Interview with Camino Developer Mike Pinkerton

An anonymous reader writes "As someone who has used Camino for much of the time since the OS X-centric Gecko browser was released, I've been hoping to see it hit version 1.0 (it's at 0.8 now). ArsTechnica has an interview with Mike Pinkerton, the lead developer for Camino in which he talks about the history and future of Camino along with his thoughts on Safari and Firefox."

Comments

Safari on Mac, Firefox on PC

[danigiri]

Mmmmm... the interview is interesting and I'll try Camino for a while to test the waters.

Any obvious advantages from day to day use? I see from their website it has some OSX-specific features that look cool enough, any highlights?

[Swimming in the calm waters of alternative browsers, Safari and Firefox when on Win]

Re:Safari on Mac, Firefox on PC

[the pickle]

I find Safari to be better on slow connections, but only because PithHelmet is so effective. Camino is typically faster (PB G4/800, 512 MB RAM) on anything better than a 56K dialup.

Both browsers have their rendering quirks, though both are Good Enough(tm) for government work. I prefer the interface of Camino overall, because I find it less visually jarring than the brushed-metal look of Safari (which, before anyone comments, looks downright *weird* in its Aqua "theme," with the brushed-metal look removed).

I still use Camino as my primary browser, though if there's something absolutely critical that I need to get to on a slow connection, I'll use Safari.

Also, Camino tends to play more nicely with sites that (stupidly) exclude browsers based on the user-agent string. Yes, you can change it in Safari, but Camino Just Works(tm) more often than not, and it's one less thing you have to mess with.

I can't really think of a good reason to recommend *against* either one, though. That says a lot for the current state of browsers on the Mac.

p

Re:Safari on Mac, Firefox on PC

[the pickle]

Oh, I should add that Safari isn't an option for anyone on 10.1, and isn't really that good of an option on 10.2 (slower, some major bugs that have been fixed in 10.3-only versions, etc., IIRC), which really helps make an argument for Camino on those older OS versions.

p

Re:Safari on Mac, Firefox on PC

[Arcane_Rhino]

I primarily use Safari. I like the brush-metal look and, as a long time Mac user, am usually fairly comfortable with what Mr. Jobs likes to spoon feed us. Being unaware of Camino when I acquired my G4 (10.2, now running 10.3), I immediately abandoned IE in favor of Safari.

I currently utilize a cable modem and my experience has been that Safari is generally as fast, maybe a little faster in most instances. My comparison method was to delete all of my caches and see which browser brought the pages up faster. It also seems that I can drag images to my desktop a little easier/quicker with Safari.

Camino, on the other hand, handles saving a web page a WHOLE lot better than Safari - I frequently do not get any graphics with a Safari-saved webpage. Camino handles this flawlessly. Camino also has cookie/security controls that are more precise. So, if I have any concerns about security surrounding a website or when I am cruising around looking for eWomen, I use the old el Camino!

All in all, I think Camino is a very good browser and agree, as the article points out, that it is very benificial to the consumer that Safari has some very close competition.

Re:Safari on Mac, Firefox on PC

[ObiWanKenblowme]

As an off-topic tip, have you tried printing to a pdf instead of saving the page? I don't know if it meets your requirements (do you need to still be able to get to the HTML or images?) but it might be worth looking into. Back on topic, I agree with your comment about Camino's cookie management. I'd love for Safari to have a better method of management than what it's currently got.

Re:Safari on Mac, Firefox on PC

[Zoop]

Table rendering, especially for long lists, is MUCH faster on Camino. I usually use Safari for blogging, due to its built-in spell checking, but if I need to mess with MT-Blacklist and its gigantotable of denial rules, I switch back to Camino.

So for day to day browsing, Camino is my default.

At work I use Firefox, mainly for its Web development features.

Re:Safari on Mac, Firefox on PC

[Anonymous Coward]

My comparison method was to delete all of my caches and see which browser brought the pages up faster.

That's a flawed method. The first time you request the page, it will probably be stored in your ISP's proxy cache, so when you try it with another browser, it will come from a cached copy even if you've cleared your browser cache.

Disabling proxies in your browser settings isn't enough as many ISPs institute interception proxies. For instance, virtually all cable modems I've come across have HTTP caches in them.

Re:Safari on Mac, Firefox on PC

[WatertonMan]

Why would someone still be using 10.1? That really was a version of OSX not quite ready for prime time. It had the advantage of being better than 10.0 only. Seriously, anyone with 10.1 really ought to upgrade. It would be well worth it.

Re:Safari on Mac, Firefox on PC

[legrimpeur]

I found out that on safary page scrolling is terrribly jerky on Macs with a graphic card not supporting Quartz Extreme. In that case Camino works just fine.

Re:Safari on Mac, Firefox on PC

[beerits]

Why would someone still be using 10.1?
It is the latest version of Mac OS X that didn't require a G3 or better processor.

Re:Safari on Mac, Firefox on PC

[holmbrew]

I find even Safari is not so reliable on a slow connection and will consistently timeout after 60 seconds. I had the same problem with Camino in the past and actually had a situation where it repeatedly submitted a form because the response took longer that it expected, resulting in the request and data being posted 9 times. If I have something real critical to do, I use Mozilla.

Re:Safari on Mac, Firefox on PC

[rjstanford]

That's a flawed method. The first time you request the page, it will probably be stored in your ISP's proxy cache, so when you try it with another browser, it will come from a cached copy even if you've cleared your browser cache.

Disabling proxies in your browser settings isn't enough as many ISPs institute interception proxies. For instance, virtually all cable modems I've come across have HTTP caches in them.

Er, that's a good thing. He was testing browser rendering speed, not network performance (beyond the local stack), so having the websites available just outside the machine is ideal for this test.

