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OS X Businesses Operating Systems Apple

Macworld Holds Battle of the Browsers 167

Posted by pudge from the i-vote-for-telnet-slashdot.org-http dept.
dumbArtMajor writes "Macworld has an article breaking down most of the available browsers for Mac OS X and evaluates speed, rendering, etc. Did your app of choice kick the other guy's ass?" I don't want to know which one kicked which other one, or where they kicked them. I just want one browser that works.
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Macworld Holds Battle of the Browsers More

Macworld Holds Battle of the Browsers

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  • Browsers: (Score:3, Funny)

    by Neck_of_the_Woods ( 305788 ) on Wednesday December 04, 2002 @04:21PM (#4813526) Journal

    telnet www.apple.com 80 has all the functionality that I need.

    • Netscape 7.0... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Alan Partridge ( 516639 )
      ...according to this idiotic article DOESN'T support tabbed browsing. Since it certainly DOES, the rest of the article isn't worth the pixels it's rendered with.

      Oh yeah - my choice? Omniweb 4.1, Chimera 0.6, Netscape 7.0 IN THAT ORDER.

      • Re:Netscape 7.0... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by angelo ( 21182 ) on Wednesday December 04, 2002 @05:50PM (#4814416) Homepage
        You are incorrect. The order goes Mozilla, Chimera, Netscape 7.0, IE, Omniweb, iCab. This is because only one thing matters: accurate rendering and standards support. Omniweb and iCab are pretty terrible at this.
        • if you want accurate rendering I'd point you to IE 6 for Windows - seeing as that's the standard.

          I choose Omniweb (yep, I even paid) because the UI is outstanding, all my online banking works flawlessly, it renders Slashdot more readable than ANY other browser, it's filtering is top notch and it's bookmark management and deadlink checking is unsurpassed. Chimera may yet develop into something good, and Netscape 7.0 is a fine internet "suite", but I'd rather lose an arm than go back to IE from Omniweb - it's that simple.

        • Re:Netscape 7.0... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Matthew Weigel ( 888 ) on Wednesday December 04, 2002 @09:42PM (#4815827) Homepage Journal

          Spoken like someone who hasn't used any of them.

          I might rank Chimera and OmniWeb neck and neck, but probably not. Netscape 7 is completely, unabashedly unusable, and doesn't belong in any list of browsers people use.

          IE renders more correctly than OmniWeb, but the user experience is sufficiently inferior that I only use it if it correctly handles something OmniWeb fails at (that is, one site a week).

          I would love for OmniWeb to render websites more correctly. But, frankly, it does a good enough job. Does that limit web developers? Sure. I feel for them. But expecting users to use crap like Netscape 7 is simply insulting. Expecting me to use stuff like Chimera, which offers a "Cocoa" interface with all non-Cocoa widets for interaction, is also insulting. I'm using OS X for a reason.

          Here's a quick test: is posting to Slashdot pleasant in these other browsers? No. Only OmniWeb can spell check my text as I enter it, and only OmniWeb and IE have text entry that is reasonably fast. Why would anyone use a browser that obviously pauses for each character I enter into a text field?

          • Re:Netscape 7.0... (Score:4, Informative)

            by TiMac ( 621390 ) on Wednesday December 04, 2002 @10:43PM (#4816082)
            I'd say that my order is: Chimera, Mozilla, IE, OmniWeb.

            Why would anyone use a browser that obviously pauses for each character I enter into a text field?

            How slow is your Mac? Or how the hell fast can you type? Because I type ~65-70 words a minute (fairly fast) and I'm typing this on Chimera 0.60 and I'm not seeing any "pauses" between characters. IE is fast. Mozilla is slow. But Chimera is definitely miles ahead of Mozilla. There really isn't significant delay. Maybe you were using an older version of Chimera?

            Expecting me to use stuff like Chimera, which offers a "Cocoa" interface with all non-Cocoa widets for interaction, is also insulting.

            What are you talking about non-Cocoa widgets? Are you high? All of Chimera's widgets are Cocoa...or rather, they are "Aqua," which is the proper name. The close, minimize and whatever-the-official-name-for-the-green-button-is buttons are all Aqua. The scroll bars and arrows are Aqua. The tabs are Aqua. You can test these by going to the "General" System Preferences and selecting the Graphite theme. Chimera's widgets turn graphite! They are real.

            The button bar is true Aqua. You can test this by Command-clicking the White button. The buttons rotate through configurations as Aqua does. The Sidebar is Aqua--it's actually called a "Drawer." Its alerts are real--they are "Sheets." Even form elements (buttons, etc) are Aqua-sized.

            So yeah...Chimera is definitely Cocoa, and definitely Aqua. And it's fast and renders perfectly (in my experience). I never use another browser anymore. Mozilla used to be my browser but it was way too slow.

            • Re:Netscape 7.0... (Score:3, Informative)

              by Matthew Weigel ( 888 )

              TiMac wrote:

              How slow is your Mac? Or how the hell fast can you type? Because I type ~65-70 words a minute (fairly fast) and I'm typing this on Chimera 0.60 and I'm not seeing any "pauses" between characters.

              500MHz G3. Is that not fast enough to run a frickin' web browser? I remember running (an admittedly much less capable version of) OmniWeb on a 25MHz NeXTStation. How much more processing power does Chimera require? Chimera pauses for each character entered, and it is definitely not a Cocoa text field.

              The text field, where OS X actually innovated a lot - actually improved usability over other systems a lot - isn't native. Things like reasonably complete emacs bindings for cursor movement, interface to the spell checker, and so on are things I've come to expect in OmniWeb. Redrawing the entire text box every time I enter a character is not what I expect.

      • Oddly enough, that's my exact choice, too! With IE a distant fourth.

        And no, accurate rendering isn't the only important part of a browser, otherwise we wouldn't have fine control over cookies/popups/images, download managers, bookmark management, tabbed browsing, and many other features.

        And even `accurate' rendering still allows much leeway for elegance and consistency.

        Those are some reasons why I currently use OmniWeb in preference to Chimera - though at the latter's current rate of development, I expect it to overtake OmniWeb before too long.

