found Omniweb to be far and away the best browser. It's faster than anything else with 10.2. I did some unofficial stop-watch testing and it loaded all the pages I frequent faster than anything else. Works great with dual processors

[eno]

Originally posted by Sophus:

Chimera, is gecko of mozilla with a native cocoa frontend. Standards compliant. Renders fast an nice, but is very early in development. Unstable and lots of features lacking. Has tabbed browsing though. Will eventually be a very nice browser for OSX, but is not fit for everyday and general use just yet.

That's just plain wrong. It is the most stable browser I have ever used on Mac OS X. Sure it lacks features, but none that are critical, and it is MORE than "fit" for everyday use. In fact, I use it exclusively now.

Perhaps Sophus should actually try using the app before posting misinformation about it.

[ginoledesma]

I use Omniweb v4.1.1 as my primary web browser on my Mac (G4/400). I've only had about 2-3 crashes since I've used it under Mac OS 10.2. Not that fast, but not that slow either. It can tax the computer (mine in particular) with lots of browser windows.

Aside from the above-mentioned browsers, you might want to check out Opera. Its rather fast (can rival the speed of Chimera), but text input can be very, very sluggish (preferences, message boards, etc).

[dn15]

My overall recommendation would be Mozilla version 1.1. Here's my take on OS X browsers (for anyone interested):

Chimera has great promise and already works fairly well. It has most of the benefits of Mozilla, but has a notably faster interface. However, it's relatively early in development so it still lacks some polish, etc. I could see it becoming the best OS X browser when it's "finished." If you don't mind a little experimenting, give it a try.

In general Mozilla is probably the most well-rounded alternative browser. It's fairly stable and compatible and it renders pages quickly despite its sluggish GUI.

I love OmniWeb but I think it's an acquired taste. It has a great interface but can browse a bit slowly at times. As is commonly said, OmniWeb really shines as an X-specific browser.

iCab is fast and doesn't use much in the way of resources (disk, memory), but it messes up some CSS-dependant pages. It's nice, but probably not my first choice.

Opera - scrolling is strange and its interface and widgets are a bit weird. I think the Mac version is not on an even footing with the Windows / Linux versions.

Explorer isn't bad either, but I tend to avoid it for "political" reasons, as another person said.

[Zimphire]

Omni has a nice GUI, and nice features, but dang it's a processor/memory hog. I have a slow 350mhz G3 and when I ran Omni and palyed iTunes, it would just choke. Not to mention it doesn't render pages that fast, nor is it compliant with today's HTML standards.

IE is somewhat faster, but buggy as hell. IE 5 for OS 9 was pretty good, but the OS X version is just a poor port. I was dissapointed.

Over all I like Chimera, been using it for well over 2 months as my default browser. It's fast, and lean and renders pages correctly and plays well with iTunes unlike Omniweb.

Now if they would just get some more features in Chimera, and make it's preferences less buggy when you change them.

[Sophus]

Originally posted by eno:


That's just plain wrong. It is the most stable browser I have ever used on Mac OS X. Sure it lacks features, but none that are critical, and it is MORE than "fit" for everyday use. In fact, I use it exclusively now.

Perhaps Sophus should actually try using the app before posting misinformation about it.

I have been using Chimera since the very first release. It is also one of my favorite browsers. But that doesn't make me blind to its shortcomings at present stage in development cycle...

The lacking features and stability problems, may be considered critical by other people although not by you.
I find it strange that some people without giving it at critical thought, promote 0.5 development versions and decleares them as products meant for everyday use by everyone. Kind of mindless zealot business IMHO.
If I was to recommend a primary browser on OSX to a guy I don't know, and he has stated that he is unhappy with the performance and stability of Omniweb and IE, I would certainly not suggest .5 Chimera, but a finished product, in this case I would say mozilla.


Sophus

long time user of Chimera...

[jasetheace]

Mozilla for me (by a long shot)!

[His Dudeness]

Originally posted by Ryu:
One word... Chimera

Amen.

[AU_student_iceBook]

I second the vote for chimera, but omniweb is beautiful.

[ginoledesma]

Just switched to Chimera 0.5 (last version I used was 0.2), and I must admit it is fast. Did some customizing to make it look like Omniweb, but I still pass the "beautiful rendering engine" to Omniweb.

[Fotek2001]

The latest nightly build of Chimera add the ability to store site passwords in the keychain and there's finally a GUI interface to enable and disable pop-up windows. I've been using it for a month or so now and I won't be going back to anything else just yet!

[msykes]

Perhaps Sophus should actually try using the app before posting misinformation about it.

Seems a bit harsh. The one thing that reading a dozen or so of these threads in the time since 10.0 was released has taught me is that different people on different machines have vastly different experiences with the same browswers. A lot of people try to avoid Explorer for political reasons, and I agree with that. For me, tabbed browsing is a must (I can never go back), so it's a battle between Chimera and Mozilla.

Try them all out! Painful, but fun!

[nforcer]

Mozilla for speed, features and open source joy
Chimera for beautiful GUI, speed, and in-development joy
Omniweb for beautiful GUI (5.0 certainly has it's work cut out for it with Chimera making such nice progress)
IE for pages where all of the above choke, so basically for standards compliance (isn't that ironic... but IE has yet to fail for me on any major pages that use a lot of crap)

iCab is dated.
I haven't seen much usability come out of Opera either.

Don't know if there is an OS X vers of Lynx

And that's my browser breakdown