Re:Safari on Mac, Firefox on PC

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually only the Mac OS X 10.0 Public Beta ran "officially" on less than a G3 processor.

Unofficially, you are correct. If you are using software like XPostFacto, 10.1.x is the final release that you can run on a PowerPC 604 or 603 processor based computer.

Personally, I don't see the use of running OS X on anything less than a G3. An upgrade card from Sonnet or PowerLogix (even the low end G3 cards) make a world of a difference when running OS X on the "Old World" Apple architecture.

-Ted

Re:Safari on Mac, Firefox on PC

[gnu-sucks]

I can't see how that would matter any, as you are still comparing a valid network request, and html render time. In fact, it may be more valid a test, as internet traffic between you and your ISP is relatively constant, where as internet traffic from your computer to, say, slashdot.org, is likely a more bumpy road.

Re:Safari on Mac, Firefox on PC

[Anonymous Coward]

He was testing browser rendering speed, not network performance (beyond the local stack), so having the websites available just outside the machine is ideal for this test.

You missed my point: if neither of the browser caches don't contain it, the request from the first browser will be a lot slower than the request from the second browser, as the second browser will only have to get it from the nearby cache.

If he was only testing browser rendering speed, he shouldn't have bothered with a network connection at all, too many variables are problematic. Just save the pages and load them from disk.

Re:Safari on Mac, Firefox on PC

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't see how that would matter any, as you are still comparing a valid network request, and html render time.

See my reply to the sibling post. You aren't comparing like and like, as one browser will retrieve it from the cache and one will not.

KHTML vs. Gecko

[thirteenVA]

Camino is a good browser, but once khtml matures its likely to outperform the gecko engine.

For me the biggest difference is that safari still chokes on pages that the gecko engine will not but with the determination and skill of the Safari team this will not be the case for long.

Safari is my default browser since its beta, and my money is on them for the long term. However it is really nice to have options.

Re:KHTML vs. Gecko

[Brandybuck]

I talked to a few Mac users the other day. It turned out that they all used BOTH Camino and Safari, because there were sites Safari would render correctly that Camino would not. This may sound like shocking heresy to some, but this information comes straight from the users' mouths.

Until web developers start coding to realworld "LCD" standards, there will always be the need for multiple rendering engines.

Re:KHTML vs. Gecko

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree completely. As a Mac user I use Camino, Safari, and Firefox almost all equally. I even load IE when nothing else works. In this Windows only world, I find I often have to try multiple browsers just to load some information!

My blood boils when a page won't work and I see the .asp file extension... Wtf is the point of the web when it is written for just one browser and platform?

Re:KHTML vs. Gecko

[cyfer2000]

Once khtml matures, I guess it will become as big as a gecko.

Re:KHTML vs. Gecko

[Daniel Dvorkin]

FWIW, as a Mac user, I use Mozilla (yes, Mozilla, not Firefox or Camino -- I just like it better) most of the time and Safari some of the time; I find that there are a very few pages that render in Safari but not in Mozilla, but far more pages that are the reverse. [shrug] I doubt I'll ever limit myself to one browser entirely, no matter how good; it's always best to have options.

Every once in a great while I run across a site that won't render in either, presumably having been coded with all kinds of IE-specific crap. My assumption is that whoever is running that site doesn't need my business.

Re:KHTML vs. Gecko

[Anonymous Coward]

A .asp extension doesn't necessarily require IE on Windows. It's just a page served from an IIS server. Now if it has client side scripting in vb, then it will require IE on Windows to quitely install trojans.

Re:Firefox is the best

[the pickle]

You (obviously) didn't RTFA.

Pinkerton discusses the "why Camino instead of Firefox" issue:

What do you see as Camino's selling point vs. Safari and Firefox?

I like to think of Camino as the browser for everyone who isn't Steve Jobs. Safari is going to go in the direction that Jobs wants to take it. Sure, there are a lot of interesting things developing, but there are also a lot of interactions that people really don't care for. Camino provides them an excellent alternative and serves to keep Apple looking over its shoulder. We keep them honest and the end user reaps the benefits.

The selling point to Firefox is subtle, but obvious to people who have run the two. First and foremost, Camino is a browser built from the ground up for Mac OS X, integrating as much with the OS as possible. We have Address Book, Rendezvous, and Keychain integration which aren't even on the radar for Firefox. When we discuss features or UI, it's "Mac-first, Mac-only," not "How can we back-port this to Mac so that it will still work?" Our fundamental goal with Camino is to make the best Mac browser, not the best browser that happens to also run on the Mac.

p

Competition is good

[HotButteredHampster]

Camino is a good browser, which I started using at 0.4. It seduced me with its beautiful anti-aliased text rendering when the only alternative was IE 5. There were big issues in the day: I never bookmarked anything, because bookmarks were as permanent as writing in sand. Below the tide line. Even so, I used it over IE (mmm... beautiful fonts) and the laughable Mozilla 1.0.

But I was seduced by Safari. It loaded quicker. It was faster. It was simple and elegant, which were things that Camino was going for, but wasn't there yet. I've used Safari ever since. Even as I did so, I was saddened, because I thought Camino would die because it was too late to the party.

However, because Camino leverages Gecko, and Mozilla/Firefox are starting to kick some butt, Camino has had forward momentum even when it was standing still. I use Firefox every day at work (right now, in fact), and it is to Windows what Camino can be to Mac. I've installed Firefox on my web server (the current version of Safari doesn't support OSX 10.2.8). As the interview points out, Firefox is good, but it's not a Macintosh app. Camino is.

There are now two excellent open-source HTML rendering engines which are actively being developed on the Mac platform, which is a much better position than it was when I was playing with Chimera 0.4. With the exit of IE, Apple still has a healthy competitive environment, thanks to projects like Firefox and Camino.

