The Chimera Project Recommends New Build To Replace .6 Milestone Release

by , 9:00 AM EST, December 23rd, 2002

The Chimera Project has posted a statement recommending that users of its open-source Chimera browser (a.k.a. Navigator) upgrade to the December 20th nightly build. Chimera is the Mac OS X Cocoa open source project based on the Mozilla browser. Chimera is a browser-only app built on Mozilla's Gecko engine, and the Chimera Project releases regular nightly builds that supplement the milestone versions periodically released.

The Chimera Group is suggesting that people using the latest milestone release, version .6, update to the December 20th nightly build. While later nightly builds have since been released, the December 20th build is available from the Chimera Project's home page for those who prefer not to live on the bleeding edge. The December 20th nightly build improves application stability over version .6, and adds numerous new features and improvements. From the Chimera site:

20 December 2002: Many useful features and fixes have been added since Chimera 0.6 was released. We encourage you to download and use the nightly build from 20 December. New features and fixes include the following:

• Improved stability (more crash fixes)
• Shockwave Director content displays now
• Improved RealPlayer support
• You can add buttons for New Tab and Close Tab to the toolbar
• Added Send Link to the File menu, with optional toolbar button
• Files are automatically downloaded now, with no Save dialog. In addition, you can turn on a preference (see the Downloads panel under Navigation preferences) to automatically dispatch downloads to helper applications.
• Added a Global History tab in Sidebar, with improved performance
• Added an Export Bookmarks item (on the Manage Bookmarks submenu)
• You can now convert bookmarks folders to tab groups, and vice versa, via the Bookmarks Info panel
• Added support for Bookmark keywords
• You can set a bookmarks folder to be visible on Dock menu (Mac OS X 10.2 only)
• Page Setup now works (still issues on 10.1.x)
• Added support for the Services Menu (e.g. you can now Speak the selected text via Services)
• The Shared Menus protocol is now supported (so Chimera is now compatible with URL Manager Pro)
• Chimera now supports Proxy auto-config (PAC), enabled via a hidden preference
• Rendezvous support was added, allowing you to see local servers (for OS X 10.2.3 and later, enabled via a hidden preference)

More information and a download link can be found at the Chimera Web site.

The Mac Observer Spin:

Check out the Chimera browser if you haven't already. It's an ongoing beta project, and it will crash at times, but it is fast, much faster than the Carbon Mozilla browser, and offers some outstanding features not found in IE. Chimera doesn't offer some of the niceties of OmniWeb, it's not as mature as Opera, and it's not as full-featured as IE, but if you like Mozilla, you will like Chimera even more.

The Chimera Project