  • most all browsers will get the job done, even IE...it's just nice because just about every browser, with the exception of IE undergoes fairly regular updates.

    i'm still in good ol mozilla.

  • Make AppleScript Work For You (Score:5, Informative)

    by pudge ( 3605 ) <<slashdot> <at> <pudge.net>> on Wednesday December 04, 2002 @04:24PM (#4813560) Homepage Journal
    The story includes this:
    Launch the Script Editor application (located in the Applications: AppleScript folder) and type the following:
    try
    tell application "Internet Explorer"
    GetURL "http://apple.slashdot.org/"
    Activate
    end tell
    on error
    end try
    To use a browser other than Internet Explorer, enter its name within the quotation marks after tell application. To open more sites in separate windows, add new GetURL commands with the other pages' addresses.
    Bleah. You shouldn't need to know the browser name, or what events are understood by the app, or what arguments it accepts. Just use this:
    open location "http://apple.slashdot.org/"
    It uses your default http handler, and should work fine with all the browsers (and if not, send in a bug report to the maker of browser you're using).
    • open location "http://apple.slashdot.org/"

      echo '' > temp.html ; open temp.html; rm temp.html

      Done.

      Write a shell script if you want to just type
      openurl blah.

      Oh, look, I already did it some time ago. Cut and enjoy:

      --- openurl ---
      #!/bin/sh
      TEMPURLFILENAME=$LOGNAME.temp.html
      echo '' >> /tmp/$TEMPURLFILENAME
      echo '' >> /tmp/$TEMPURLFILENAME
      echo " " >> /tmp/$TEMPURLFI
      LENAME
      echo 'Not Here' >> /tmp/$TEMPURLFILENAME
      echo '' >> /tmp/$TEMPURLFILENAME
      echo '' >> /tmp/$TEMPURLFILENAME
      echo 'Hang on!!!' >> /tmp/$TEMPURLFILENAME
      echo '' >> /tmp/$TEMPURLFILENAME
      echo '' >> /tmp/$TEMPURLFILENAME
      open /tmp/$TEMPURLFILENAME
      sleep 10
      rm /tmp/$TEMPURLFILENAME
      echo bye
      ---
      • Oh, crap - I should have previewed!

        echo '<html><head><META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" content="0;URL=http://www.apple.com"></head></html >' > temp.html ; open temp.html; rm temp.html

        And here is the shell script:
        --- openurl ---
        #!/bin/sh
        TEMPURLFILENAME=$LOGNAME.temp.html
        echo '<html>' >> /tmp/$TEMPURLFILENAME
        echo '<head>' >> /tmp/$TEMPURLFILENAME
        echo " <META HTTP-EQUIV=REFRESH CONTENT=\"0;URL=$1\">" >> /tmp/$TEMPURLFI
        LENAME
        echo '<title>Not Here</title>' >> /tmp/$TEMPURLFILENAME
        echo '</head>' >> /tmp/$TEMPURLFILENAME
        echo '<body>' >> /tmp/$TEMPURLFILENAME
        echo '<h1>Hang on!!!</h1>' >> /tmp/$TEMPURLFILENAME
        echo '</body>' >> /tmp/$TEMPURLFILENAME
        echo '</html>' >> /tmp/$TEMPURLFILENAME
        open /tmp/$TEMPURLFILENAME
        sleep 10
        rm /tmp/$TEMPURLFILENAME
        echo bye
        ---
        • Or, better yet, if typing open location "http://apple.slashdot.org/" is too long for you.. you could just use aliases to do all the typing...

          Please don't take offense when I say that your script is like using a machine gun to kill an ant.

          • You gotta admit that its an extraordinarily well aimed machine gun :)
          • Please don't take offense when I say that your script is like using a machine gun to kill an ant.

            Here are the big advantages to my script:
            • It works
            • It's done


            Here's the disadvantage to using aliases:
            • I don't have one onhand
            • Explain to me how your script is better than typing open http://www.apple.com/. You don't even need aliases.
              • Explain to me how your script is better than typing open http://www.apple.com/. You don't even need aliases.

                benzene% open http://apple.com
                2002-12-04 17:18:20.586 open[23213] No such file: /home/kwerle/http:/apple.com

                benzene% openurl http://apple.com ...
                Browser of choice opens page.

                That was the point about it working, as opposed to not working. I'm using 10.1 - maybe you're using Jaguar and they included that functionality. Can you type open http://www.apple.com and have it work?
                • That was the point about it working, as opposed to not working. I'm using 10.1 - maybe you're using Jaguar and they included that functionality. Can you type open http://www.apple.com and have it work?
                  open http://www.apple.com/ works just fine on my machine (10.2.2).

                  Try open location http://www.apple.com/. If that works, you can alias "openURL" to "open location". Then you can just type "openURL http://www.apple.com/"

                  Hmmm. This entire discussion appears to be the result of another inconsistency in Apple's Tools...

                  • benzene% open location http://www.apple.com/
                    2002-12-04 17:55:40.175 open[24496] No such file: /home/kwerle/location
                    2002-12-04 17:55:40.176 open[24496] No such file: /home/kwerle/http:/www.apple.com

                    Hmmm. This entire discussion appears to be the result of another inconsistency in Apple's Tools...

                    They just added that functionality to Jaguar. Cool with me!

    • Make _Terminal_ Work For You (Score:4, Informative)

      by ChrisDolan ( 24101 ) <chris+slashdot.chrisdolan@net> on Wednesday December 04, 2002 @07:27PM (#4815116) Homepage
      Try this on the command line:

      bilbo% open "http://apple.slashdot.org/"

      It uses you Internet prefs to decide which browser to launch.

      But do you want to see something really bizarre? My prefs are set to use IE as the default browser (yeah, I know, sorry). But If I explicitly try to launch an url with mozilla, it launches in IE instead. That is, the following command launches IE:
      open /Applications/Mozilla.app "http://apple.slashdot.org/"

      *shrug*

  • I'll enter. (Score:5, Funny)

    by tps12 ( 105590 ) on Wednesday December 04, 2002 @04:26PM (#4813574) Homepage Journal
    I think I have a chance at taking home the trophy. I've been browsing since the mid 90's, and I've got my moves down. I can read User Friendly in one window while submitting a Register article to Slashdot in another and bookmarking the latest Flash meme in a third. I haven't seen an ad since 1998, I've never been fooled by a goatse link, and I clean my cache biweekly. My History is organized better than most people's Favorites, an appropriate plugin is always found, and I have a script set up to automatically notify webmasters of broken links. I truly am a Great Browser, and I think I have what it takes to compete with the best.