HBH

Re:Competition is good

[thirteenVA]

A big blow to Camino would be a cross-platform Google browser based on Gecko...

Re:Competition is good

[Finuvir]

How so? Mozilla and Firefox are already available on Mac OS.

Re:Competition is good

[thirteenVA]

Because google could conceivably 'do it better'. It could be a blow to the Mozilla project as a whole.

Look at Gmail. Adwords, Adsense, all things done before by other people but google did it better. Hell, Google itself is the biggest example of taking something and making it better.

I guess an even bigger blow to Camino/Mozilla would be a Mac OS X google browser based on khtml...

Re:Competition is good

[Brandybuck]

Nasty horrible competition. Someone should outlaw it!

Re:Competition is good

[MinutiaeMan]

You obviously didn't RTFA... the entire point of Camino is that it's a browser designed specifically for Mac OS X, and therefore includes features and compatibility that Firefox and Mozilla don't (and can't).

Re:Competition is good

[Finuvir]

I did read the f--ing article and besides, I know what Camino is. Why would you think a cross-platform Google browser would be any more native-looking than the cross-platform Mozilla and Firefox? Why would it be a blow to Camino any more than to another browser?

Re:Competition is good

[Electrum]

Because google could conceivably 'do it better'. It could be a blow to the Mozilla project as a whole.

It's odd that you think a good Gecko based browser could be a blow to the whole Mozilla project. I think it would be great. Mozilla could then concentrate on what they are good at: writing a browser core.

Firefox might be more secure than IE, faster, etc., but it certainly doesn't have as nice of an interface as a whole. Not that it doesn't have useful features that IE doesn't, like tabbed browsing, but overall the skinned interface is sub-par to a native interface. The day a Gecko or KHTML browser comes out for Windows that uses native widgets, I'll switch from IE.

Re:Competition is good

[Moofie]

So a Mozilla-based browser developed by Google would be bad for Mozilla...how exactly?

I don't understand.

I was using Camino, but now I'm back on Safari. It's faster and cleaner, and I haven't found any problems with rendering. I went back to Safari because Camino's plugin architecture, well, doesn't exist.

Firefox is dog slow on my Powerbook. It's also plug ugly IMO. So I'm back on Safari.

Re:Competition is good

[Anonymous Coward]

the current version of Safari doesn't support OSX 10.2.8

I think the more appropriate statement is that OS X 10.2.8 doesn't support the current version of Safari.

Re:Competition is good

[Migrant Programmer]

The day a Gecko or KHTML browser comes out for Windows that uses native widgets, I'll switch from IE.

You haven't been paying attention.

http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/

Re:Competition is good

[Ilgaz]

os x has services, frameworks which Linux, Windows doesn't have yet.

And Camino uses them since its a native OS X application.

Re:Competition is good

[Ilgaz]

Adwords, Adsense on Google mail are the most evil agression against privacy on email yet.

You call them "inventions"? Why bitch about adware then?

Re:Competition is good

[Ilgaz]

No, Apple could update frameworks etc and make Safari latest to run on 10.2.x, they didn't do it.

Why Mozilla (Gecko) or Opera (Presto) can run on 10.2.x? Ask yourself...

Veee-rry Smart answer ..

[torpor]

.. to the 'difference between open and closed source models' ..

open source == -0day!

I shall have to try Camino, but darnit, if it still takes forever to load and get itself started, its useless to me. web browsers need to open and close fast, on my system .. and Safari has the fastest startup time yet, so Safari it is .. but lets see if Camino is worth changing habits for..

Re:Veee-rry Smart answer ..

[BandwidthHog]

I keep one or more browser windows open on four of my eight desktops. Each of those browser windows has between one and ten tabs open. Unless something dreadful happens, my browser only launches after Software Update causes me to reboot.

Launch time is bandwidth-bound, so whichever one launches less wins. Unfortunately, Safari was crashing every month or two. FlamingCougar hasn't gone out once since I switched a few months ago *knock on space age composite*.

That was why I (somewhat reluctantly) switched, and extensions are why I'll never go back to Safari. Last time I used Camino (kept with it for about six months after Safari came out) it didn't support Mozilla or SmolderingChimp extensions. If that were to change some day, who knows?

Re:Veee-rry Smart answer ..

[torpor]

I keep one or more browser windows open on four of my eight desktops. Each of those browser windows has between one and ten tabs open. Unless something dreadful happens, my browser only launches after Software Update causes me to reboot.


yeah, i'd work that way too, if suspend worked properly on my aging tiBook .. but it doesn't, so i shut down and start up a lot, at least a couple times a day, so .. i likes my apps to pre-load, yo!

be nice if there were a way to add 'proper suspend to disk and go to sleep' to the tiBooks .. maybe there is a way to hack a disk file for it, or something, but i dunno .. i'm not all that fussed about browser politics, anyway. for me, its whatever loads the fastest .. and isn't from Microsoft.

Re:Veee-rry Smart answer ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Wacky concept, but why not open the program as a login item, and just leave it open?

The only time I ever close my browsers is after it's been up for a couple weeks and it's starting to act "funky."

Re:Firefox is the best

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't mean anyone actually uses it.

OmniWeb

[metalligoth]

The first commercial web browser, originally written for the platform the WWW was invented on, is still the best. OmniWeb has more features than any other browser.

I couldn't imagine using anything else, but if I had to use another browser, it would be FireFox. I don't care if my browser is integrated with Address Book. FireFox does almost everything OW does. Camino is stuck in a strange no-mans land, and with Safari out there, Camino will remain a nitch browser.

Safari is for average users. OmniWeb is for people that want amazing features. FireFox is for power users that want a free and open source browser. Camino just doesn't bring anything vital to the table.

Re:OmniWeb

[thirteenVA]

I couldn't imagine using anything else...

And I can't imagine paying for a browser... otherwise I'd be using Opera.

Re:OmniWeb

[MinutiaeMan]

Camino just doesn't bring anything vital to the table.

I strongly disagree. Camino is ideal for Mac users who want to have a pleasing, streamlined application but also need (or want) the features offered by Gecko. It's effectively the best of both worlds -- the power of the Mozilla-based rendering with the power of a native OS X application. Firefox (IMO) is just for Windows switchers who desperately need to have a familiar interface.

Of course, I definitely agree that OmniWeb trumps them all! (I've been using OW5 since the second beta back in February.)

Re:OmniWeb

[MinutiaeMan]

Oh, of course, you just expect to get something for nothing, right? There's a reason why OmniWeb and Opera charge for their browsers -- they offer more powerful applications with a wider range of features. And of course, they don't fund their development from operating system sales or random volunteer work...

Did you ever try using OmniWeb? Do you have any idea how many features have been packed into that little package?

Re:OmniWeb

[Daleks]

Per-site preferences rocked my world. OmniWeb innovates while others stagnate. A new feature in Safari for 10.4 is RSS feeds. Woo... Why not improve my actual browsing experience? OmniGroup focuses on doing this rather than adding stupid add-ons. The use of WebKit has freed OmniGroup from having to build a rendering engine (re-inventing the wheel) and allows all the talent flow to improving the act of browsing. Job well done.

Re:OmniWeb

[Ilgaz]

" A new feature in Safari for 10.4 is RSS feeds. Woo... Why not improve my actual browsing experience? "

As a licensed user since Omni beta 5 (now its final, doesn't crash) I smiled when I read it.

WE HAVE RSS! While browsing slashdot for instance, check that newspaper icon with "plus" on it, click, there, RSS. It sees RSS feed as a "dynamic bookmark folder", a perfect practical, simple thing.

Maybe Omni as a company tries to be nice to Apple but, dear Steve, Omni invented RSS feed sensing ;)

Re:OmniWeb

[jcr]

OmniWeb innovates while others stagnate.

Someday, I'd like to see a list of all of Omni's inventions that were copied by NetScape, and then copied in turn by MS.

-jcr

Re:OmniWeb

[rockforever]

I tried OmniWeb a few times. Even tried 5.x. Pissed me off. I couldn't believe I would have to pay money for this. OmniWeb will never take off when it costs money to buy. We have to buy enough software, and browsers shouldn't be in that group, period. I will never pay for a browser so long as there is a free one available.

Re:OmniWeb

[Ilgaz]

Check www.omnigroup.com , they offer the network SDK etc Omni built on for free, would give you a clue.

Also what are you doing on mac/ mac community anyway?

Interesting quote on tabbed browsing

[chia_monkey]

Pinkerton was quoted as saying "For instance, we looked hard at the tabbed browsing style of OmniWeb even before they did it and decided that while it was very pretty and a great demo of Aqua, it wasn't all that usable on a day to day basis."

I have to admit that I'm a tabbed browsing junkie now. I go absolutely nuts if I have to use someone else's computer that doesn't have a tabbed browser. It seems like such an insignificant little feature, but it really does add a lot to my browsing experience. I'm really glad it's in there now, but I still found that quote to be quite interesting. It seems that if you want to be on the cutting edge, you'd want to put in the features and let the users decide on whether it's useful or not.

Re:Interesting quote on tabbed browsing

[dn15]

In case you didn't know, I believe he was actually referring to OmniWeb's specific style of tabs (a sidebar of thumbnails) rather than tabs as a whole. Camino does have a regular tab bar like Safari, Firefox, etc.

Re:Firefox is the best

[thirteenVA]

Well, he conveniently forgot to add that Firefox is easily extendible (extensions galore). It has way more options and functionality (some through extensions, but still...). It has a number of skins for people that feel the need to customize their browser. And It has some great features such as keyword searching, and the ability to search for text on a page without opening a search box.

Camino is playing catch-up with more than just Safari...

I Prefer Firefox

[Goo.cc]

Don't get me wrong, I have tried Camino and I really do like it, but I use Firefox for the same reason that I use Vim: my experience is the same regardless of the operating system I use. Cross platform tools rock.

That's not what he meant.

[Millennium]

Camino has had tabbed browsing for a long time.

What he was talking about is the "tab" paradigm used by OmniWeb 5.0. This paradigm doesn't actually use tabs at all; rather, it's a drawer filled with thumbnails of the sites on it. You can typically fit four or five thumbnails into the drawer before needing to scroll.

Very pretty, but not nearly as useful in the real world; the thumbnails add less than you'd think and there's even less room for sites in the drawer than there is on a toolbar. I'm glad that Camino went with actual tabs.

Re:That's not what he meant.

[MinutiaeMan]

Very pretty, but not nearly as useful in the real world;

As opposed to the tendency of Camino or Safari to squish the tabs down until you can hardly read their titles? I'd much rather be able to scroll through my tabs (not to mention drag-n-drop to reorganize them!) than be forced to stick to a single order of tabs.

I was initially very dubious of OmniWeb's tabs, but after using them for a week or so I really started to see the benefits. You should give it another try.

Re:That's not what he meant.

[lfourrier]

any site that use favicon.ico will have it's tab using the icon, at least in Camino and firefox

Re:That's not what he meant.

[MinutiaeMan]

And what happens when you've got multiple tabs open from the same site? When you happen to have similar page names? Duh.

Re:That's not what he meant.

