Chimera programmer feeling way down...

[wiz]

hey wait a min, i got it!!!

why dont the mozilla group make the chimera the Mozilla for osx. a complete cocoa suite.

this include the browser "chimera", a cocoa verion of the mail app, addressbook and the chat client!!!

is that possible?
if so, it's a lot of work. its worth it though.

 

[Ripcord]

I can't believe that no one's mentioned Chimera's popup blocking.. This is pretty much the main reason why I keep avoiding IE on any platform - overall I'm happy that IE does what it does well, but it's missing a lot of things - and popup blocking is definitely a key one for me!

 

[edX]

i would feel pretty sory for this guy even though i personally don't like chimera. hell, i've never even been able to get it to run stable on my mac. while stuff that other people complain is unstable is rock solid on it. i dunno. still, i wouldn't want to be in his position right now.
but why i don't feel sorry - he's upset that aol isn't supporting him. for christ's sake, what an awful goal. this is like being upset the devil didn't want your soul. geez, get a grip.
it seems to me that there are plenty of people who truly love chimera. maybe he should get a new set of priorities and start doing this out of love or out of appreciation for the people who do appreciate his work. listen to people's feedback and make it what people want, not what aol might buy. If you do that, then maybe you'll find a way to get financial support from the people you support with your work. people will always want choices and alternatives. provide them and you will win out if your heart is in the right place.
obviously he isn't alone - several other developers are in the same place right now. i still think we owe them all a little something for all they have done so far. but frankly, if any of them had been really doing the job, apple wouldn't have needed to come out with a browser and we would already have had several good ones that were worth paying for. lately i've gotten as p;o'd at our browser developers for slowing down once they get some popularity as i have bee happy with apple for releasing safari. but any of them that did it just to be bought out or supported by aol or any other corporate big guy, well, i hope they get what they deserve, not what they bargained for.

 

[solrac]

OK FIRST THINGS FIRST

ANYONE WHO LIKES SAFARI BETTER THAN CHIMERA (as of today) IS JUST BLIND.

What does Safari have that chimera doesn't? Just ONE thing: A Bug button.

Chimera has tabs. Safari has NOT won until safari puts in tabs. What if Apple never puts in tabs for some weird reason? (Like they never put in a right mouse button). Then chimera will ALWAYS be the champ.

Chimera has bookmarked tabs. So if you open 10 tabs, you can bookmark them all into ONE bookmark, so you can open TEN websites with ONE CLICK.

I don't even think Safari is faster than Chimera. It's about equal. Sometimes Chimera seems faster.

Safari's bookmarks are nice, but just as good as chimeras. Maybe a little bit more polished on the interface but who cares?

Safari actually scrolls smoother, and plays animated gifs nicer. But Chimera plays flash sites much better and could easily polish up everything else.

Now... what's second.
We here are the only people who know about chimera. The mac geeks.

Your mom doesn't know chimera. Your uncle doesn't know chimera.

All they know is "Netscape and Explorer". And they might hear about Safari now because it'll be all over apple's marketing and software installs.

This is why pinkerton feels he lost.
He is working on the better program, but Safari will instantly become known to all the masses, while chimera will only be known to the geeks.

He won't feel motivated and better by coming up with new software innovations for chimera. What he needs is a marketing genius. Banner ads on hotmail, and CNN, and CNET. Prime Time TV spots saying "The BEST BROWSER ON MAC IS NAVIGATOR (chimera)".

Well, I want a lamborghini too.

 

[solrac]

Oh, by the way:

Apple markets "snapback technology" as some super cool innovative browser technology.

What a crock of sh***t!!! It's simply ONE variable that marks a page. It doesn't even remember the trail you "snapped over" if you use it.

I could program snapback technology with a TI calculator, lol.

 

[edX]

Your mom doesn't know chimera. Your uncle doesn't know chimera.

All they know is "Netscape and Explorer". And they might hear about Safari now because it'll be all over apple's marketing and software installs.

and until one of these little guys makes the invesment to usse the WMP an d real player plugins, that will remain true. frankly i've given up trying to cinvince these kind of people that there are better ways. because the truth is that for what they want out of a browser, there is only one way. maybe 2. apple is going to have to step up and pay the fees if they want to compete in these people's worlds. untill they do, they're just another alternative browser.

and i still don't want tabbed browsing and i doubt mom and her gang do either.

 

[solrac]

Originally posted by mindbend
I have never understood the passion behind these browser wars. It's not like these things are Photohop, Lightwave and Indesign. And as far as web development goes, which I do a ton of, I guess it's nice to have a standards compliant browser, too bad none of them seem consistent to each other in terms of delivering on those "standards".

Here's the passion behind the browser wars, mindbend, and listen closely.

