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Interview with Camino Developer Mike Pinkerton

Posted by michael on from the anything-but-ie dept.

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."

11 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Safari on Mac, Firefox on PC by the+pickle · · Score: 4, Informative

    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

    --
    In Korea, long hair is for old people!
  2. Re:Firefox is the best by the+pickle · · Score: 4, Informative
    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
    --
    In Korea, long hair is for old people!
  3. Re:Safari on Mac, Firefox on PC by Arcane_Rhino · · Score: 5, Informative
    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.

  4. Re:Firefox is the best by thirteenVA · · Score: 4, Informative

    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...

  5. That's not what he meant. by Millennium · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  6. I heart Camino by commodoresloat · · Score: 4, Informative
    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.
    1. Re:I heart Camino by bdaehlie · · Score: 5, Informative

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

  7. Re:Safari on Mac, Firefox on PC by Zoop · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  8. Re:Safari on Mac, Firefox on PC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  9. Re:but... by Quobobo · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  10. Re:OmniWeb by Ilgaz · · Score: 4, Informative

    " 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 ;)