Why Camino

Talk about the native Mac OS X browser.

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DanHep
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Post by DanHep »

Thanks, japser. After my post I found the thread proposing such a panel. Good luck with its development.
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tobyh
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Re: Why Camino

Post by tobyh »

Zulithe wrote:My sis has a Mac and I have Firefox installed on it for her. I know Camino exists but know very little about it. I see it uses "Cocoa" but doesn't the Mac port of Firefox also use it? Sorry, not much of a Mac person so ...

What I really want to know is why a person would use Camino over Firefox or Safari, can someone please convince me? If not, why does Caminio even exist, it seems like developer manpower that is being wasted.


I was actually thinking the opposite.

I think Firefox is taking Developer manpower away from Camino.

Firefox was develop on a PC then ported to Mac.

Camino is Native.

We need standards yes.

But do we all need to run the same Browers?

As for Safari. I use it as Default. Probably always will BUT, I will use this as my Second and drop Firefox like a three day old sponge, as soon as it has a RC
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Uncle Asad
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Post by Uncle Asad »

tobyh wrote:Probably always will BUT, I will use this as my Second and drop Firefox like a three day old sponge, as soon as it has a RC

Honestly, I've found Camino to be more stable and less buggy than Firefox, even though Camino is at 0.8.x and Firefox is 1.0.x (and quite frankly, Camino nightly builds are even more solid, and of course much improved).

Version numbers are somewhat arbitrary here, as both browsers have bugs and both have missing features. Camino is well-known for having very high quality releases, which is part of the reason why it will have been roughly a year since the first 0.8 release when we finally get 0.9 in the next couple of months (Firefox went through 0.8, 0.9.x and 1.0.x in the last year [14mos]). Camino's also been under development longer than Firefox has been under development on the Mac, which is part of the reason for Camino's more solid feel and better OS integration....

So don't let the fact Camino hasn't hit 1.0 yet unduly influence your browser-preference decision. Look at what features you want and need, try the browsers out, and see which one(s) fits you best :-)

tobyh wrote:I think Firefox is taking Developer manpower away from Camino.

Perhaps, but the success of Firefox has pointed out a number of glaring weaknesses of Mozilla-the-platform's Mac side and caused MoFo to hire Josh Aas full-time to work on the Mac backend and Firefox and Camino. And Josh working nearly full-time on shared code (plus a little bit on Camino) is in the long run more valuable than Josh working after-hours on Camino; suddenly we've gone from zero full-time Mac developers to one :-)
Last edited by Uncle Asad on May 11th, 2005, 1:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Snow7 »

Uncle Asad wrote: suddenly we've gone from zero full-time Mac developers to one

yeah, that's better than a 100% increase! :lol:
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Post by Uncle Asad »

*** This thread is now linked to by the Camino Forum FAQ. Please Un-sticky this thread! ***
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vprice509
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Post by vprice509 »

Thanks to everyone that added to this discussion. I have decided to give Camino a real try, as my beloved Firefox keeps crashing since switching to my latest machine. [Did setup assistant; since then has not even launched successfully once] Why troubleshoot it? Who cares? Path of least resistance is fine w/me, so Camino it is.
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tobyh
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Post by tobyh »

Uncle Asad wrote:
tobyh wrote:Probably always will BUT, I will use this as my Second and drop Firefox like a three day old sponge, as soon as it has a RC

Honestly, I've found Camino to be more stable and less buggy than Firefox, even though Camino is at 0.8.x and Firefox is 1.0.x (and quite frankly, Camino nightly builds are even more solid, and of course much improved).

Version numbers are somewhat arbitrary here, as both browsers have bugs and both have missing features. Camino is well-known for having very high quality releases, which is part of the reason why it will have been roughly a year since the first 0.8 release when we finally get 0.9 in the next couple of months (Firefox went through 0.8, 0.9.x and 1.0.x in the last year [14mos]). Camino's also been under development longer than Firefox has been under development on the Mac, which is part of the reason for Camino's more solid feel and better OS integration....

So don't let the fact Camino hasn't hit 1.0 yet unduly influence your browser-preference decision. Look at what features you want and need, try the browsers out, and see which one(s) fits you best :-)

I'm using Camino on a limited basis mostly due to the fact that it doesn't have a spell checker for...message boarding:)

Like for example I'm using Camino right now (I figure it's only respectful)

And I'm so junked out on the spell checker (I feel naked right now without it)

With that said, I LOVE the right mouse click feature with the dock.

I love that I can access web pages that way.

Uncle Asad wrote:
tobyh wrote:I think Firefox is taking Developer manpower away from Camino.

Perhaps, but the success of Firefox has pointed out a number of glaring weaknesses of Mozilla-the-platform's Mac side and caused MoFo to hire Josh Aas full-time to work on the Mac backend and Firefox and Camino. And Josh working nearly full-time on shared code (plus a little bit on Camino) is in the long run more valuable than Josh working after-hours on Camino; suddenly we've gone from zero full-time Mac developers to one :-)


Very good point.

Now question, what are the difference in rendering engine between Camino and Firefox?

I know that Safari runs on KHTML or WebCore. What are the two (if two)?
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Post by Snow7 »

Firefox and Camino both run Gecko, inherited from Mozilla Suite.
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smorgan
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Post by smorgan »

There are some differences in the codepaths taken during actual rendering though, since Camino uses native-themed widgets and Firefox doesn't.
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Post by danny_w »

I have used FF on Winodws and then on Mac, but was curious about Camino. I constantly switched between FF and Safari on the Mac, because each had thngs that Iliked better than the other. I finally decided to try Camino, and it lacks two of the features from FF that I liked best:

1) The ablity to setup multiple home pages (tabs) rhat opened automatically. Is there any way to get this functionality in Camino?

2) The "Find" box at the bottom of the screen. I found that the "/" enters find-as-you-type mode, similar to the "Find" box, but does not display the box itself. Is there any way to add the box?

Also, there doesn't seem to be a way in Camino to show the tab bar if there is only one tab open like you can do in FF and Safari. However, Camino does seem to be much faster than Safari and just seems more "right". Since I have just started using it tonight I am sure that I will find other differences.
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Post by cflawson »

I'm not sure what "box" you're referring to with find-as-you-type. