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Gee4orce · Aug 20, 2002, 06:49 AM

Now that Chimera has better proxy support I can actually test it out for the first time. Well, I'm impressed !

I just compared it to Opera on Win98 - the self acclaimed 'fastest browser in the world' - on hardware that's slightly faster than my iBook. I didn't time it, but subjectively Chimera absolutely blows Opera away ! Amazing.

The only things that was worse were rollovers (DHTML menus in this case). Macs always seem much slower with rollovers than PCs - for no reason I can tell.

I'll definately be using Chimera as my 'compatibility browser' instead of IE for now, but I'm too used to OmniWeb's features to give them up completely.

Hopefully the future will either see OmniWeb with Chimera's compatibility and speed (and tabs), or Chimera with OmniWeb's features and beauty.

One last thing though - why is the application know as Chimera, when the application is actually called 'Navigator'

escher · Aug 20, 2002, 09:49 AM

Originally posted by Gee4orce:
One last thing though - why is the application know as Chimera, when the application is actually called 'Navigator'

"The Chimera of Greek myth is the offspring of Echinda and Typhon. From the Greek meaning "she-goat" the Chimera is a fire breathing creature that has the body of a goat, the head of a lion and the tail of a serpent. Some have said that the Chimera has three heads, but the popular myth tells of the single, fire-vomiting head." (According to this website; emphasis added.)

I reckon that the project is named Chimera because it grafts a Cocoa front-end (the head of the Chimera) onto the Mozilla rendering engine (the body of the Chimera).

Escher

Guy Incognito · Aug 20, 2002, 10:23 AM

Originally posted by escher:

"The Chimera of Greek myth is the offspring of Echinda and Typhon. From the Greek meaning "she-goat" the Chimera is a fire breathing creature that has the body of a goat, the head of a lion and the tail of a serpent. Some have said that the Chimera has three heads, but the popular myth tells of the single, fire-vomiting head." (According to this website; emphasis added.)

I reckon that the project is named Chimera because it grafts a Cocoa front-end (the head of the Chimera) onto the Mozilla rendering engine (the body of the Chimera).

Escher

Yup...and according to the description, a Chimera is rather ugly and disturbing and spews fire...much like the browser; an ugly mess (not an ugly browser. I find it is pleasing aesthetically, but the browser itself is a mess), rather disturbing, and often 'vomits fire' all over you (crashes for those that may not understand.)

That's right, Chimera fits the description.

SMacSteve · Aug 20, 2002, 10:29 AM

I've installed Jaguar on my TiBook 800 and just updated to the latest "nightly". It took awhile to launch the first time as well to load the first page, but then it seemed to just take off! As fast as ever and renders the pages I've visited so far perfectly. I love this browser! I can't wait for it's final build. I too love Omni and I have a hard time giving it up. Although Omni is having trouble rendering the MacNN Forums and gets alot of inncorrectly rendered pages.

Great job Chimera Dev!

Spirit_VW · Aug 20, 2002, 11:46 AM

<sniff sniff> My humble little thread has actually stuck around - I'm so proud!

I'm extremely impressed with the latest nightlies. Chimera is quickly becoming my favorite browser, period. I hardly ever even touch OmniWeb now - I love the features, but I dislike the incompatibilities and speed deficiency compared to Chimera.

jwblase · Aug 20, 2002, 01:00 PM

Hey!!! When the the keyboard shortcuts for forward and back (CMD-Arrow keys) disappear???

This is one of the basic and most useful things!

WAAAHHHH!!!!

JB

starfleetX · Aug 20, 2002, 01:09 PM

Originally posted by jwblase:
Hey!!! When the the keyboard shortcuts for forward and back (CMD-Arrow keys) disappear???

In a painfully stupid move, they have switched the command to cmd-[ and cmd-].

This is a very difficult key binding for international users. Just try using that regularly on a swiss or german keyboard. Then try the key command for switching tabs.

Pathetic.

Zimphire · Aug 20, 2002, 01:09 PM

Originally posted by Spirit_VW:
<sniff sniff> My humble little thread has actually stuck around - I'm so proud!

I'm extremely impressed with the latest nightlies. Chimera is quickly becoming my favorite browser, period. I hardly ever even touch OmniWeb now - I love the features, but I dislike the incompatibilities and speed deficiency compared to Chimera.

Same here, Omni's features are slowly not mattering to me as much as rendering and speed.

