Camino is out of beta and if you don’t use it already, it’s high time you did.

For those of you who haven’t discovered the joys of Camino already, allow me to spell them out.

Camino is rock-solid, dependable like no other browser I have used (and I’ve used a lot of browsers). It feels right, it’s Cocoa, and it was built from the outset to be a native OS X application. Many of the internals share roots with Firefox, but the external wrappings and the interface are Mac and nothing but Mac; Camino is not a port of Firefox, it’s an entirely separate beast.

There’s a small team of devoted volunteers who have been working incredibly hard, for many years, to reach this point. Their efforts have produced a browser that Just Works, which like all of Apple’s best products is one of the best recommendations you can have.

It doesn’t matter if you’re still devoted to using Safari or Firefox; no one is asking you to change your default browser in an instant. But if you are a Mac user who demands high quality software, or a web user who wants a simple, uncomplicated and user-friendly web experience, you owe it to yourself to spend a few minutes getting Camino into your Applications directory.

One of the things I love about Camino is the “Block web advertising” checkbox in the preferences. Camino doesn’t only kill pretty much every annoying pop-up around, it also transparently filters out most graphical advertising on most commercial web sites. Thanks to this, I have almost forgotten about banner ads, because I rarely see them. My browsing experience is faster and a lot less hasslesome as a result, and for that I owe the Camino developers my heartfelt thanks.