[lfourrier]

it's not perfect, but I regulary have 20 to 30 tabs open at once, and i still manage. In fact, i think i develop a mental model of the horizontal position of the tabs linked to the opening order, having the icons only as reminders.
What could be cool (warning : it is obvious, and discussed in public. No patent allowed ;-) is an intra browser exposé, where, with the press of one key, all tabs become small windows, you choose one, and then they become tabs again.

Re:That's not what he meant.

[Ford Prefect]

And what happens when you've got multiple tabs open from the same site? When you happen to have similar page names? Duh.

In Safari, if you have two tabs open with similar names, it just shows the different sections.

There's a site I developed which uses some (perhaps excessively) descriptive page titles, and Safari works fine with it. For instance, the following page titles:

'Thingy Workgroup Site - Calendar for Smarch 2004'
'Thingy Workgroup Site - Advanced Search - User Profiles'
'Thingy Workgroup Site - Advanced Search - Database Records'

Are labelled in the tabs as:

'Calendar for Smarch 2004'
'Search - User Profiles'
'Database Records'

It's not perfect, but it's far better than just 'Thingy Workgroup Si...' as the title of each tab.

Re:That's not what he meant.

[mdarksbane]

You mean camino and firefox, right?

I've seen that behavior in firefox (I haven't used camino for a few versions), but after tabs stop fitting into the window, safari stops shrinking them. It puts a pop-down menu on the far right that contains any that didn't fit into the window.

Whether you think that's a better solution or not, it's what it actually does. Personally, I find it annoying for numbers of tabs slightly over what will fit, but much nicer if I grab a whole page of of thumbnails and open them at once. Firefox makes the tabs so small you're lucky to click on one.

Re:That's not what he meant.

[General Sherman]

They're extremely aggrivating for people on 12" laptops with a 1024x768 resolution. They take up way too much space, leaving nothing for the browser window.

Re:That's not what he meant.

[MinutiaeMan]

That's funny, 'cuz I've got a 12" iBook with 1024x768 resolution, and I don't have a problem with the OmniWeb tabs whatsoever... :-P

I used to use Camino

[Isbiten]

But then I switched to Safari because I just loved pithHelmet, but Safari is prone to weird rendering errors and the timeout of 60 seconds is enough to drive one mad.

So atm, Im using Firefox with adblock. But Camino + adblock would be a dream setup.

Anyone know if it's possible?

Re:I used to use Camino

[OmniVector]

just add this userContent.css file to ~/Library/Application Support/Camino/chrome and you have *exactly* the same thing as adblock in firefox. you can even add this style sheet in safari (use the last toolbar button) and it's the same as pithhelment.

Re:I used to use Camino

[Isbiten]

Thanks! Camino is now my standard webrowser once again :p The dev really should include this by default IMO!

Re:I used to use Camino

[the pickle]

There's a fix for the timeout problem out:

Safari No Timeout

I grabbed it about two weeks back and haven't had any issues, though I don't use Safari all that much.

p

Re:I used to use Camino

[Anonymous Coward]

An alternate way of accomplishing this, (and easily accessing other "hidden" features of Camino), is to use Karlheinz Dobler's cool "hidden" prefs setting tool for Camino, Camino ExtraPrefs, at http://www.nada.de/mac/camino/cep.html.

I heart Camino

[commodoresloat]

I use Camino as my main browser. My only beefs with it at the moment are:

1. Command-up arrow and command-down arrow do nothing. These should take you to the top and bottom of the document as they do in every other OS X program. I've filed bug reports on this since .7 but they get ignored.
2. When viewing a .txt file, there is no option for Camino to word-wrap the text. This makes it very difficult to read text files that are not word wrapped. (perhaps someone knows a way to solve this one?)
3. Camino should have an easy to use user-agent preference so that you can just click on a menu to send a different user-agent string. I know how to edit the file but I don't remember user-agent strings and rather than go through all that trouble I'd just as soon ignore the web page that needs it.

Re:I heart Camino

[thirteenVA]

1) You're correct, it does however support using space and shift+space to quickly scroll.

2)I don't think safari or firefox does this either.

3)As far as i know, none of the major browsers do this (IE, Mozilla or Safari) 'right out of the box'. In safari you enable the debug menu, and mozilla/firefox require an extension.

Re:I heart Camino

[Pandora's Vox]

2) Safari wraps by default.

I have a to-do list served off my iMac (well i did before i took it in to get the screen fix0red :-( ) which is just a txt file. displays fine.

-Leigh

Re:I heart Camino

[commodoresloat]

1. yeah I do settle for that, but of course just about every other os x program in the world does the command-up and -down trick. It would be nice for camino to be consistent.

2. Safari does, actually, but who cares. We're talking about Camino. I would like for camino to be useful browsing scads of text files. It would just be more useful that way. There should at least be a "hidden pref" for this feature, but I can't find any information about it. Seems like it would be frightfully easy to implement. As with #1, I have sent this feature request to the camino developers a couple of times, but have not heard any reply or indication they would do anything about it (to be fair, I don't browse the camino development email lists and stuff; perhaps it has been discussed.)

3. They don't do it but that's not the point. They should. It's an easy menu item and it would be no problem to implement, since you can already do it by editing files. The problem is, who wants to memorize user-agent strings? These are simple and don't change, so why not code them in?

Re:I heart Camino

[bdaehlie]

The patch for your #1 issue was checked in about an hour ago by Pinkerton.

Re:I heart Camino

[bob65]

3. They don't do it but that's not the point. They should. It's an easy menu item and it would be no problem to implement, since you can already do it by editing files. The problem is, who wants to memorize user-agent strings? These are simple and don't change, so why not code them in?

They shouldn't do it. What would be the point of user-agent strings if they were not accurate?

Re:I heart Camino

[Val314]

4. ctrl-enter doesnt add www. .com to the adress. i'm so used to this feature, so i wont use a browser that doesnt support it

Re:Firefox is the best

[BadMrMojo]

This is the first actual explanation I've seen for a reason to select Camino over FF and it has me convinced to give it another try.