Chimera plays well with iTunes, Omniweb doesn't.

chromos · Aug 20, 2002, 09:54 PM

Is it just my machine, because I don't understand why people dis OW so much in the speed dept. It doesn't render as fast as Chimera, but it blows the pants offa it when pulling pages from cache. That accounts for a lot of the subjective feeling of speed, in my book.

Ron Goodman · Aug 20, 2002, 10:02 PM

The one thing keeping Chimera from becoming my default browser is the lack of a minimun font size setting. It's a pain to keep having to go to the View menu for Bigger Text.

gator · Aug 20, 2002, 10:20 PM

Yeah, the font thing is a little annoying when I view sites with smaller fonts on my iBook (i.e. these forums)... I usually just keyboard-shortcut it... it's cmd-= in case you haven't used it. I don't even think about it anymore, it's just kind of automatic if I feel the text is small.

passmaster16 · Aug 20, 2002, 11:17 PM

Originally posted by Gee4orce:

One last thing though - why is the application know as Chimera, when the application is actually called 'Navigator'

That's an interesting question. Also is this Chimera project related to in any way to www.chimera.org, a browser for the UNIX platform?

You would think there'd be some name conflict there. Just wondering as I stumbled upon www.chimera.org while searching for Chimera OS X.

ink · Aug 20, 2002, 11:34 PM

Originally posted by chromos:
Is it just my machine, because I don't understand why people dis OW so much in the speed dept. It doesn't render as fast as Chimera, but it blows the pants offa it when pulling pages from cache. That accounts for a lot of the subjective feeling of speed, in my book.

Yes, but tabbed-browsing has made the back button and hence, most cache paints obsolete.

chromos · Aug 21, 2002, 02:27 AM

Originally posted by ink:

Yes, but tabbed-browsing has made the back button and hence, most cache paints obsolete.

Perhaps. But I find still find it easier to spawn windows and move between them with Command-` rather than use Shift-Command-[ to move between tabs. It's also easier to go backwards using Delete rather than Command-[. Matter of taste. I still use both daily though.

Gee4orce · Aug 21, 2002, 03:36 AM

I know what a Chimera is - and why it seems a good name for a browser that's a mix of Mozilla and Cocoa.

What I was trying to ask is this: why is the application actually called 'Navigator' ? It's just the disk image that's got the name 'Chimera'. Just seems more than a little inconsistent.

Zimphire · Aug 21, 2002, 04:03 AM

Originally posted by Gee4orce:
I know what a Chimera is - and why it seems a good name for a browser that's a mix of Mozilla and Cocoa.

What I was trying to ask is this: why is the application actually called 'Navigator' ? It's just the disk image that's got the name 'Chimera'. Just seems more than a little inconsistent.

I was wondering about that too.

starfleetX · Aug 21, 2002, 04:47 AM

This has been explained a thousand times in various places. I'm surprised you guys haven't caught on.

Chimera can't be used as the name for the browser itself because there is an existing Unix browser by the name Chimera. Rather than hassle with infringement issues, the Chimera project leaders opted to simplify the name to Navigator. Apparently Netscape doesn't mind them using the name.

Producer · Aug 21, 2002, 02:07 PM

Mike Pinkerton posted this in his blog today:

"Sigh. MozillaCFM doesn't build under Jaguar. It's not mozilla's fault, it's stupid bugs in the tools. Could today suck any more?"

Can anyone translate this?

zazou · Aug 21, 2002, 02:10 PM

In line Spell Check.

That is all I need.

Please.. in lnie splel ckech.... i enden it baddly!

escher · Aug 21, 2002, 05:48 PM

Originally posted by starfleetX:
Chimera can't be used as the name for the browser itself because there is an existing Unix browser by the name Chimera. Rather than hassle with infringement issues, the Chimera project leaders opted to simplify the name to Navigator. Apparently Netscape doesn't mind them using the name.

Navigator was also the name for Netscape's standalone browser before it mutated into the Navigator bloatware that has everything but the kitchen sink. I just want a browser. No e-mail or other crap. The Navigator name reflects that.

Escher

passmaster16 · Aug 21, 2002, 07:02 PM

Originally posted by escher:

Navigator was also the name for Netscape's standalone browser before it mutated into the Navigator bloatware that has everything but the kitchen sink. I just want a browser. No e-mail or other crap. The Navigator name reflects that.

Escher

Remember the good old days when Netscape was the dominant browser. I remember when Navigator was superior to IE. I used IE 1.0 and 2.0 for PC and it was pretty ugly. Then M$ started bundling it and "intergrating" it into windows. They knew that Netscape was one company that had the know how to do some damaging things to them. So as result, they crushed them before they could go any further. Now, as you said, Netscape is nothing more than bloatware...sigh

sdagley · Aug 21, 2002, 09:29 PM

Originally posted by Producer:
Mike Pinkerton posted this in his blog today:

"Sigh. MozillaCFM doesn't build under Jaguar. It's not mozilla's fault, it's stupid bugs in the tools. Could today suck any more?"

