Chimera (cocoa mozilla) screenshot

googolplex

googolplex

jeff.hume.ca
You guys may have seen me metion Chimera in a few threads that I've replied to recently. Basically what it is is a cocoa browser using the Mozilla rendering engine (gecko). It is being worked on by a few developers and it is coming on at quite a nice pace. Their development page is at chimera.mozdev.org.

I just wanted to point out to everyone that they have put up a screenshot of it. It is not complete yet, but as you can see its cocoa and its mozilla inside! :)

You can see the screenshot here: http://chimera.mozdev.org/screenshots.html

If you want to try it out you can follow the *really* complicated build instructions, or you can wait until they make a package of it available sometime next week (thats what I was told when I talked to one of the developers on irc.mozilla.org dont hold me to that :))

I can't wait for this I think it will become a killer browser on OS X. It has the speed of Mozilla with the nice Mac cocoa interface.

Anyways it looks amazing and I just thought I'd let everyone know.
 
It's really nice to (finally) see the benefits of Mozilla/OpenSource, after the years where Netscape floundered due to poor management of the open source efforts.

It's amazing at how far the OS X browser situation has come since last September. We now have some killer browsers available, and a better selection of choices than Windows has.

Still, we lack the one browser that can do it all. Carbon Mozilla 0.9.8 has jumped ahead to the top of the pack, but for me, it still doesn't work 100% with my online banking (Wachovia). It allows me to view, but can't seem to execute transactions. So I have to fall back to IE for that one site.

OmniWeb and iCab also are shaping up to be excellent browsers as well, although both are still lacking in complete standards support.

Opera is just so far behind the pack that I'm not sure it's worth mentioning. Plus, I'm turned off by their insistence on using banner advertising unless you pay for the browser.
 
Oooohhh, mama likes!

I'll definately be downloading that when it comes around .. it will probably replace OmniWeb for me. Seeing as how the only real reason I'm using OW is because it looks like OSX :)
 
While looking at the Bug Reports for Chimera, I came across this little note from Matt (one of the coders on the project)...


Code: 
Mac OS X's Cocoa API is making Chimera development progress too swiftly.

TEST: Added a toolbar to Chimera's Save File dialog.
RESULT: This took about an hour.
EXPECTED RESULT: This should have taken all frigging day.

This could lead to jealosy with other APIs and OSes, and cause riotous behaviour
from other embedded Gecko coders.

Ha! Can't wait to try this puppy out!
 
let us know the second it comes out! mozilla 0.9.8 is nice, but it won't access anything secure correctly for me and i've got to fall back on IE.

i can't wait!
 
looking good! I tried using mozilla but just couldn't stomach how it looked...plus it seemed like IE was displaying pages faster anyways...I'm definitely gonna give Chimera a look see when it is finished :cool:
 
wow - mozilla is nice, but there are some things about it I don't like... This look great. I'll have to add it to the list of Cocoa apps I'm watching (Cocoa GIMP, Cocoa Abiword and Bochs).

Very cool.
 
Oh hell yeah! I am among the group of people who like Mozilla best as a browser, but its too depressing. There aren't any good themes as far as I'm concerned so it doesn't work. I use Omni, unless that doesn't work then its mozilla. Between the two everything works.

I wasn't aware of a cocoa gimp project. That is definatly drool worthy :) It's feels so good to be a mac user right now.
 
Bring on this shitake. I use Mozilla as my primary browser. It's excellent. This cocoa wrapper on gecko will just imrpove the experience a lot.

I love the sidebar as a drawer! It's a natural!
 
To clear some things up...

Chimera won't run more of those 'secured sites' that you can only run in IE. Chimera uses the same rendering engine and codebase as Mozilla.

Also the displaying speed of table intensive sites should not improve, because of the very same reason.

I also have two questions:

1) Does Chimera use Quartz for displaying fonts? Do they have to patch Gecko because of that? (OmniWeb has come a long way trying to get around some bugs in Quartz concerning the displaying of TrueType fonts.)

2) Will the tab-feature of Mozilla (which is a main reason to use Mozilla) be in Chimera? Will it look Aqua-like?

Galeon (a Mozilla-embedding browser for Linux/Gnome) is a perfect example for how this should be done: Take the codebase and design a small-footprint app around it with GUI-improvements. Chimera devs should take a look at that.
 
"Chimera won't run more of those 'secured sites' that you can only run in IE. Chimera uses the same rendering engine and codebase as Mozilla.

Also the displaying speed of table intensive sites should not improve, because of the very same reason. "

Your right about both those things. However, I have found mozilla to be the fastest on table intesive sites so that shouldn't be a problem.

" 1) Does Chimera use Quartz for displaying fonts? Do they have to patch Gecko because of that? (OmniWeb has come a long way trying to get around some bugs in Quartz concerning the displaying of TrueType fonts.)"

Theres a bug in bugzilla talking about getting antialiased fonts. I'm not sure exactly what the status is. The text looked pretty good in that screenshot though.

"2) Will the tab-feature of Mozilla (which is a main reason to use Mozilla) be in Chimera? Will it look Aqua-like?"

I'm not sure if it will be in right away, but they will probably have that since it is a feature that a lot of people seem to really like (myself included). And if it is in it it will be aqua like because it will be done in cocoa just like the rest of the app.

" Galeon (a Mozilla-embedding browser for Linux/Gnome) is a perfect example for how this should be done: Take the codebase and design a small-footprint app around it with GUI-improvements. Chimera devs should take a look at that."

Yup that is a good example. Beleive me they probably looked at it. :)
 
I know :) Thats what's good about it.

Speaking of browsers, anyone know why my computer keeps switching to IE as default? It's not every time I reboot but it doesn't happen unless I reboot. I have to go back and change the sys prefs agian which leads me to believe Microsoft has its hands more deeply entrenched in our operating system than I was aware of.
 
Originally posted by Koelling
I know :) Thats what's good about it.

Speaking of browsers, anyone know why my computer keeps switching to IE as default? It's not every time I reboot but it doesn't happen unless I reboot. I have to go back and change the sys prefs agian which leads me to believe Microsoft has its hands more deeply entrenched in our operating system than I was aware of.
Click to expand...

Actually, a friend of mine who uses Omniweb sent this to me. I hope the formatting works out okay due to web browser text fields. If not, and you can't figure it out, send me a private message with your email address and I will forward it to you.

There's a bug that always reset the default browser to IE... hates it, and here's how to change it!

1. First change directory to /System/Library/PreferencePanes/Internet.prefPane/Contents/Resources/[LANGUAGE].lproj, i.e. for
English go to:

% cd /System/Library/PreferencePanes/Internet.prefPane/Contents/Resources/English.lproj

2. edit this file as root:

% sudo vi DefaultHelperApps.plist

change the web section to:


?? web = (
????????{
??????????DisplayName = "OmniWeb";
????????????Info = { BundleIdentifier = "com.omnigroup.OmniWeb"; };
????????????IsDefaultHandler = YES;
??????????},
????????{
??????????DisplayName = "Internet Explorer";
????????????Info = { BundleIdentifier = "com.microsoft.explorer"; };
??????????}
????);

That's it...
 
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