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Dr. Mac's OS X Tip-of-the-Day
Dr. Mac's Prescription "Browsers are free and so are you"
By BOB LEVITUS
It's Freeware Friday and today the focus is on two promising (and free, at least
for now) OS X browsers.
The first fabulous free browser is OmniWeb, and if you've been using Mac OS X
long, you've surely heard someone (like me) say something nice about it by now.
The first (and so far, only) Cocoa-built browser, nothing displays pages as
beautifully. I have a friend (hi Chipp!) who runs his business on Windows NT.
Though he used to be a heavy-duty Mac guy, he switched years ago and had never
seen Mac OS X up close and personal. So when he came by to demo his Web site he
told me it never looked better than it looked in OmniWeb.
I love these guys (The Omni Group). They have such a great attitude and make
such nice, useful, cleanly designed software. Not to mention all the cool games
they've ported to Mac OS X.
But they have such a Mac attitude. The product page for OmniWeb says,
"We've made OmniWeb the best browser you'll ever use. But you'd expect us to say
that, so check out what our users think. And if you use OmniWeb and it doesn't
make you smile, please tell us."
And this:
"OmniWeb 4 for Mac OS X can be used for free, but occasionally you might get
little flashes of guilt while you use it. If this overwhelms you, why not buy a
license at our web store?"
A license will run you a whopping $29. I'd have bought one already but Manny
(the marketing guy) insisted on giving me a freebie.
I love OmniWeb. When I'm surfing, and especially when I'm surfing text-heavy
sites, it's a thing of beauty. It's still a little flakey, and crashes a little
too often, but it starts right back up every time. And it's a tad slower than
some of the other browsers, but it's so easy on the eyes you must give it a try
if you haven't already.
http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/ (product information and
download)
http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/raves/ (user raves)
The second browser I'm about to recommend may come as a surprise... I know it
came as a huge surprise to me, because I had all but given up on Netscape and
its spawn. But the latest builds of Chimera, a relatively new project aimed at
delivering a best-of-breed browser on the OS X platform.
It is based on Cocoazilla, which is a variant of Fizzilla that consists of a
UNIX back end coupled with a Cocoa front end.
Chimera 0.2.6 came out this week and it now supports the OS home page and proxy
settings. You can also import bookmarks! This is the fifth or sixth build this
month and they've gotten progressively sweeter.
As one user commented on VersionTracker: "At this progress-rate Chimera will
soon be the perfect browser =)."
http://idisk.mac.com/mozilladave/Public/chimera26.dmg.gz (product download)
http://chimera.mozdev.org/ (product info)
To discuss this tip (or anything you like) in Dr. Mac's OSXFAQ Forum, click
here:
http://forums.osxfaq.com/viewtopic.php?topic=1012&forum=100&0
Bob LeVitus is a leading authority on Mac OS and the author of 38 books, including
Mac OS X For Dummies and The Little iTunes Book.
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