    Sign me up.
  • Glad to see Mozilla made a good showing against IE. With Mozilla I can run a MS free Apple. I don't hate MS, I just don't want them anywhere near me.

    Now if only I could get my Mac to serve the browser to my X-thin clients.

  • chimera wins (Score:1, Redundant)

    by stoffel ( 106124 )
    Need I say more...

    • Re:chimera wins (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Corvus9 ( 300802 )
      Yes you do need to say more. You need to say why you think Chimera "wins" when the article left it unrated because it was a beta release. It was also the only browser rated "prone to crashes" and having "minimal preferences; limited support for Flash".

      What the summary said is Chimera is the "browser to watch". As in, if it ever becomes reliable and supports plug-ins it will become a contender, but not until then. The summary also said Internet Explorer is "the browser to beat". IMHO this comes a lot closer to "winning" than the "browser to watch".

      • Have you used Chimera of late? Most of the Flash bugs have been fixed. You need the latest download from Macromedia, but it works quite well. Many of Flash heavy sites I used to have problems with work perfectly now.

        Don't get me wrong. I have some problems with Chimera. Its history is weak. It has few features. It doesn't support most of the nice Cocoa features that Omniweb does. (i.e. spellchecking) But it is very fast and renders pages better than Omniweb. What I've heard about the new Omniweb makes me excited. But that is still likely about two months out.

        • Yes 0.6 could be 1.0 in my book. It does everything so well.
        • It doesn't support most of the nice Cocoa features that Omniweb does. (i.e. spellchecking)

          It goes deeper than that. Chimera doesn't use Cocoa text widgets at all. Not only to you not get services like spellchecking; the text rendering itself is screwed up. It's unbearable, and so absurdly unnecessary.

          I use Chimera only when I have to. For everything else, it's OmniWeb all the way-- and yes, I paid for my OmniWeb license, thank you very much.

          • Re:chimera wins (Score:3, Informative)

            by WatertonMan ( 550706 )
            The problem only really occurs with some fonts that the Carbon anti-aliases handles differently than the Cocoa anti-aliasing. I've complained about browsing the MacNN Forums with Chimera, for instance. They use bold Geneva which anti-aliases horribly with Chimera. There was a discussion of this in the MacNN Forums. Basically there isn't much of a work around. That is more Apple's fault than anyone elses though.

            You are right that text input fields still use the Gecko code which is oriented towards crossplatform abilities. Supposedly that will be changed, but because of the difficulty will be one of the last things finished. Hopefully by then Apple will have made more Cocoa features available to the Carbon API.

            • The problem only really occurs with some fonts that the Carbon anti-aliases handles differently than the Cocoa anti-aliasing.

              That's not what I'm talking about. Open up Chimera and go to a page with a big textedit box. Start typing. See how it redraws the entire textedit box contents every time you strike a key? I have a dual gigahertz machine, and I'm only a moderately fast typist; Chimera can't keep up with me. It lags behind as I type. That's unacceptable.
              • This article [macosxhints.com] explains how to bookmark groups of tabs in Chimera. And this one [macosxhints.com] tells you how to block images selectively by server. The more I use Chimera, the more I like it-- it's fast and stable, and it's nice to know that folks can expand upon its functionality easily. It seems like every day I learn about a new way to trick out Chimera.
                • Yuck. I don't want to use a browser where you have to have an article that explains how to do things.

                  I do not, for example, want an article that tells me how to make Chimera's tab-to-focus only work with text boxes instead of with every UI element on the page. I just want it to work correctly.
              • I don't notice the typing problem. I'm on a dual 867 system. I edit rather long messages in forums like this one without noticing such a problem. I admit that in earlier versions of Chimera I hated doing this. But I don't notice it now, although I still prefer Omniweb for typing. What version of Chimera are you using? Something sounds wrong.

                Regarding what some others asked about anti-aliasing. This is a real problem although there are modifications you can make to Chimera to limit the smallest font displayed and also the font used. Various hacks have been discussed on many message boards and Version Tracker even has an application to modify them without editing the pref file by hand. Some of these the nightlies have added interfaces for.

                To see the problem check out this MacNN Forum thread [macnn.com]. Be aware that it is based off on Chimera 0.5 and not the more recent version. But the same basic problem remains. It also demonstrates the display differences between Omniweb and Chimera on ESPN.

                I'd have to say that I've modified my position somewhat since that thread. I find that CHimera 0.6 is improved enough that I now use it more than Omniweb.

                • What version of Chimera are you using? Something sounds wrong.

                  A nightly build from a week or so ago. It's definitely wrong, but the question is whether it's wrong in all cases, or only wrong in the build that I (occasionally) use.

                  If-- and this is a giant if-- the Chimera guys can get their act together and actually release a finished product, it might, someday, end up being a better browser than OmniWeb. But if it goes the Mozilla route, that is to say they just take a given build that's not even remotely feature-complete or bug-free and stamp it 1.0, then it's still going to be OmniWeb all the way.
    • > Need I say more...

      Some supporting comments might help.

  • ... and no, that reason is not "Microsoft".


    It's because the damn thing will totally lock you out of doing just about anything if you have the misfortune of trying to contact a server that won't respond immediately. IE just sits there, waiting for a timeout instead of letting you do something.

    This is what makes it totally unusable.

  • IE5WIN != IE5MAC (Score:3, Insightful)

    by krs-one ( 470715 ) <<moc.smuroflgnepo> <ta> <civ>> on Wednesday December 04, 2002 @04:52PM (#4813871) Homepage Journal
    I didn't read the article, but a lot of people think that IE5 for Windows is the same as IE5 for Mac. IE5 for Mac is actually a decent browser because it was headed up by a guy at Microsoft who pays attention to the standards set by the W3C (I forget his last name, but I think it starts with a T). IE5 for the Mac is as good as Mozilla for Windows. They are both awesome browsers. Unfortunately, IE Anything for Windows sucks.