I started using Camino (Chimera, at the time) when I got sick of OmniWeb (version 0.5, maybe?) and switched from Camino to Firefox in order to see what all the hype was about. I've downloaded updates as they came out but haven't really given them much of a chance. I simply didn't see any reason to do so.

Finally, I've gotten them. Thanks for the quote.

Camino's biggest fault.

[Yaztromo]

FireFox is my day-to-day browser on OS X, and while there are some integration items I wish it had (like the integration with the Adress Book, the various Services like Grab, Mail, Speech, Summerize, and most importantly the Keychain), Camino has one major functionality lack which keeps me from running it -- no image blocking.

I can't understand why they haven't implemented this. It's in every other Gecko-based browser out there. I don't visit websites to see big flashing ads at the top and bottom of every page. I have better uses for my bandwidth.

FireFox has ad blocking. Camino doesn't. For this (and pretty much only this) reason, I'm not using Camino.

The day they implement ad blocking, I'll probably switch on my PowerBook.

Yaz.

Re:Camino's biggest fault.

[twain]

Why not use CSS to block ads? Works with any browser that allow you to set a custom style sheet.

Re:Camino's biggest fault.

[Yaztromo]

Because I want more control than that. And I don't want to have to edit CSS to get it.

Personally, I like that I can right-click on ads in FireFox to block or un-block them. There are some sites I permit ad-sized graphics from. There are others I kill as soon as I first visit them.

The CSS solutions are good if you don't have access to a better solution -- but with FireFox, I have access to a better solution :).

Otherwise, I really want to like Camino. While I don't use it extensively, I'd like to be able to use the "Services" menu, but FireFox doesn't interoperate with them at all. And being able to have just one Keychain setup (instead of two) would also be advantageous.

But that lack of integrated ad blocking just bugs me. It's the same reason why I don't run Safari.

Yaz.

Re:Camino's biggest fault.

[idiotnot]

I like that I can right-click on ads in FireFox to block or un-block them.

Right click? What's that? :-p /me glances over at the iBook...yep, one big button.

I started using Camino when I got back into the mac world (10.1 days), after being utterly unimpressed with Mozilla, and hating the carbonlib ugliness that is IE.

I used it pretty much regularly until 10.3 came out, when I switched to Safari.

Firefox still is an abortion on the mac, although it's better than the old builds of Mozilla were. And I seem to have this problem with mouse-gestures and the trackpad, and haven't been able to figure out how to turn them off. Camino, OTOH, does damn near everything that Firefox does, and looks like it belongs on OSX.

Re:Camino's biggest fault.

[Draoi]

But that lack of integrated ad blocking just bugs me. It's the same reason why I don't run Safari.

I know it's not strictly integrated, but you are aware of PithHelmet for Safari, right? It integrates seamlessly into Safari (only appears in the preferences pane and in the contextual menu 'right-click'). I'd be completely lost without it ...

Re:Camino's biggest fault.

[plj]

I've said this on /. before, but can't find that post now, so I'll have to say it again:

For me the biggest fault are lacking certificate controls, i.e. the inability to install custom root CA's (except by creating a DB on Firefox and moving it to Camino's directory). When these are added, I'll drop Safari for Camino, but not before.

Preferably it should be done following Camino's "Mac-way" philosophy, which would mean using the certificates of X509Anchors system keychain instead of Mozilla's own cert.db.

Re:Camino's biggest fault.

[Anonymous Coward]

-- FireFox has ad blocking. Camino doesn't. For this (and pretty much only this) reason, I'm not using Camino. --

I completely agree. I started using Camino when it was Chimera and thought it was awesome. I then drifted to Firefox when I discovered AdBlocker and other extensions and themes. AdBlocker was the biggest reason I was using it. However after reading Mike's interview, I was reminded of the integration of Camino into the Mac environment and I switched back. (Back came those supremely annoying ads..)

I then discovered Karlheinz Dobler's cool "hidden" prefs setting tool for Camino, Camino ExtraPrefs, at http://www.nada.de/mac/camino/cep.html. It has given me back ad blocking (after a fashion). Or I should more specifically state it enables Camino's built in CSS ad blocking, even though I couldn't tell you what CSS ad blocking is. I tested it on a particularly annoying site and it worked perfectly blocking all banner ads, and even stopping some new popup thingy that was defeating the standard popup blocking feature.

So the upside is that there certainly looks like this will be an upcoming feature in Camino, and it will block all ads it detects at once, without having to click on an ad and select AdBlock (sorry if AdBlock also has that feature). The downside seems to be that you don't have as fine grain control over ad blocking with this Camino feature..

Anyway I'm back with Camino.. You could say I'm caminando again..

Re:Firefox is the best

[Alcimedes]

One thing I'll say for Camino is they know how to render default buttons.

Firefox's button defaults look like ass. It has a lot of other, better features, but the UI isn't really one of them.

Now Adblock.......

Try this, perhaps

[BadMrMojo]

http://kmgerich.com/archive/000069.html

Not perfect but getting warmer.

AdBlock

[Anonymous Coward]

If Camino had AdBlock I'd use it. I used Camino back when FireFox was still too buggy and I like it a lot. FireFox is ok but doesn't have that same Mac feel that Camino does.

Re:Firefox is the best

[Anonymous Coward]

Camino isn't meant to be Firefox, with an infinite, extensible toolkit for the power user. It's meant to be a lightweight OS X native browser that anyone can just open up and use.

The fact that Camino exists and a lot of people use it and like it doesn't mean that those who want / need the extra features of Firefox can't use them.

Unfortunately, even some basic features aren't available yet for Firefox on OS X. For instance, it's currently impossible to open a downloaded file because most of the application options are unavailable. And that's just the beginning.

So even some power users choose Camino as their Gecko browser for OS X. To each his own.

FWIW.

Re:Firefox is the best

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes I did read the article thank you very much, but Camino is quite a bit behind the features of Firefox. Thank you for being our /. smartass #764824, and please enjoy your flashing ads in your Camino browser while mine are all blocked.

Firefox can be ugly on OS X

[singularity]

I used to use iCab for a long time, but then development (and speed) really fell behind. I started looking around for a replacement, and there was Firebird (or whatever Firefox was called back then), Camino (which I think had a different name, as well), and Safari.

Firefox is obviously not an OS X application. Sure, they have Gecko running really quickly, but non-native widgets? One of the big draws of OS X is the look and feel, and the consistency of the looks. Having what looks to be Windows-themed widgets for all forms drives me crazy.

Safari looks really good, renders most things perfectly, and is rather snappy.

Camino looked nice, but the feature set was just not there at all when I tried it. When I first tried it, the pref-pane was new to that version. Even now, the feature set is just not there to be used as a primary browser, I think.

I would really like to see Camino developed more.

but...

[chasingporsches]

/. looks A LOT nicer on safari. camino, firefox, mozilla, etc. needs GOOD font smoothing on OS X.

Re:but...

[Quobobo]

A lot nicer? Sheesh, there's one tiny thing that isn't anti-aliased in Camino (parts of the left sidebar). It's had good anti-aliasing for a long time, which used to be one of its major attractions.

Gmail vs. Yahoo! mail

[Big Sean O]

Ho hum. I just got Gmail and all I can say is "Is that all there is?". It's frankly not much niftier than Yahoo mail.

Less spam though... that alone might be enough for me to switch.

Sean O

Camino + Japanese = still sucking

[bursch-X]

It still makes a complete visual mess when trying to display Japanese. It displays some words using different fonts for each character and quirks like this. Makes the page really ugly. I have no idea why that is, because Firefox renders those pages perfectly (as does Safari).

It's a shame because I'd rather use Camino than Firefox. Firefox doesn't use native widgets and still doesn't really look & feel like a fully OS X "native" application (although they're really doing their best to get closer).

Re:Camino + Japanese = still sucking

[Quobobo]

Interesting, what pages are you talking about in particular? I just fired it up and checked out a few sites (of course the all-important slashdot.jp), and I don't see any problems. Are you unable to fix this even by changing the text encoding? Only thing I noticed is that a few words in Japanese seem a bit blurry, but I don't know if that's a Japanese-specific bug or not.

Re:Camino + Japanese = still sucking

[bursch-X]

No it happens with any Japanese page I visit with Camino. Changing encodings doesn't fix the issue. The problem is that Camino for some reason uses the proper characters, but mixes all kinds of different fonts, so the pages looks unbearably ugly. I've experienced this with any version of Camino and I wonder why this is.

Re:Camino + Japanese = still sucking

[Anonymous Coward]

The rendering of accented Roman characters makes Vietnamese text look like a ransom note, too. As an example, compare the display of http://vnexpress.net/ in Camino and Safari. For a smooth display in Safari, you should have the fonts that come with Microsoft Office 2004; the demo version is fine. Camino can apparently not recognize all the characters in Unicode fonts but renders characters outside the Roman script with what looks like a bitmapped fallback font.

Camino Localization project

[Anonymous Coward]

The Camino Localization project, aims to translate and release Camino in non english languages. If you want Camino to be available in your language please join the project.

Actually They're All Good ...

[Socket Scientist]

A few years ago when OS X was new and OmniWeb and IE were it, who would have believed we'd eventually have such an embarrassment of capable browsers on the Mac platform?

Re:Actually They're All Good ...

[System.out.println()]

I think you picked the wrong word there. "Embarrassment"? It sounds like you're saying that lots of browsers is a bad thing.

Re:Actually They're All Good ...

[Socket Scientist]

"An embarrassment of ... " is an idiomatic expression that indicates "a greater number than is strictly necessary". See for example "an embarrassment of riches ..." etc.

Re:Actually They're All Good ...

[System.out.println()]

Interesting... can't say I've ever heard that phrase before.

Same here...

[solios]

I use Safari and Firefox, because hey- there's shit Safari just fucks up on. Period.

I think it's positively stupid that it's 2004 and there's no single Good Web Browser yet. :-| Hell, Safari has a ton of its own stupidities and neither Safari OR Firefox have a download manager that I like. :P

Slow development (no more?)

[AvantLegion]

I stopped using Camino and switched to Firefox on my Powerbook because, at the time, the most recent Camino release was over a year old (this was around May, with tnen-current 0.7 having been released in March 2003).

But now 0.8 and 0.8.1 have dropped, and I'm using Camino again - at least for the time being.

Hopefully development will remain steady.

Ad blocking == bad

[oldosadmin]

I understand there are some obnoxious ads... but if you want free content, deal with the ads. I mean, blocking flash ads... popup blocking... understandable. But I have a lot of people who block my google text ad and my sponsor banner on my site... which keeps me from having a lot of money come out of my pocket each month.

Re:Ad blocking == bad

[Yaztromo]

I understand there are some obnoxious ads... but if you want free content, deal with the ads. I mean, blocking flash ads... popup blocking... understandable. But I have a lot of people who block my google text ad and my sponsor banner on my site... which keeps me from having a lot of money come out of my pocket each month.

I just took soe time off my busy day to drop by and say: "Awwww".

I'm sorry, but I never gave you permission to use my bandwidth to send me ads. I don't have to consume them if I don't want to, and if that affects your bottom line, you're just going to have to find some different source of income.

