Now I've got Qupzilla browser working on my Mac

You know, I think I might be the first person in the world to get this ultrafast, lightweight browser working on a Mac.

Of course, I cannot claim any credit for this as the developer basically did everything and I just did what I was told.

While it indeed works (I'm writing this post in Qupzilla on my Mac), it's by no means perfect as I'll describe later.

Obviously, there was quite a bit of experimentation needed in order to get it working on the Mac (13-inch, late 2009, MacBook with OS X 10.7.3), so I'll just provide the essential steps needed here:

1. Download QtSDK for Mac from here and follow instructions to install.

2. Install Xcode 4.3.1 (or later) from the Mac app store (free)

3. In home directory, checkout the latest Qupzilla source code using the command:

git clone git://github.com/nowrep/QupZilla.git

4. When checkout is complete, cd to ~/QupZilla and issue the command

qmake -spec macx-g++

This is necessary, rather than just qmake, as qmake produces .xcode files rather than Makefiles by default in OS X.

This operation takes only seconds.

5. Now run make in the same directory and wait. On my machine the compile took 7-8 minutes.

Everything should go to completion without error.

6. For the moment, a range of .dylib files are not automatically loaded, so Qupzilla will fail on launch.

As a temporary fix, do the following:

sudo cp ~/QupZilla/bin/libqupfilla* /usr/lib/

and now the problem should be removed.

7. To launch Qupzilla, run the following command

open -a qupzilla

I'm very glad to get this browser working on the Mac, as I do most of my day-to-day stuff on the Mac and  it looks so very good in Ubuntu, Windows XP and even on Haiku.

However, it really isn't quite ready to take over from chrome on the Mac.

The main problems are:

1. I've had a few crashes which have never occurred either in Ubuntu or Windows (but many times in       Haiku)

2. Qupzilla cannot handle the Statcounter website (login page opens but can't login) or my ISP's speedtest  site.

3. Qupzilla, in its present form, must always be started from the terminal. Even though an icon appears in    the dock, it does nothing.

4. The tabs don't have a closing X which means they can only be closed by right-clicking and choosing    Close.

5. On some sites, the cursor actually disappears.

Nevertheless, with its speed of operation and its wonderful RSS reader, I'm looking forward to when these teething pains have passed.