    -Vic
    • IE5 for the Mac is as good as Mozilla for Windows.

      It's pretty good, except I seem to have this problem using <object> tags to include text/html content. Both versions of IE5 (Win or Mac) seem to make this extra GET request to the server with "-" as the referer, and the content is not displayed.

      This is in keeping with not using frame tags in Strict HTML 4.01 compliance. The w3c validator reports that the container page is compliant, as is the page included by the object tag.

      Finally, in all versions of Mozilla browsers (since they all use the same render engine), the content is included in the container page without a hitch (and Moz doesn't make the extra GET request with the empty referer string). So, IE still isn't as good as Mozilla in this w3c strict compliance regard.
    • IE5 for the Mac is as good as Mozilla for Windows. They are both awesome browsers.

      Well, I won't argue that IE for OS X is about the same as Mozilla for Windows, but I can say that it's not an "awesome browser."

      IE randomly decides to stop loading page data before it's finished. If you browse a page with tons of images-- some web designers just love to separate a page into 50+ GIFs, for some reason-- the page will often fail to render completely. IE will just stop right in the middle.

      On my machine, I have OmniWeb, Chimera, and IE. IE is by far the least dependable browser of the bunch.

    • "...it was headed up by a guy at Microsoft who pays attention to the standards set by the W3C..."

      You're thinking of Tantek Celik [tantek.com].

  • Quoting some doodie (Score:4, Interesting)

    by BoomerSooner ( 308737 ) on Wednesday December 04, 2002 @05:01PM (#4813985) Homepage Journal
    Quote "The Last Word
    Microsoft's Internet Explorer effectively controls the Mac OS X browser market -- its overall rendering quality and its support for Web standards made it the browser to beat in our tests. Netscape's fall from grace as IE's main competition has opened the field to newer browsers, such as Opera and The Omni Group's OmniWeb, that focus on speed and standards compliance. But what may turn out to be the biggest surprise is how Mozilla.org and the promising Gecko rendering engine have risen from the ashes of Netscape Communications to mount a credible challenge to IE's dominance. Although Mozilla is still too similar to its Netscape cousin in performance, Navigator's speed and rendering fidelity make it the OS X browser to watch. "

    This is a load of crap. First Navigator is based on Mozilla. I use Mozilla and Chimera as my browsers on OS X, and on Windows I use IE and Mozilla.

    Saying IE is the "standards" leader is like saying you find your grandma attractive (fucking crazy). My company runs all linux on the server side (except one db on solaris) and when building our JSPs the ONLY browser that constantly fucks up is IE on OS X/9. If it works fine in IE for PocketPC you'd hope it would work on a Mac. Oh well, I guess if you use MS you get what you pay for.

    I just cant wait for Apples iBrowse (or whatever they decide to call their own browser). Sherlock is not exactly what I'm envisioning for the future.
    • This is a load of crap. First Navigator is based on Mozilla. I use Mozilla and Chimera as my browsers on OS X, and on Windows I use IE and Mozilla.

      They never said Chimera wasn't using Gecko as a matter of fact they made sure to mention the Gecko rendering engine, they merely didn't mention that Navigator uses Gecko explicitly. I thought the idea was inferred.

  • iCab... (Score:5, Informative)

    by singularity ( 2031 ) <.nowalmart. .at. .gmail.com.> on Wednesday December 04, 2002 @05:02PM (#4813991) Homepage Journal
    I am disappointed the article did not mention more about iCab's unique abilities. It does have some problems supporting CSS, and it is HTML compliant to a fault (although being "compliant to a fault" with HML could be argues as impossible), but some features it does offer are only now being integrated into other browsers.

    iCab's Filter Manager is one of the most powerful things I have ever seen in a web browser. You can filter almost anything (cookies, JavaScript, images) based on domain, link, or another other thing.

    Mozilla's coders could learn a lot by studying iCabs Filter Manager.

    Do you want to turn off JavaScript except for your online banking (that requires it), and allow all cookies but those coming from DoubleClick? Done. Want to accept Slashdot cookies forever, but Yahoo cookies only until the end of the session? Done. Do you want to not load images that are 480x60 pixels big and not accept any images that come from */ad-bin/*? Done.

    iCab (along with some other browsers) also supports "Open in Background Window", which is something I cannot imagine being without while surfing.

    Another great thing? You can set it to only send a Referrer: header inside the same domain (or set it to not be sent at all)

    Unfortunately the article forgot to mention iCab's ad filtering (which is much more powerful than simply rejecting all images not from the original server and its ability to block pop-ups without seeing them.
    • I was downloading a new beta of iCab in the background while writing that message. From the readme:

      "The Web Cache and the image cache (and some other components) were completely replaced by new routines. Because of this iCab is now much faster (depending of the page)."

      So maybe iCab will be even faster (it was in the middle of the pack as far as speed goes in the article)

  • Bad coverage of Mozilla (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LordNimon ( 85072 ) on Wednesday December 04, 2002 @05:02PM (#4813992)
    I subscribe to Macworld and read this article in the December issue. The coverage of Mozilla was very poor. The editors just don't "get it" when it comes to why you would choose Mozilla. They didn't cover any of the useful Mozilla-only features. They didn't cover the fact that you could report bugs directly and download daily updates that can fix your problems. They didn't cover anything about the value of open source. They didn't cover any of the cool plug-ins, like the preferences toolbar, mouse gesturing, or whatever. And worst of all, they didn't mention that Netscape removed the GUI control for allowing you to block pop-up windows. That feature alone would convince half the IE users to switch to Mozilla if they knew about it.
    • The coolest thing is you can selectively allow pop-ups based on whether they are requested (followed link) or not.

      I cannot remember if Chimera does this but I think it does. Once Chimera implements 90% of Mozilla I'm changed for good.

      My favorite feature (this is real cheezy I know) is the fact I can add a Home button next to the stop button without having to show the Personal Toolbar!!! YEAH!!!
      • The coolest thing is you can selectively allow pop-ups based on whether they are requested (followed link) or not. I cannot remember if Chimera does this but I think it does.
        Yep.
        Once Chimera implements 90% of Mozilla I'm changed for good.
        They have. Gecko's in there in it's entirety, and that's the whole web browsing portion of Mozilla. (Except the resource hogging XUL environment; sorry, but it's true.)

