As the PowerPage builds its dream team of OS X applications, one niche has been decidedly ambiguous: web browsers. It’s not uncommon to see three or four browsers vying for position on the dock of a X guru. Fortunately, after a few early releases for the brave-hearted only, the Chimera variant of Mozilla is maturing into the ultimate OS X browser. If you’re skeptical, I have two words for you: tabbed browsing. Once you try it, you’ll never go back (an epiphany I owe to my friend Patrick Murphy in Chicago). Switching between multiple websites is much more fun with tabs, and you can load tabs in the background. It’s the perfect compliment to the PowerPage’s favorite X chat client, Adium. Fans of geeky goodness will love Mozilla’s open source status, and it’s even possible to hack Mozilla features while the software is running.
Unfortunately, Mozilla has an ugly standard Netscape interface only a mother would love. Enter Chimera, with an Aqua interface every bit as elegant and pretty as OmniWeb, and complete Quartz rendering with anti-aliased text. The current release even supports bookmark import and plug-ins. There’s still some work to be done: some features aren’t complete, including Mozilla’s nice Google integration, and the Macromedia page crashed the browser. But Chimera remains the most well-rounded browser for X I’ve seen yet. Keep MSIE handy for the occasional stubborn page, but Chimera could easily become the only web browser on your dock.
What’s your browser of choice? Fire up the feedback and let the browser wars begin.