Imagine you are a mac lover. Imagine you are surrounded by twenty PC users pointing at you and laughing.

Imagine your mac loading a web page in Explorer in 45 seconds, that takes a PC literally 2 seconds to load, on the same connection.

Imagine them pointing and laughing, louder.

Now, imagine you download Chimera (or Safari), and that same page loads up in 2 seconds, just like the PC!

The 400 mhz G4 is not really much slower than a 3 Ghz Pentium 4. It's just the mac had bad software on it, that MADE it slower. This was explorer.

Now, imagine the hate you have for explorer, which made your mac so slow for so many years.

Now you have chimera and your mac is comparable to all your evil PC friends.

This is the passion behind the browser wars, on mac os x at least.

The original browser wars were just corporate money wars, and investment capitalist wars, and netscape hundreds of millions of dollars wars versus Micro$oft billions of dollars wars.

But all the browsers are just about as good as each other on PC.

On the mac, the browser will make or break your computer.

I am not against safari. Apple needs to market it so that people don't think "the mac is slow" when opening a web page.

Why didn't they just buy chimera though? That's what I don't get.

 

[solrac]

Originally posted by edX

and i still don't want tabbed browsing and i doubt mom and her gang do either.

what??!! You don't like tabbed browsing???? You must not be right-brained or something. Wait, you couldn't be left-brained either..... hmmm..... where's this joke going... lol

actually, I showed my mom tabbed browsing. It was hard for her to understand but she finally ended up liking it, and she saw how much faster chimera was too.

Internet Explorer is so bad, that even the mass market crowd (your mom, your uncle) would appreciate chimera (or safari).

 

[hulkaros]

...Chimera is and can be a GREAT browser but: I am sure that Apple will go ahead and incorporate Tabs (and other features ofcourse) and that's when Chimera will be in trouble... For now, Chimera has MANY things that Safari lacks to say the least and that by itself makes it a worthy browser: An unknown browser with unknown people behind it VS the mighty team of Apple's Safari! It sure sounds like David VS Goliath but hey at least in that story we all know who won, aren't we?

Hint for Chimera people: Shareware

 

[toast]

Apple was aiming at killing Chimera. This Safari operation is one of their main successes: soon Safari will be, just like IE is for Windows, a standard browser for Web coders.

However, Chimera is better for the moment. Just imagine one second what would have happened if Apple had released a browser with all Chimera features at MWSF: I can assure you the whole Mac planet would have dumped their other browsers (hm, no, not Ed ).

I could program snapback technology with a TI calculator, lol.

Hey, don't be nasty with Texas Instr. ! I spent all my high school programming this thing instead of learning philosophy !

 

[Cat]

Hey, don't be nasty with Texas Instr. ! I spent all my high school programming this thing instead of learning philosophy !

LOL!

I spent all my high school learning philosophy instead of programming calculators!

Back to the main issue:

It's nasty to think of Apple as an evil commercial imperialist empire, like, say M$ or the entire U$A ( ). Fact is that from the point of view of Chimera Apple is just like that... Well, that's nasty... and we like Safari, but hate the fact that it will probably kill Chimera.

If Safari will not incorporate tabs and Chimera will continue to be developed up to a 1.0 release, we, the mac-geek community, will continue to use Chimera without doubt!

Now for the problems: well, admit it, Toast is right there:

Just imagine one second what would have happened if Apple had released a browser with all Chimera features at MWSF: I can assure you the whole Mac planet would have dumped their other browsers (hm, no, not Ed ).

Sad but true.

 

[phatsharpie]

Originally posted by solrac
OK FIRST THINGS FIRST

ANYONE WHO LIKES SAFARI BETTER THAN CHIMERA (as of today) IS JUST BLIND.

I do like Safari better than Chimera, and I can assure you, I am not blind. I have to wear glasses, but my prescription is quite minute, thank you.

I am quite sick and tired of this Chimera vs. Safari debate. THEY ARE BOTH EXCELLENT PROGRAMS, SO USE THE ONE YOU PREFER AND SHUT THE F*** UP ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE'S PREFERENCE! Everyone have different priorities when using software programs, I prefer Safari for a variety of reasons, while others will choose Chimera. Gee, different people have different tastes, what a shock! <sarcasm />

I don't know what would be the best course of action to support Mike Pinkerton. I've emailed him with my gratitude and admiration for his excellent work. That is all I can think of to do right now, but what I WOULD do if I were a decent C/C++ programmer is to help him out. There are only 2 people really working on Chimera, so if you love the project, and you can code, start helping!!!

 

[toast]

Forum talk written in capitals always ends up badly. Please guys, let the Caps Lock key go free !

The best way to help Pinkerton is to think very hard and to find THE useful feature no other browser has. Then send him by mail.

I wonder if Apple could employ Pinkerton to get the tabs and Keychain and other brilliant features Chimera has into Safari. Maybe that's already the case.

 

[solrac]

Originally posted by phatsharpie
I do like Safari better than Chimera, and I can assure you, I am not blind. I have to wear glasses, but my prescription is quite minute, thank you.

NO!!!!!!!!!! YOU'RE BLIND!!!!! HOW CAN YOU LIKE SAFARI BETTER THAN CHIMERA???? THAT'S THE SAME AS LIKING INTERNET EXPLORER BETTER THAN SAFARI!!!

OR THE SAME AS LIKING A YUGO INSTEAD OF A FERRARRI????

WHY WOULD YOU LIKE A YUGO BETTER?? WHY????????????

just kidding hahah

but seriously, safari really has nothing on chimera. I just can't see what you like more about safari, other than a brushed metal interface.

 

[Captain Code]

Originally posted by solrac

just kidding hahah

but seriously, safari really has nothing on chimera. I just can't see what you like more about safari, other than a brushed metal interface.

I like it better than Chimera as well. For me, it's faster. I don't use tabs, so I don't care that Safari doesn't have them. Yes, I've used tabs before, and I didn't find them much different than a new window. Safari's new windows open faster than Chimera's so, it wouldn't really be any faster if there were tabs.

 

[phatsharpie]

I do like Safari's speed, but the thing that I truly love about Safari is that it uses native Aqua widgets. Although Chimera is a Cocoa app, its Gecko engine doesn't use true Aqua widgets, only a simulation. I finally understood why people love Omniweb despite its shortcoming - its the native Aqua widgets! The great thing is that now I can use the system spell-checker, and all its services within the application and form fields!

If Chimera can be programmed to use native Aqua widgets, I'll seriously consider switching back. But I prefer a browser that is built using Mac OS X technology, not just a "simulation".

Yeah, tabs are cool, but Safari opens and renders windows in the background fast enough for me to not give a hoot.

 

[toast]

Some very good points here. Safari uses more OSX features than Chimera. Especially Cocoa text boxes, which are delightful.

BUT...
... the very core browsing technology I use so MUCH, I mean tabs, is not there - yet.

One other thing is the page render: have you realized KHTML progressively renders pages (you can see it coming bit per bit) whereas Gecko first loads the whole thing and then displays it ?

I really prefer the latter one. When I click "Read last post", I like the browser to take one more second to load rather than having a strange messy forum moving in front of my eyes and then stabilizing.

It's a general remark: I'm of the few nes (I think) who prefer the 'whole page load and then display' rendering to the 'little bit by little bit' loading.

I'll stick with Gecko, hence.

 

[edX]

When I click "Read last post", I like the browser to take one more second to load rather than having a strange messy forum moving in front of my eyes and then stabilizing.

and the fact that i like to rapidly jump to the next page and be reading it while it finishes up is a big reason i like icab. i always assume when people say it is slow, it is because they are looking at some complex page's final rendering time. but the time till you're there and reading is normally just a few seconds. it's that blank pause before it goes anywhere that drives me nuts about most of the other browsers.

 

[solrac]

you people who don't use tabs... you are just blind to how much better tabs are.

A new window is completely horrible compared to a tab. What if you have 20 windows open? The only way to find your window is through a window menu. But how many windows can be in there before you have to scroll through a list?

With tabs, you just instantly click on a tab, and the already rendered page is in there. It's easier to use times a billion.

With chimera, you could have 20 windows open in the windows menu, each with 15 tabs. That's 300 accessible windows while safari could not even come close.

If you only go to one web site at a time and never do anything more complicated i guess it's useless, but even following a series of links is better in tabs.

 

[stealth]

Originally posted by solrac
you people who don't use tabs... you are just blind to how much better tabs are.

A new window is completely horrible compared to a tab. What if you have 20 windows open? The only way to find your window is through a window menu. But how many windows can be in there before you have to scroll through a list?

With tabs, you just instantly click on a tab, and the already rendered page is in there. It's easier to use times a billion.

With chimera, you could have 20 windows open in the windows menu, each with 15 tabs. That's 300 accessible windows while safari could not even come close.

If you only go to one web site at a time and never do anything more complicated i guess it's useless, but even following a series of links is better in tabs.

it all depends on HOW or what u use the internet for. if u like readin only one page at a time, or if u have a fast connection u might not open more than 2 windows at the same time. in that case u might not care bout tabs.

on the other hand, now that ive switched to safari . i really miss the nice feature bout Chimera where u could have a folder of numerous tabs on the toolbar. so by pressin it all my news pages will load in one single window.that was very helpful.

safari has reached 1 million downloads. and if its next update has tabs. i guess thats the end for the rest of browsers.