Lightweight web browsers based on Mozilla engine

Do you like Mozilla/Netscape browser in theory, but can’t stand to use it in RealLife™? Me too. Happily there are now smaller/faster browsers that use the Mozilla layout engine, which trounces browsers like Opera and OmniWeb at rendering sites that use current web standards.

Chimera (love that Aqua goodness!) is for Mac users, and I find the nightly 0.6 builds to be stable enough for daily use. Phoenix is for Windows users, and version 0.5 has just been released.

In a related note, one of the not-often-discussed-but-hugely-important holes in Mac OS X is that it doesn’t have a decent HTML/XHTML renderer — this is why Macromedia’s Contribute for Mac OS X is running far behind its Windows counterpart, for example. When will Apple get its act together and (1) include Chimera as Mac OS X’s default browser, and (2) expose Chimera’s layout engine to Mac OS X developers? | Chimera (Mac) | Phoenix (Win)


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