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

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

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: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.

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:I heart Camino

[bdaehlie]

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