        It's the preference interface that isn't full featured yet. In other words, it will honor every pref set by Mozilla, even the ones it doesn't present to the user. So either set them from Mozilla, or edit the file 'prefs.js' by hand.
    • They didn't cover anything about the value of open source.

      Why should they? Open source is of no value whatsoever to most people. In fact, given the conclusion (the arguable conclusion, but a conclusion nonetheless) that IE is superior to Mozilla and Mozilla-derived browsers right now, it seems like "open source" is a liability rather than an asset.

      They didn't cover any of the cool plug-ins, like the preferences toolbar, mouse gesturing, or whatever.

      This falls into the same category as the open-source thing. These features are of dubious value at best. Mouse gesturing? Dumb idea. Certainly some people out there are going to like it, but most won't, so why bother mentioning it in a competitive review?
      • Twirlip of the Mists wrote:

        > Why should they? Open source is of no value
        > whatsoever to most people.

        A more valid point would be that most people may not realize what open source is or what value it is to them.

        Open source is of considerable value, or Apple would never have based their OS of the future, OS X, on an open source base (Darwin). Open source web server, Apache, included in OS X, is the major player in the web server market, with over 50% of the market.

        And in this case, Mozilla and buddies being based on open source means that people can suggest changes (or gasp, make their own), and get frequent updates and bug fixes. That is valuable, whether you are a heavy browser with a cool idea for how to improve your browser, or the IT department looking to deploy a customized browser for the corporate intranet.

        > In fact, given the conclusion (the arguable
        > conclusion, but a conclusion nonetheless) that
        > IE is superior to Mozilla and Mozilla-derived
        > browsers right now,

        Oh, give the baby a break! Mozilla just hit 1.0 a few months ago! Big brother Goji is gonna get mad if he hears you are being mean to his baby brother. Besides, if IE is oh-so-superior, where are its tabbed windows and ad blocking features?

        > it seems like "open source" is a liability
        > rather than an asset.

        Closed source (and $30) iCab has been in "preview" versions for how long now?

        > This falls into the same category as the
        > open-source thing. These features are of dubious
        > value at best.

        In a review I want to see a comparison of features (and even details of feature implementations so I can tell, say who has the best ad blocking features, and who can't be bothered to have any). I don't want to just see features compared on what IE has (the ones Microsoft decides we need to further its world domination).

        Chief Tsujimori: "I won't let you get away. I will never let you escape."
        Godzilla elegantly lifts his tail skyward to give her the "finger", crashes it down on the water, and submerges.
        "Godzilla X Megagiras", 2000
        • Open source is of considerable value, or Apple would never have based their OS of the future, OS X, on an open source base (Darwin). Open source web server, Apache, included in OS X, is the major player in the web server market, with over 50% of the market.

          Okay, so open-source software has value to software companies, or to people who run web servers. I fail to see how that has any meaning for individuals who just want to surf the web.

          And in this case, Mozilla and buddies being based on open source means that people can suggest changes (or gasp, make their own), and get frequent updates and bug fixes.

          Last things first: the value of frequent updates is moot if the browser is not of sufficient quality to merit its use. In other words, all the patches in the world won't make up for a poor product. As to the other matter, virtually nobody is going to be interested in making changes to their web browser; users are not programmers. There will undoubtedly continue to be a niche in which users want access to source code, but that niche is so small in comparison to the user base for a web browser as to be statistically insignificant.

          I uphold my assertion that "open source" is of no value to just about everybody.

          Besides, if IE is oh-so-superior, where are its tabbed windows and ad blocking features?

          Tabbed windows are a terrible idea; on those occasions when I use Chimera, I avoid them. With tabbed windows one cannot view two pages side-by-side at the same time. That's the only reason I ever have more than one browser window open at once, so tabbed windows are of no use to me.

          Ad blocking, on the other hand, is a good thing. It's one of my main reasons for using OmniWeb.

          Closed source (and $30) iCab has been in "preview" versions for how long now?

          There is just as much crappy closed-source commercial software as there is open-source software. I generally find that this is less good open-source software than closed-source software, however.

          I don't want to just see features compared on what IE has (the ones Microsoft decides we need to further its world domination).

          Uh... okay, first of all, your opinion of Microsoft is clear, and irrelevant to the conversation. Can we keep the MS-bashing out of this, please?

          Let's say you built a web browser that also included a little window with a picture of a bouncing ball. A feature, no question about it, but is it a useful or important one? In reading a review of web browsers, I would prefer that the discussion be limited to features that actually mean something in the context of a web browser. Features like Mozilla's misguided and unwelcome "sidebar" and the mail and news readers don't belong in any serious comparison of web browsers, not because IE doesn't have them, but rather because no web browser needs them.

    • Bake-offs like this are inherently flawed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by melquiades ( 314628 ) on Wednesday December 04, 2002 @07:53PM (#4815253) Homepage
      The problem with side-by-side comparisons like this -- MacWorld is an especially egregious offender -- is that they strongly favor comparisons on quantifiable attributes, like feature matrices and benchmarks.

      Unfortunately, these things aren't what users really care about.

      Most any modern browser will render most any web page at a perfectly acceptable speeds. I don't really give much of a shit about rendering times, unless some browser's are so incredibly bad that I actually notice them. (Perhaps I'm more patient than some users, but honestly, I really don't care. They'll all just fine.)

      What I care about is the whole "browsing experience" -- and that's hard to quantify. A program's functionality is more than the sum of its features: it also involves how well those features work together, and the smoothness of the facade under which they fit. I don't actually want a lot of features -- I want very few powerful features that give me tremendous functionality.

      This bake-off misses the subtle, truly important differences that make it worth switching. For example:

      OmniWeb renders pages gorgeously. They just ... look better. They're easier on the eye, scan faster, read faster, and are just ... pleasing. I defy even Tufte to quantify that.