Can anyone translate this?

Apps for OS X are either built as CFM or mach-o binaries. Mozilla for Mac OS X, as it currently ships, is a CFM binary and is built with CodeWarrior 7. Chimera is a mach-o binary built with the gcc tools Apple provides with OS X. Mike spends most of his time working on Chimera these days but is looking at a bug in MozillaCFM and learned the hard way that the MozillaCFM build system doesn't work under Jaguar. Apparently it's a bug in CodeWarrior.

Steve

Producer · Aug 21, 2002, 11:17 PM

Thanks Steve!

I thought that after 1.0 that mozilla for OS X was going to switch to mach-o binaries. I think I remember reading that in either a blog or an interview with one of the Mozilla people...maybe that has been postponed to 1.2

Has anyone read the recent article about Opera now having a completely new and speedier engine? Just curious what opinions you guys had on it (I have never used that browser on any platform)

Also when Mozilla finally makes the switch to Mach-o since mozilla programmers will be focused on this will this help Chimera as well (since they could take code from mozilla)?

Hennker · Aug 22, 2002, 03:24 AM

I think the reason they changed the back/forward keys is, that apple-left/right is normaly used for jumping at the beginning/end of textlines, and that's what they are now used for in chimera, too, like in this textfield i am typing right now. Because i found myself fooled by this sometimes, i think this is the right decision.
But: apple-[ and apple-] are definitly stupid shortcuts for international users, as someone mentioned earlier, so i wish heavily they change them to something more reachable.

Hennker

escher · Aug 22, 2002, 08:46 AM

Originally posted by passmaster16:
Remember the good old days when Netscape was the dominant browser. I remember when Navigator was superior to IE. ... Now, as you said, Netscape is nothing more than bloatware...sigh

Well, I remember the days when Lynx (on UNIX) was the dominant (text-only) browser and Mosaic was just starting to show up on the radar. I remember asking myself why anyone would want to have pictures on web pages. Then the Netscape guys split from the Mosaic team to start their own browser. Mosaic started languishing and MS finally snapped it up to catch up to Netscape. By-gones...

I'm just psyched that an excellent, simple, fast and light standalone browser (i.e. Chimera) is avaiable once again.

Escher

clebin · Aug 22, 2002, 11:51 AM

Originally posted by escher:
I remember asking myself why anyone would want to have pictures on web pages.

That's a remarkable insight - give yourself a pat on the back

After a gap of a month or so I installed the latest Chimera nightly and it's superb. I'm glad to see that the download progress bars seem to work on all types of download now.

My main feature request is Keychain support. There's some others naturally, but that's the only biggie.

Anyway it's shifted IE off my Dock again, and MS are going to have to do something pretty special to get back there...

Chris

renpar61 · Aug 23, 2002, 10:25 AM

in the past 2 days the latest trunk hasn't changed (8/20), but if you go on the parent directory you will find nightlies of 8/21 and 8/22. does anyone know why?

starfleetX · Aug 23, 2002, 10:29 AM

The nightlies are broken because they are rearranging the files for PB 2.0, if I recall correctly. Regular builds should be back in a few days.

sdagley · Aug 23, 2002, 12:48 PM

Originally posted by Producer:
I thought that after 1.0 that mozilla for OS X was going to switch to mach-o binaries. I think I remember reading that in either a blog or an interview with one of the Mozilla people...maybe that has been postponed to 1.2

That's the plan but right now it's looking like it'll be sometime after 1.2 before we can make the switch.

Has anyone read the recent article about Opera now having a completely new and speedier engine? Just curious what opinions you guys had on it (I have never used that browser on any platform)

No opinion until I see it on the Mac. I don't think anyone would consider their old Mac version "the fastest browser on earth!" though

Also when Mozilla finally makes the switch to Mach-o since mozilla programmers will be focused on this will this help Chimera as well (since they could take code from mozilla)?

Right now all the Chimera work is happening on a branch so all the things we're doing that would improve the mach-o build aren't being reflected back into the trunk. That will eventually change.

Steve

sdagley · Aug 23, 2002, 12:55 PM

Originally posted by starfleetX:
The nightlies are broken because they are rearranging the files for PB 2.0, if I recall correctly. Regular builds should be back in a few days.

