Today’s been a pretty good day, not least because there’s a new release of Camino.
I declare it now, in public: I used to be a browser whore, flitting from one to the other every month or so, always drawn to the newest clever widget or the newest smart feature.
But for a while now I’ve been a steadfast Camino user and it will take something pretty spectacular to make me stop using it.
Why do I like it so much? It fits in wonderfully with the rest of the Mac system. It’s stable (I can leave it open for days, with stupid numbers of tabs open, and it never complains), it’s fast, it’s dependable, it doesn’t - as they say of other good apps - suck.
Now the brand new 1.0b1 version, there’s plenty of new features and squished bugs.
Best of all (and yes, I admit, a long time behind other browsers) is a “Are you sure you want to quit with all those tabs open?” dialog. That’ll save me from 10 minutes of swearing on the rare occasions I hit Command+Q instead of Command+W.
Remember when Mike Pinkerton moved to Google and promised us that this was nothing but good news for Camino users? Well, today’s release is proof that he was right, and I think is also an indication of plenty more good things to come.
Browser, browser, browser, browser, MUSHROOM! MUSHROOM!
still, Safari
I second the praise for Camino, it is a very good browser. Still, my day-to-day favorite is Safari with Saft and Inquisitor installed. Without these plugins, Safari would be a distant second, but Saft gives you all of the Camino functionality and then some, and Inquisitor is the slickest search tool around. I keep Camino around, though, because the Mozilla engine is sometimes required for some websites.
Pinkerton rocks allright
Camino has become a mature browser and it sure does make you wonder what the future has in store.
True
I agree that Safari - acidtest proven and all - is hard to beat. However you could add Inquisitor's webversion as a homepage to Camino and enjoy its great functionality.
Browsers
I have four browsers. My main browser is Safari. This is because it's very fast, looks good and is rather stable. I have SafariStand installed to give me a few extra's to make it better. I have Firefox installed because I like it's nice JavaScript Console. This is what I debug my work with. Safari would be more complete with some type of JavaScript console. Next I have Camino installed because it's fast and looks good, but it has almost no features other than it's a web browser. Then my favorite browser, Omniweb. It's by far my favorite browser but it's slow and it crashes a lot. But the features can't be found anywhere else. So I use Safari and FireFox, but I really like Omniweb, which I never use anymore.
Why can't there be just one good browser? Why a bunch of almost good but not quite there....
Browsers
There is a JavaScript console on Safari's Debug menu. Here's how to enable the menu:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030110063041629
Camino's AppleScript support not there yet
So far, OmniWeb is the only web browser to support tabs properly (except for iCab, whose rendering engine is not great). If either Apple would fix Safari's AppleScript to know about tabs, or Camino would do the same (and get AppleScript actually working at all), I'd consider switching to one of them.
Camino's AppleScript support not there yet
Do they still actively develop OmniWeb? It seems like it has been in version 5.1 forever, with the same, slow webkit engine. It is a nice concept (I also like the thumbnail tabs), but way out of date as a browser.
True
I could use the inquisitor page, thats true. Ans I could also use an online news aggregator, and many other things to make up for Camino's missing features, but I would rather use a browser that has those features built-in. Without becoming encumbered by unnecessary features (e.g. Opera), I think Camino has to add a few features that would be useful to most users.
OmniWeb IS still being improved
OmniGroup has released several betas and a few minor releases in the last few months. I'm not sure what their schedule is to include the newest WebCore (NOT WebKit). The reason that OmniWeb has an older rendering engine is because they cannot add the features they have while using WebKit. They have to use the lower-level WebCore (WebKit is built on), and changes to WebCore can are not guaranteed to remain compatible, so OmniGroup has to actually include WebCore directly in their application.
In short, better features, but slower inclusion of changes to Apple's rendering engine.
Camino for Typo3
I have switched to the latest Camino because of the Midas RTE engine. I maintain a Typo3 (CMS) website and Camino is the only browser that will load the RTE plugin for Typo3. Apart from that, I find Camino to be solid but plain. Not extensible like Firefox and not swift and light like Safari.
I *really* love Firefox's extensibility. That feature alone makes it the top browser for me. I know Firefox seems...heavy, for lack of a better analogy, on the Mac but extensions make up for that. I love Shiira's lightness and speed and unique features. If they could match Safari's featureset along with their own, it would be *the* killer Mac browser. If you could extend Safari/Shiira/Webkit browsers as you could Safari, well that would be browser nirvana.