      OmniWeb (and, increasingly, Chimera) feel much more like OS X apps than the alternatives. They have great UIs. Apple goes a long way toward quantifying that in their HI guidelines, but really, it's a "feels good" thing.

      Mozilla's tabbed browsing isn't just a feature in a checklist -- it's a wonderfully powerful and well-thought-out feature that's tightly, thoughtfully integrated with the app. Menus are keyboard shortcuts for tabs are there where you'd want them; tabs behave helpfully and sensibly. It's not the tabs that are exciting; it's the fact that they work so darned well.

      Do keep trying, MacWorld. I'm glad that somebody at least acknowledges that there are alternatives!
      • IMHO they didn't even do the quantifiable part very well. For example they should have checked how well the browsers fit Apple human interface guidelines, which would in part reflect the overall "browsing experience".

        Things like klicks in the URL address bar:
        single klick: place the cursor
        double klick: mark a word
        triple klick: mark the whole line (URL)

        Or drag-n-drop support:
        Can I drag-n-drop a URL address or HTML file item onto an open browser window? Onto the browser icon in the task bar or on the desktop? Can I mark text in a HTML window and drag it to an open editor window? Is text from HTML tables tab separated? etc.

        All in all a pretty shallow review, but then it's only MacWorld, and not a serious computer magazine suited for geeks...

  • Problems with Article (Score:4, Informative)

    by WatertonMan ( 550706 ) on Wednesday December 04, 2002 @05:10PM (#4814069)
    There is something wrong with this article. For one it says all the browsers pretty much rendered ESPN right. However Omniweb, my favorite browser, does NOT render ESPN right. The speeds seem slightly off from what I see on my system as well. Right now Chimera renders about as fast as my PC while the others are far slower.

    I really don't think it is a terribly good article. It isn't very specific in problems. They also didn't do what I think is applicable: a bank test. Most problems Mac browsers have are with banks. Chimera handles most of them as well as IE. Omniweb doesn't.

    I should add that the browser scene is changing quickly. The latest releases of Chimera really have improved a lot. Although its still a beta, it is a beta far more usable than many iApps. Omniweb is falling behind, but version 5.0 is just around the corner. It'll have an entirely new rendering engine and should remove all the problems it has with CSS and tables.

  • Surely most accurate benchmark evar (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 04, 2002 @05:11PM (#4814075)
    Time spent in loading a web page has to be one of the most rock solid, consistent and predictable experiences a computer user cam ever hope for. Thus their decision to only load each webpage once per browser is more than enough, and anyone suggesting that this is a ludicrously simplistic and flawed benchmark needs to get help.
    I applaud the scientists involved in this research for their painstaking efforts and astonishing attention to detail.

  • Obviously an English-Only Type (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kalidasa ( 577403 ) on Wednesday December 04, 2002 @05:17PM (#4814125) Journal

    its overall rendering quality and its support for Web standards made it the browser to beat in our tests.

    Really? Standards like ISO 10646-1? Let's see:

    Internet Explorer for Mac: No Unicode

    Mozilla: BMP and Plane 1 support (maybe more; that's what I've seen)

    I just use IE for the sites that are too stupid to code to W3C standards like they ought to.

    • Internet Explorer for Mac: No Unicode

      Mmmm... huh? For the record, non-Roman sites like apple.co.jp, chinese.yahoo.com, yahoo.co.jp, and so on render just fine in IE for OS X. I don't know if they use Unicode or another character set, but they work with no problem at all, and without anything other than the default OS loaded.
      • No, not Unicode. Shift-JIS and Big5 (the encodings used by apple.co.jp and chinese.yahoo.com, respectively) are not the be all and the end all. And you can't use e.g. Cyrillic or Greek on the same page as Shift-JIS Japanese. IE 5 claims to have UTF-8 support, but that support seems to be limited to the pre-Unicode encodings, and so is not real Unicode support like one finds in OmniWeb and Mozilla. Try Alan Wood's Unicode test pages in IE and then in Mozilla, and you'll see what I mean.

  • whoopie doo (Score:2, Insightful)

    by BigBir3d ( 454486 )
    I thought we all new there was only 4 real choices:

    1) IE
    2) Mozilla or variant therof
    3) iCab
    4) Omni

    IE was/is the most reliable rendering wise...

    Mozilla/Netscape et al, too slow and buggy.

    iCab was ok.

    Omni I hate.

    There really is no good browser for OS X.

    A fast IE with tabs that is not a Microsoft product would be great. To bad Apple has little apparent interest in doing such a thing.
    • I must agree to an extent. Even Opera, my browser of choice in Windows, isn't nearly as efficient in OS-X. I really think more attention needs to paid to the Macintosh world of internet users.
    • Omni I hate.

      Dude, if you take the very best browser overall for the Mac and dismiss it with "I hate this," of course you're going to end up with no good choices.

      OmniWeb is not without flaws. It needs some CSS improvements, seriously, and some JavaScript improvements. But its text rendering and Cocoa features (like spell-checking in a textedit box) can't be beat. It's got great regular-expression URL filtering, too. I use OmniWeb most of the time, and Chimera on those rare occasions when I have to.

      "I hate this" isn't a very good critique.
      • ok...

        CSS doesn't work

        Java is useless (double entendre...)

        My bank's website didn't agree with it (first browser ever)

        slooowwww....

        tabs?
        • >ok...
          >
          >CSS doesn't work

          agreed, but I rarely read wired anymore so...

          >Java is useless (double entendre...)

          Java is useless on ALL Mac browsers!

          >My bank's website didn't agree with it (first >browser ever)

          my three credit card and one bank site work PERFECTLY

          >slooowwww....

          not on my DP533 - what are you running?

          >tabs?

          no, but it handles windows very nicely, like opening links BEHIND. If Omni do add tabs, I hope they leave it optional.
          • >not on my DP533 - what are you running?

            ex-girlfriend has a iMac 700MHz G4 with 3/4 gig o RAM running Jaguar (10.2.1)

            did a side by side comparison with my P3 500MHz IBM ThinkPad (600X) that is running win98se with only 192mb RAM, and the laptop is faster (IE, Mozilla, & Netscape) than the iMac, using same browser. All 3 were faster than Omni and iCab also.