Nightly builds are back. Actually we were reorganizing the files just because it was a mess having everything Chimera related in one directory. The ProjectBuilder 2.0 fun comes later. Or maybe sooner because we just noticed PB 1.0 crashes on Jaguar

Producer · Aug 23, 2002, 03:15 PM

Thanks sdagley!

Does anyone happen to know where the Chimera forum is? I remember stumbling across it once and it was very active.

Wow Mozilla is quite speedy as is and chimira is too obviously. When Mach-o gets supported by Mozilla and Chimera gets to feed off of the progress I can't even imagine the speed improvements.

We may even end up having a faster browser than windows!

When people say that IE is built into windows and supported at a low level can anyone explain in more detail what this means? If this is true will Windows always have a browser advantage because of this? Would building Gecko into OS X makes sense to compete?

Zimphire · Aug 23, 2002, 03:20 PM

Originally posted by Producer:
Thanks sdagley
When people say that IE is built into windows and supported at a low level can anyone explain in more detail what this means? If this is true will Windows always have a browser advantage because of this? Would building Gecko into OS X makes sense to compete?

That is usually a apologetic excuse that allot of Pro MS zealots like to tell when trying to make excuses as to why MS made it apart of the system.

AKA

"It wasn't because they wanted to screw Netscape over, it was to make it faster!"

The only faster part this would cause is launching, that is because it is always loaded.

Sharky K. · Aug 24, 2002, 12:01 PM

Originally posted by Zimphire:

That is usually a apologetic excuse that allot of Pro MS zealots like to tell when trying to make excuses as to why MS made it apart of the system.

AKA

"It wasn't because they wanted to screw Netscape over, it was to make it faster!"

The only faster part this would cause is launching, that is because it is always loaded.

And the application is 60mb!!! for just a browser

escher · Aug 24, 2002, 04:34 PM

Originally posted by Producer:
Does anyone happen to know where the Chimera forum is?

The Chimera forum is at http://chimera.eternaltedium.com/ .

Has anybody else been having trouble with Flash in Chimera on Jaguar? Flash content has been playing fine in Chimera for many weeks, but since I upgraded to Jaguar, Flash content is displayed lower than intended in the layout of a page. In other words, Flash content plays about 150 pixels lower than it should considering the HTML layout. This is especially annoying for publications like the New York Times and C|Net News, which display Flash advertisements within article text. Any solutions to this Flash problem?

Escher

PS: I already reinstalled Flash and tried several nightly builds with no improvement.

krove · Aug 24, 2002, 11:43 PM

Originally posted by escher:

The Chimera forum is at http://chimera.eternaltedium.com/ .

Has anybody else been having trouble with Flash in Chimera on Jaguar? Flash content has been playing fine in Chimera for many weeks, but since I upgraded to Jaguar, Flash content is displayed lower than intended in the layout of a page. In other words, Flash content plays about 150 pixels lower than it should considering the HTML layout. This is especially annoying for publications like the New York Times and C|Net News, which display Flash advertisements within article text. Any solutions to this Flash problem?

Escher

PS: I already reinstalled Flash and tried several nightly builds with no improvement.

Same problem here. This used to be a problem in the builds leading up to 0.3.0 I think. This looks like a regression...

AliP · Aug 25, 2002, 06:46 AM

Where can i find the parent directory?
When i go to the link for the latest nightly build i'm taken the build for the 20/8? Can't find 21 or 22 builds anywhere.
KRO
Ali P

JLL · Aug 25, 2002, 09:11 AM

Originally posted by AliP:
Where can i find the parent directory?
When i go to the link for the latest nightly build i'm taken the build for the 20/8? Can't find 21 or 22 builds anywhere.
KRO
Ali P

Click on 'Up to higher level directory'

Producer · Aug 26, 2002, 04:09 AM

Mike Pinkerton "Chimera 0.5 should be out in about a week and I'm not quite sure if I feel good about it. I think we're dangerously close to being buggy. Too many new features, not enough care. I'm not even sure how many of the new features we've added are really of any use. Thankfully we've also fixed a couple huge memory leaks and some pretty heinous bugs."

Producer · Aug 26, 2002, 04:17 AM

I also found the Chimera forum I was looking for:

Chimera Forum

jwblase · Aug 26, 2002, 10:03 AM

If .5 is looking icky, go backwards

Is there a "roadmap" as to the exact features needed in a Chimera 1.0 release?

Looking at the bug reports and daily change logs, it seems that people are just implementing whatever they feel is 'nifty'. There doesn't seem to be much coherence between parties now.

