Competition to Chimera out on Windows / Linux

solrac

solrac

Mac Ninja
It's called Phoenix

www.mozilla.org/projects/phoenix

It will not come out for OS X since it's pretty much the same as Chimera (Navigator).

BUT.... there's two really cool things it has that Chimera doesn't! (Which I just noticed with a few minutes use)

1) It has a close box for tabs (so you can close tabs with the mouse)
2) Under view, it not only has page SOURCE but page INFO as well, with several tabs, including a tab to list ALL links in the page, and tons of stuff!!

Also, it's .1 release and way more stable than chimera was at .1 :rolleyes:
 
Your link doesn't work at home. It's a pity, because phoenix looks great from what you say !
 
I wouldn't exactly call it "competiton" for Chimera. They are both projects of the mozdev folks, after all.
Mozilla has the close-box for tabs, and I expect to see it implemented in Chimera before too long. Probably the other features will make it into Chim, too.
 
Hyatt always said that Chimera was the answer to the browser product for Macintosh, and that XUL would work on Windows and Linux if they would only make a browser-only product and rework the UI. He always pointed tot he m-b project, and Phoenix is clearly the successor to that idea.
 
Thanx for the new link, sol - any pictures of Phoenix available anywhere ? Just by curiosity, I'm almost sure it'll never be as nice as Chimera :p
 
Heh

Phoenix is stupid.

It's just mozilla, with a changed about box and the default theme set to orbit.. heh.

Icons are a little prettier but to me this looks like a bored 19 yearolds pet project, copy source from mozilla, change icons, add an extra feature thats invisible or two, release.

Sucker hasnt even changed the build name as it still claims itself to be mozilla.
 
Originally posted by verlorenengel

Sucker hasnt even changed the build name as it still claims itself to be mozilla.
Click to expand...
Doesn't Chimera also claim to be Mozilla?

Anyway, what I always hate about Mozilla products is that don't have any cache: Even if you click on "View Source" it loads the page new from the Web! This is so stupid! If the page changed in the few seconds it takes to view the source, it might be a totally different page, so view source is useless!
 
Like it was pointed out earlier in this thread, this is not a matter of competition. The Mozilla project is about making a standards-compliant web user agent (Gecko) available on as many platforms as possible, applied in as many ways as possible.

Chimera is not available for anything but OS X, so it doesn't do a good job at delivering a browser-only Mozilla for the ever-hungry mob. This is where Phoenix comes in -- it's basically Chimera for W32 and Linux/the BSDs/etc. All the way down to Cocoa style customizable toolbars.

And bear in mind, the guy who started Chimera also started the Phoenix project. And that same guy now works at Apple. Dave Hyatt.
 
Originally posted by verlorenengel
Heh

Phoenix is stupid.

It's just mozilla, with a changed about box and the default theme set to orbit.. heh.

Icons are a little prettier but to me this looks like a bored 19 yearolds pet project, copy source from mozilla, change icons, add an extra feature thats invisible or two, release.

Sucker hasnt even changed the build name as it still claims itself to be mozilla.
Click to expand...

You obviously never used the first release of Chimera. It was a 16MB download that didn't even include the ability to download.

Basically the author just slapped on a new face, gave the browser minimal functionality and left the rest of the Mozilla browser code there doing nothing.

It was slow and buggy and completely unusable.

After serveral releases the unused code was removed while functionality was improved. Quartz rendering was probably the turning point for the project. Now Chimera is an awesome browser and it's only half finished.

Phoenix on the other hand is quite functional for a .01 release. It's basically what Chimera is to Mac but on Windows and Linux.
Plugins and download support are there, something Chimera didn't have on it's initial release and the download size is half that of Mozilla.

I don't really care for the theme but I think the author has the right idea. It certainly has the potential to gain the popularity Chimera has on the Mac platform.
 
Originally posted by itanium
You obviously never used the first release of Chimera. It was a 16MB download that didn't even include the ability to download.

Basically the author just slapped on a new face, gave the browser minimal functionality and left the rest of the Mozilla browser code there doing nothing.

It was slow and buggy and completely unusable.

After serveral releases the unused code was removed while functionality was improved. Quartz rendering was probably the turning point for the project. Now Chimera is an awesome browser and it's only half finished.

Phoenix on the other hand is quite functional for a .01 release. It's basically what Chimera is to Mac but on Windows and Linux.
Plugins and download support are there, something Chimera didn't have on it's initial release and the download size is half that of Mozilla.

I don't really care for the theme but I think the author has the right idea. It certainly has the potential to gain the popularity Chimera has on the Mac platform.
Click to expand...

Completely WRONG.
The first release of Chimera was very crippled, but it was an AWESOME, AMAZING, RIDICULOUSLY POWERFUL, INSANELY UNBELIEVABLE browser since day one. Why? Just ONE reason:

pages rendered almost as fast as windows.

Some pages that IE would take a whole minute to render (like message board threads with tons of pictures) would take chimera 3 seconds or less. Even if Chimera was a 200 MB download it would be well worth it.

And lastly, Phoenix will NEVER gain the popularity that Chimera has. Why? Because there is no need. Explorer is great and perfect and fine and dandy on Windows. Phoenix doesn't really offer anything new.

On the other hand, for the mac, Chimera offered a usable, ACTUALLY DECENT browsing experience. For Windows, Phoenix will just be a cool project. For mac, Chimera will be known as the great equalizer, one of the most important milestones ever for Mac OS X software.
 
Galeon uses the gecko engine as well. It also uses the Gnome environment so its to Linux what Chimera is to OS X.

And its had close buttons on the tabs since it came out.
 