            I love OS X, but the 'internet experience' is pretty sucky... Wanted to buy a iBook (G3 700MHz), but it was slow enough that I got the used ThinkPad instead.

      • OmniWeb is not without flaws. It needs some CSS improvements, seriously

        "Some" CSS improvements?? OmniGroup is so far behind the curve on CSS [macedition.com] that I don't bother to account for it in my sites.

        its text rendering...can't be beat.

        I used to agree, because it was the only browser that used OS X's text rendering capabilities. Recent versions of Mozilla now use Cocoa for text rendering, obviating the only real presentational advantage of OW. I can't comment on its other nifty features because it's just too frustrating to watch it break compliant sites.

        Mozilla ain't perfect. It renders fairly quickly, but the interface is a bit rough and the programmers don't seem to know about multi-threading (trying to open a new tab while a page is loading usually takes two or three tries). However, it's the benchmark for standards compliance, and for that I'm eternally grateful.

        • Recent versions of Mozilla now use Cocoa for text rendering

          True, but the text still doesn't look right. The leading is wrong, and cannot be adjusted. Compare, oh, Slashdot's main page in OmniWeb to the same page in Chimera. The OmniWeb version looks noticeably better.

          Mozilla ain't perfect.

          Mozilla is, ultimately, a hack. I appreciate the work that went into making the user interface fully cross-platform, but it was wasted effort. It would have been better to have a native branch for Mac, a native branch for Windows, and so on. More work to maintain, but the result would have been far superior, which is the only thing that counts.

          I have, at various times, tried to use either Chimera or full-blown Mozilla as my main browser. I just can't do it. OmniWeb just blows them both away in terms of overall quality of the browsing experience.

          • Compare, oh, Slashdot's main page in OmniWeb to the same page in Chimera.

            I did, and couldn't see any real difference. OW lets you adjust the leading? I can't find it in the prefs.

            Mozilla is, ultimately, a hack.

            No real argument from me here. I'm just so happy that somebody is emphasizing standards-compliance that I'm willing to overlook (for a while) the shortcomings in the UI.

            • OW lets you adjust the leading?

              No, text leading in OmniWeb looks good by default, whereas with Chimera it looks way too tight by default. Neither program has an adjustment that I know of, but OmniWeb gets it right and Chimera gets it wrong.

  • Chimera Cons (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DoktorFaust ( 564453 ) on Wednesday December 04, 2002 @05:31PM (#4814243) Homepage
    From the article in reference to Chimera:
    Prone to crashes; minimal preferences; limited support for Flash.

    Notice that all of these cons are just what you'd expect in beta software -- in fact, improvements in all of these areas has been made since the release of 0.6.

    This suggests to me that Chimera is going to be one awesome brower when it reaches 1.0
    • Agreed. The Chimera project has turned a corner in a big way since 0.5. It is as solid as IE now, renders better and is much faster. I predict no other browser will hold a candle to it by 1.0. By that I mean on any platform.

  • Pluses he missed... (Score:5, Funny)

    by DarkRecluse ( 231992 ) on Wednesday December 04, 2002 @06:42PM (#4814813)
    "...Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.2.1...
    Price: free
    Pros:Most reliable renderer; good performance; great standards support.
    Cons: Sporadic cache and redraw problems; doesn't take advantage of new technologies such as tabbed windows or ad blocking."
    He forgot a few pluses... So let's update those Pro's and Cons...
    "...Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.2.1...
    Price: one measly soul
    Pros: Most coded for renderer; theatrical; standards support it well; No unused processor time; evokes joy in others; slows down your machine to prevent it from going to fast for you;
    Cons: What cons? Who needs a soul?..I mean, REALLY"

  • I wouldn't surf without... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by lbrt ( 625194 ) on Wednesday December 04, 2002 @06:47PM (#4814846)
    Chimera [mozilla.org] or Links [sourceforge.net].

    Chimera is a fast lightweight (unlike Mozilla) browser using Gecko layout engine and Cocoa user interface. Links on the otherhand is an excellent text browser. Sadly neither one was in the review.

    *lbrt
    • Chimera is a fast lightweight (unlike Mozilla) browser using Gecko layout engine and Cocoa user interface. Links on the otherhand is an excellent text browser. Sadly neither one was in the review.
      Uhh, yeah it was. That's what Navigator 0.5 is, Chimera.

      But other than that, you're right about it. It's lightweight, and *fast* as hell. It also now renders pages almost as beautifully as OmniWeb, but I'll admit I haven't tried that lately. Speaking of which, didn't the article say Omni is free? Wasn't last I knew.

      Oh well, it's MacWorld. They served us well in their day, now, well... What are ya gonna do?
  • I know someone else out there HAS to give up to OmniWeb with me. It renders SO beautifully. It's fast. And it really IS written in Cocoa.

    I don't care if Mozilla *calls* itself Cocoa --- If i cant use CocoaGestures with it then it ain't, period. I do believe that it's the only browser (haven't used iCab) that lets you do this so far (as all apps really written in cocoa will support).

    if you don't kmow what Cocoa Gestures is, download this http://www.bitart.com/CocoaGestures.dmg NOW!

    and you'll thank me.

    • Has Omni web improved it's load speeds though? I remember with early versions of Omniweb, the pages were amazing in terms of rendering, but it took forever to do anything, even worse than other browsers under OS X (the original release)
      • my box:
        867Mhz Quicksilver G4, 2Meg L3
        640 Megs Ram,
        Many Open Applications, with Uptime > 2 days.
        There is sufficient free memory to avoid any
        swapping.

        i'm using DIALUP avg 4.0 Kb/sec for both tests.

        opening ESPN (what they liked to test in the article), it takes:

        OmniWeb
        1:32 Seconds.

        Mozilla
        1:11 Seconds.

        BUT, considering that it's dial-up and not highspeed, I think the render-time proportions between the two would shrink to a factor where OmniWeb's other merits become a factor to appreciate.

        Observe, I ran them consecutively. They don't share caches so they both loaded from scratch. Being 4:00am on a college dialup means there aren't many fluctuations in network availability.
        if we imagine then that everything was the same, but run 16 times faster (like a dsl can easily achieve), then the rendering times come out to be

        5.75 second for OmniWeb,
        4.4375 for Mozilla.