JB

sdagley · Aug 27, 2002, 01:50 AM

Originally posted by jwblase:

Is there a "roadmap" as to the exact features needed in a Chimera 1.0 release?

Looking at the bug reports and daily change logs, it seems that people are just implementing whatever they feel is 'nifty'. There doesn't seem to be much coherence between parties now.

JB

Chimera Meta Bug is the bug that tracks the issues that we've flagged as being important to Chimera. Not that they're all Chimera specific, targeted at specific milestones or needed for a Chimera 1.0 release but it'll give you an idea what we're looking at.

OwlBoy · Aug 28, 2002, 02:06 AM

OMG you killed my bookmarks!

YOU BASTARDS!

hmm bookmarks were not saved during my last update.

-Owl

MasonMcD · Aug 28, 2002, 06:32 AM

I get a "Navigator is already running on this machine. Only one copy may run at a time."

Now I can't even revert. I have no processes running that might be construed as Navigator, and I've deleted it, erased all the plists and redownloaded. Still says I've got Navigator running.

Any clues?

JLL · Aug 28, 2002, 07:29 AM

Originally posted by MasonMcD:
I get a "Navigator is already running on this machine. Only one copy may run at a time."

Now I can't even revert. I have no processes running that might be construed as Navigator, and I've deleted it, erased all the plists and redownloaded. Still says I've got Navigator running.

Any clues?

Remove the Chimera folder in ~/Library/Application Support and start Navigator again (remember to copy your Bookmarks.xml from the old folder to the new one).

dazzla · Aug 28, 2002, 07:57 AM

In my internet prefs in Jag, I have Navigator appearing about 3 times. Including "Navigator 0.4.0 copy". I have no idea on how to have just the navigator in the list.

When navigator isn't started, and I click an external link, it tried to start up a generic app (by this I mean the generic app icon appears in the dock and disappears after about half a second). So I have to open navigator before clicking any links.

sdagley · Aug 28, 2002, 05:21 PM

Originally posted by JLL:

Remove the Chimera folder in ~/Library/Application Support and start Navigator again (remember to copy your Bookmarks.xml from the old folder to the new one).

Actually if this started happening after a crash when running Chimera all that should be needed is to remove the file named 'Lock' buried in the ~/Library/Application Support/Chimera folder. That's how we tell the profile is in use and, if we think it is, you'll get an error trying to launch Chimera.

sdagley · Aug 28, 2002, 05:28 PM

Originally posted by OwlBoy:
OMG you killed my bookmarks!

YOU BASTARDS!

hmm bookmarks were not saved during my last update.

No, profiles (where prefs and bookmarks are stored) aren't migrated when upgrading from the 0.3 to 0.4 builds of Chimera. They're still on your drive though unless you manually deleted your "~/Library/Chimera/" folder. The new folder Chimera keeps its profile data in is "~/Library/Application Support/Chimera/"

JLL · Aug 29, 2002, 03:52 AM

Originally posted by sdagley:

Actually if this started happening after a crash when running Chimera all that should be needed is to remove the file named 'Lock' buried in the ~/Library/Application Support/Chimera folder. That's how we tell the profile is in use and, if we think it is, you'll get an error trying to launch Chimera.

I found it myself late last night but didn't have time to post

Producer · Aug 29, 2002, 06:04 PM

huh I am a bit worried...

Why do the last few builds suck...?

ok I know they are nightlies so maybe you guys are implenting something and trying to get it right...but I downloaded nightlies for a month and they just kept getting better and better...

Mike Pinkerton wrote that 5.0 was do in the coming week so i thought the builds should be getting more stable before then...

He also wrote that things were getting dangersouly buggy...

Now my personaly preference would be for the chimera to release a kick ass fast Simple browser first... instead of pleasing all these request geeks...let's just have a browser that renders well and fast... and then worry about these features that the geeks are requesting that most of us will never use...

I don't mean to say mean...but this browser is so close to kicking ass out of everything even on the windows side. I read on the register review of Jaguar how he considered browsing the weak spot...Chimera will end this for once end for all..

Keep it simple...

ROCK ON!

dazzla · 08:58 PM

Chimera has crashed over 40 times today with the latest nightly. It's crashed at least 5 times in the past 5 minutes.

This is still the case on a total clean install of Jag.

Speaking of Jag, Chimer has gfx errors on the buttons still.

Here's a site that doesn't seem to play nice with me:

http://www.revolution.co.uk/sword/brokenswordsite.htm

(OT but did Broken sword ever come out for Mac?)