Originally posted by solrac
Completely WRONG.
The first release of Chimera was very crippled, but it was an AWESOME, AMAZING, RIDICULOUSLY POWERFUL, INSANELY UNBELIEVABLE browser since day one. Why? Just ONE reason:

pages rendered almost as fast as windows.

Some pages that IE would take a whole minute to render (like message board threads with tons of pictures) would take chimera 3 seconds or less. Even if Chimera was a 200 MB download it would be well worth it.

And lastly, Phoenix will NEVER gain the popularity that Chimera has. Why? Because there is no need. Explorer is great and perfect and fine and dandy on Windows. Phoenix doesn't really offer anything new.

On the other hand, for the mac, Chimera offered a usable, ACTUALLY DECENT browsing experience. For Windows, Phoenix will just be a cool project. For mac, Chimera will be known as the great equalizer, one of the most important milestones ever for Mac OS X software.
Click to expand...

http://slashdot.org/articles/02/10/30/051255.shtml?tid=154

I'd say after being featured on TechTV and Slashdot several times, Phoneix might just be a little more than a "cool project" and is shaping up to be the equivalent of what Chimera is but for Windows.

Anyway, not to say I told you so, but, I told you so! :D

I guess it turns out, you were Completely WRONG! :p

I can't help but love how a Mac user "knows" so much about what Windows users want. :rolleyes:

Ok, ok, I'm sorry but its just an annoying trend that this forum seems to foster.

Open-mindedness is king.
 
Just installed Phoenix on both RedHat 8.0 and Windows 2000. It's the latest nightly builds for both OSs, so it's between 0.4 and 0.5.

Feels like a finished product from downloading to using. Much like Galeon on Linux, less like Chimera on Mac OS X.

So my new browser setup will look like this:

Mac OS X: OmniWeb 4.1.x
Windows 2000: Phoenix 0.x
Linux: Galeon

And I've got an iPod 10G now, because I was tired of preparing MiniDiscs for my everyday use. Why haven't you all told me how great iPod was? Oh, you did... :p
 
Originally posted by itanium
http://slashdot.org/articles/02/10/30/051255.shtml?tid=154

I'd say after being featured on TechTV and Slashdot several times, Phoneix might just be a little more than a "cool project" and is shaping up to be the equivalent of what Chimera is but for Windows.

Anyway, not to say I told you so, but, I told you so! :D

I guess it turns out, you were Completely WRONG! :p

I can't help but love how a Mac user "knows" so much about what Windows users want. :rolleyes:

Ok, ok, I'm sorry but its just an annoying trend that this forum seems to foster.

Open-mindedness is king.
Click to expand...

what??

LOL

That was a link to a little slashdot message board with some geeks talking about Phoenix.

Phoenix is just a cool project. I stand my ground.

Chimera changes the web for EVERYONE on mac os x. From the super geek to a regular business person.

Chimera made web browsing usable on mac os x.

Chimera made web browsing "not a joke" on mac os x.

Chimera made web browsing not a migraine on os x.

What does Phoenix do? None of that.... yet it is still cool, but it's not an earth-shattering program.

Chimera is.
 
What you're afraid to admit is that Phoenix has gained far more acceptance than you ever anticipated. It has gotten far more publicity than Chimera for a mozilla based project and probably by this point has a larger install base as well.

Phoenix has just as much potential in Linux and Windows as Chimera has for OS X.

What you also fail to realize is that people want an alternative to IE. IE, as stable as it may be in Windows, is still terribly exploitable on the web. I'd say without Mozilla or other browsers based on it, web browsing in Windows would be a joke.
 
Actually, I have no fear of admitting anything about Phoenix. Of course it has a larger install base! Mac has only 5% of the market. If only 1% of windows users downloaded Phoenix there would be more installations of that than Chimera on 99% of macs. (A little exaggerated but you get the point.)

So true, Phoenix offers an alternative. But that only makes browsing on windows more "fun" or more "anti-microsoft". It doesn't really offer anything Explorer doesn't have, except popup-blocking.

Phoenix is no more stable than Explorer.
Phoenix is no more faster than Explorer.

Phoenix is cool, though. It has tabbed browsing and popup blocking and all that jazz.

On mac though, web browsing was unusable. Sad. Pathetic. Chimera made web browsing USABLE. That's all I'm saying.

I'm just saying Chimera improved Mac web browsing by eleventy-billion squared, and Phoenix only improves windows browsing by threefold, or so.
 
I personally would say Chimera is also just a cool project, nothing more.
It didn't do anything of that for me you are telling.
On my setup, it isn't any faster than IE. It doesn't render any pages prettier for me. Maybe the server gives me an other version of Chimera than everyone else.
I don't know, cause people always tell me something like it is the Über-Browser.
 
Tigger, what kind of mac do you have?

If you have a dual G4 1.25 Ghz, maybe Chimera is just as fast as Explorer.

I go to pages with tons of pictures on them that Explorer takes OVER a minute to load and display.

The same page on Chimera takes THREE SECONDS.

Chimera renders every page faster.

Chimera doesn't redraw HTML code that doesn't change. In Explorer, if you delete a message in hotmail, the whole page redraws and the message is gone. In Chimera, you would just see the message disappear without the page redrawing.

Tigger, are you sure you're on a mac?
 
direct from the mouth of the developers of phoenix:
13. Where's the mac version?

There is no mac version. While Phoenix could be made to run on Mac without much trouble, we see no point in competing with Chimera. Chimera is the lightweight, standalone Mozilla browser solution for Mac OS X. We have received requests for a Mac classic version, and are considering the idea. But don't hold your breath.



anyway...

http://www.kmgerich.com/misc.html

phoenix for mac os x.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top