        That is not a large difference. Someone up on the thread mentioned that it's really hard to get objective speeds with browsers, but this is a unbiased as i can get. Especially when, did i mention, i'm a 56K warrior.

        I think Omni caught up.

        Now feel free to blow my little science fair project away...

        regards, jamesr.

  • Old article (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Daleks ( 226923 ) on Wednesday December 04, 2002 @08:06PM (#4815316)
    Internet Explorer 5.2.1 [...] Most reliable renderer; good performance; great standards support.

    Um, what? If this were true, then why would Apple make an article [apple.com] documenting the IE's shortcomings? Also, on the subject of verions, why do they test version 0.5 of Chimera? 0.6 is much better and has been out [mozilla.org] since November 4th. It's a month later! The tested version of IE is 5.2.1, but on my machine I have 5.2.2. The modification date is October 3rd. This article is dated.

    Also why didn't the article address security? I seem to recall a problem [editthispage.com] with IE in that when it would download .hqx files it would automatically execute them. Granted it doesn't do this anymore, but it shows IE has a bad track record.
    • These print magazines, MacWorld and MacAddict, seem to take at least two months to go to print, and this article we're discussing is already about a month old. I really just read them for reviews these days.

  • Chimera (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MalleusEBHC ( 597600 ) on Wednesday December 04, 2002 @08:32PM (#4815457)
    Some people have pointed out that Chimera is at 0.6 already. However, as much of an improvement as this is for stability, I think it should be noted that turning of disk caching increases stability as much if not much more. Since I turned off disk caching I have only had one crash of Chimera as opposed to crashing about once every 2-3 days. (This is with the nightly builds that tend to be less stable than the regular release.) Turn of disk caching and enable http pipelining, and Chimera beats the pants off anything out there. It's fast, it has tabs, and it's nearly as stable as the other browsers even though it's a beta.
    • Where are the prefs for "disc caching" and "http pipelining"? I love chimera (using it now), but the lack of powerful preferencing is my major pet peeve.

  • IE Fast??? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Fished ( 574624 ) <amphigory@@@gmail...com> on Wednesday December 04, 2002 @09:07PM (#4815684)
    Okay, I don't know what anyone else's experience is, but my primary reason for switching to Netscape 7.0 (then to Chimera starting with 0.6) was that IE was so incredibly slow and unreliable, prash-crone and sluggish. I almost wonder if they are using the same IE I am to call it faster and more reliable.

  • If it hasn't got TABS then it doesn't rate (Score:4, Interesting)

    by evil_roy ( 241455 ) on Wednesday December 04, 2002 @09:20PM (#4815746)
    How could anyone who has experienced tabbed browsing discount this feature? The lack of tabbed browsing alone places IE dead last. When you add in the fact that it doesn't support ad-blocking the whole article becomes a troll.

    Of course IE will win if you discount features it doesn't have.
  • ...points to Chimera. It just works, with very little fuss.

    There aren't a ton of rational reasons. It's all feel. IE for Mac feels like Microsoft's operating systems; that is, like junk food. Omniweb gives the impression that is thinking oh so hard about how to construct a page.. iCab made more sense in OS 9, and Opera is easy to forget about after it crashes. That said, I've gone back to the Chimera .5 formulation; .6 appears unsteady.

    And yeah, I like tabbed browsing. Wow. My desktop's already a mess, might as well not add to it.

  • Fastest web browser (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Paladeen ( 8688 ) on Thursday December 05, 2002 @03:45PM (#4821037)

    By far, the fastest web browser for MacOS X is the quick'n dirty port [kmgerich.com] of Phoenix.

    Quite frankly, it is amazingly speedy, although it lacks quite a lot of features. But if you are willing to sacrifice compatibility for speed, it's the way to go. Launch speed is pretty lousy, but once it's launched, boy is it fast!

  • odd config (Score:2, Insightful)

    by gumbi west ( 610122 )
    Did anybody else notice that they had just 256MB in the computer? 10.2 launches and that's it, its all swap from there on out. If you actualy have $30 to blow on memory your computer will perform much better and differently than these tests.

  • There's no "best" browser (Score:4, Insightful)

    by kitzilla ( 266382 ) <paperfrog&gmail,com> on Friday December 06, 2002 @12:04PM (#4827465) Homepage Journal
    There's really no "best" browser. Each has its strengths and weaknesses.

    I use Chimera/Navigator almost exclusively now. The Flash instability problems seem to be a thing of the past, and even the nightly builds are useable. It's damn fast, and renders better than IE or OmniWeb. Preferences are still a bit spartan from the UI, but you can always edit the preference file by hand if you want tweaks. I've enabled HTTP pipelining and some other things in that manner. There are also pointy clicky utility programs like Chimerchanga that will do this for you if a text editor is inconvenient.

    Mozilla for OS X handles certain Javascript better than Chimera. It's more mature, but it's slower and doesn't feel like an OS X app. It's a good choice for those who prefer suites to standalone browsers. The mail program is quite serviceable.

    Netscape 7 is a bit clunky and cluttered. It's great if you access Netscape webmail, or if you need a spellchecker within your mail program.

    OmniWeb is a very respectable browser: fast and pretty, and quite stable. Like Chimera, it has a support community around it. I recently loaded OmniWeb and spent a few hours seeing how it has come along. A very nice ride, but I miss tabbed browsing. I understand tabs will make it to OmniWeb soon.

    IE for OS X is a much better browser than its Windows counterpart. I keep it on my drive to access our company's internal websites, which all require IE. It handles tables poorly. Don't bring it to Slashdot.

    Opera has a huge following: it feels light and was the first with tabbed browsing. You can set it to identify as pretty much any browser right from the toolbar. I've never liked its rendering, but a lot of folks think it's great.

    iCab does nothing to my satisfaction, but has its own faction of supporters.

    In my view, it's a great time to be an OS X user. We have a ton of great browsers. My top 3, in this order: Chimera, OmniWeb, and IE.

    All bets are off if Apple delivers a branded browser. It would almost certainly be based on Chimera/Navigator. Would be nice to see a commercial distribution of an already terrific product.

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