Camino - a browser than can get stuffed!

I'm the kind of guy who likes to use many browsers on my computer. I've always had at least two installed at any one time, and these days on the Mac are very interesting. Granted we only have four cores to choose from, but the builds on these are so vastly different, that no one need pine.

The project I want to review today is Camino. Camino is a Gecko-based project currently at version 1.5, although the Beta 2 for 1.6 is out and in my experience it is very stable.

Camino is an attempt at getting a more Mac oriented browser based on the Firefox technologies. I've been using this project on and off since the days of Camino 0.8 on Mac OS X 10.1, and I have to say, it is, and has always been, a really good, solid browser.

Let's start with the downsides of this browser. Camino officially lacks the ability to handle extensions. This means you are effectively excluded from all that cool extra functionality those Firefox users get… All those nice extensions, crashing the software… That's right, we had extensions, or Inits, in Mac OS prior to OS X. Is that a good thing in the long run? I think not. Yes, it did save the Mac in that it made it surprisingly expandable, but it could also make it exceedingly unstable at the best of times, if you tried to run more than a few at any given time. Users are reporting similar problems, especially with Firefox 2.0 and up. For Camino you can find hacks though, which doesn't do much for stability, but at least you can pimp your browser if you want to! Oh, and of course you can script your way through mostly anything thanks to the brilliance of AppleScript, and there are many Mac style hacks you can do over at Pimp My Camino.

Another major drawback is that it sometimes uses the Mozilla based text buttons, instead of the Cocoa Aqua ones. This might sound like a strange thing to complain about to Linux/Windows users, but on a Mac, the feeling must be right. It is important guys. Fix it. Especially since the whole project is meant to bring you Mozilla power in Mac style.

That is about all the bad things I have to say about it. Possibly a switch to allow for Firefox identification. It could be useful sometimes, since web coders seems to be too thick to A: keep to the standards, and B: recognise a Mozilla based browser rather than just Firefox…

On the upside, Camino is a very handsome browser, with some nice functions built into it. It is very fast to start, giving Safari, Shiira and iCab a run for their money and very definitely beating every other Gecko-based Mac browser. But it is also faster on the go, according to some faster even than Firefox, and that would be my experience as well.

Now a days it also has a built-in spell-check. Unlike many other browsers Camino uses the excellent built-in one in OS X, a very good addition in todays' content creating Web 2.0 world.

You also get something called session saving, which is something I think you can get in Safari via Saft and in Firefox through some or other extension. Basically it means that you can have the browser save all your windows/tabs on quitting, and reopen them next time. It even works after a crash!

Another neat feature concerns "auto-tabbing", in which you can save a number of bookmarks in a special folder. You will then be able to open all of them with one single click. Useful for students among others: one click to open GoogleDocs, Wikipedia, University pages and the Library for instance. All at the click of one button!

Simply put, Camino is very capable browser. It still lacks some features of its competitors (RSS reader, mouse gestures and so on) but non of these are in any way essential to a BROWSER. And that is what Camino is, and that is what it is doing very well. It's not trying to be your one-stop web app. Instead its aiming to be the best web experience on the Macintosh, and it comes very close to being so all ready. Just think how great it can get for version 2.0…

As a side project you can find Portable Camino, which is a self-contained browser that you can keep on your thumbdrive and use on any Mac without leaving any traces on the machine in question. Very handy if you help people out, or want to use your relatives machines for, to them, unsavoury surfing.

We at The LifeStuffingBlog can't but pronounce Camino to be one stuffworthy browser!

Thobias

You can read books too!

Yes it's true! It is still possible to read books, and here is a good tip. A Year at the Movies by Kevin Murphy of MST3K fame. The basics of the book is that Kevin after having watched over 3000 bad movies for MST3K, has lost his joy for the cinema. And during one whole year he decides to visit at least one movie every day.

He sees movies in the US, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Europe and a couple of other places. Small theatres, big theatres, breaks down a Super-8 projector in Italy and even has a full turkey dinner a thanks giving, in a cinema! 

The books is a fun ride with plenty of insights and much to both agree and disagree upon. I can highly recommend it for those days when your ears are hurting from the iPod headphones, or you just want a legitimate reason to stay on the couch all day: "But honey, I'm reading a book!"

Thobias