Chimera - The newest OS X browser

Nov 12, '02 12:59:13AM

Contributed by: robg

Chimera iconThe macosxhints Rating:
6 of 10
[0 to 10 lights; 10 = perfect!]

Although Chimera has been out for quite a while now, it's only in the newest versions that it's really starting to feel like a 'real' program to me. It still doesn't have everything needed for successful use as my full-time browser (hence the somewhat low score for a pick of the week), but it gets much much better with every minor release. Version 0.6, released about a week ago, is by far the best version yet. I've found myself using it quite often this last week, and so it winds up as this week's Pick of the Week.

Chimera has many of the advantages of Mozilla (it uses their page rendering technology, and it supports tabbed browsing) but it is developed in Cocoa, which speeds its interface greatly (and it should eventually support services). Although I don't have any solid empirical research to back this up, it also seems like pages display much more quickly in Chimera than they do in Mozilla or any of the other OS X browsers (has anyone done any real timed studies?).

So while Chimera may not be ready to become my default browser yet, its progress to date has been amazing, and it is now a very usable product. So here's a word of thanks to the Chimera team for taking the best rendering engine and combining it with what's shaping up to be a very nice user interface!

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