Ad blocking may be bad for you as a distributor of ads, but it doesn't harm the rest of us one iota. If pages didn't try to inundate surfers with ads, ad blockers wouldn't be necessary.

But as it is, I too spend good money on my monthly allotment of bandwidth, and I have absolutely no desire to waste it downloading ads. And over here, my money is vastly more important than your money, so pardon me if I feel absolutely no sympathy for your position.

Yaz.

Re:Ad blocking == bad

[hobbit]

I'm sorry, but I never gave you permission to use my bandwidth to send me ads.

Cry me a river, yourself. You would prefer to pay for content how? He's talking about Google ads. Are you really trying to claim that they seriously impact your bandwidth allotment? Obviously you browse the web with images turned off, otherwise you wouldn't even slightly have a point. Do you really need blocking for text ads as well?

Re:Ad blocking == bad

[PsychoSpunk]

I'm sorry, but I never gave you permission to use my bandwidth to send me ads.

Yes, because you live in some magickal world where the browser fairy takes you to unwanted sites and fills your screen with advertisements.

Er, rather, you requested content from a site that looked like:

GET /page.html

And it gave you page.html and all that it entails. So, at least from a httpd server point of view, you did request the advertisements.

Re:Ad blocking == bad

[Yaztromo]

Er, rather, you requested content from a site that looked like:

GET /page.html

And it gave you page.html and all that it entails. So, at least from a httpd server point of view, you did request the advertisements.

Your own argument works completely against you.

An HTML file contains no bitmap data -- it merely links to it. If I ask for "page.html", I expect to get a text file called "page.html". This is how HTTP is designed to work, and is indeed how it works virtually everywhere.

Your browser has to parse the HTML and get all of the IMG tags, and then make requests for each and every graphic element referenced.

Asking for "page.html" doesn't necessitate that one request everything it links to. If I go to "google.com", I'm hardly expected to download everything it links to.

As such, I run a browser that allows me to control what content I retrieve, so that I am in control of the content. If I wanted someone else to be in control of the content, I'd watch more TV.

So if I ask for "page.html", I expect to get a text file called "page.html". If it links to other content, I'll retrieve it if it so suits me to do so by making additional requests. I refuse to make requests for content I don't want, and this includes most advertisements.

The fact of the matter remains there are many Mozilla-based browsers which provide me with the ability to block images. The browsers offer this feature, and it's one I desire. As such, I won't use Camino as my day-to-day browser until it supports this very useful feature.

And let's get one thing perfectly clear: ad blocking software is completely legal. I'm not breaking any laws by using it. As such, if its usage afffects the bottom line of some webmaster, it's because their business model is broken, and not my fault or problem.

Yaz.

Re:Ad blocking == bad

[cbirdsong64]

[i]Yes, because you live in some magickal world where the browser fairy takes you to unwanted sites and fills your screen with advertisements.[/i]

You mean he uses IE on a PC?

25kb? C'mon, give me a break

[oldosadmin]

The total size of ads on my page: 25kb.

One of which is a persistently cached 13kb image, which is loaded once and never again, per my apache setup.

You don't wanna look at my ads? Thats fine. You have the choice of not visitng my site, or hell, if you're one of those people who don't mind donating, then block my ads, but my problem is that people expect to get quality content for free, then wanna block the ads that pay for it. I'm a member of a stuggling family, using free AOL disks to keep my website updated. Everytime you block an ad, you cost me money and make small-time webmasters like me just a tad more tempted to close the doors forever.

Re:25kb? C'mon, give me a break

[Yaztromo]

First off, I'm not now, nor have I ever been a visitor to your website. So I haven't cost you anything.

However, ad blockers are a part of the business of the web, and if you can't make sufficient money off your website through them, you need to stop blaming the visitors who block your ads and look for a different source of income.

It's just like when Ted Turner a a year or so back claimed you were stealing if you didn't sit down and watch the advertisements on his channels. Do you sit through and watch every ad on your TV set when you're watching a program or movie? Do you realize someone is paying for them?

Welcome to the wonderful world of advertising. You can't force anyone to look at anything they don't want to look at. The web provides us with some excellent tools to ensure we see what we want, and not the things we don't want to. I am the viewer, and it is I who gets to select what they want to see. And I am not alone. If you can't deal with this, then I'm sorry to say you're in the wrong business.

If you're not making money off ads, look into selling t-shirts, bumper stickers, premium content, or other such services.

Yaz.

Camino and new windows

[Anonymous Coward]

I never received an answer from Mike Pinkerton regarding the exchange below. I seem to be the only one on the planet who would like the Camino broswer to open a new window the same way Firefox, Omniweb, and IE do. Has the rest of the world fallen in love with a bug too? Does no one find this "feature" an extremely annoying one?

=====================
Robert wrote on 6/15/04, 11:50 PM:

What I love about Chimera is it's ability to open on the left, with plenty of space if the originating page is in the middle of the screen.
Please, how can I change Camino to do the same thing?

=====

At 9:01 AM -0400 6/16/04, Mike Pinkerton wrote:
we changed that behavior to fix several bugs with window staggering. i
think you've fallen in love with a bug, not a feature Smile

sorry!

--
Mike Pinkerton
==========

Thanks Mike,

But why should that be considered a bug when Camino opens a new window on my screen about a quarter of an inch to the right making it much more difficult to even click on the new window. I'm beside myself to understand how that could be considered a better "feature." Is there a work around to get a new window to open a wider distance from the previous window? And on the left instead of the right (most annoying since my downloaded files to the desktop appear on the right and I keep my dock on the right)?

Thanks,

Robert

Camino Hidden Prefs (adds what most /.ers want)

[sagefire.org]

http://www.nada.de/mac/camino/cep.html

Head on over to the above URL and do to Camino what most users do to Safari with PithHelmet!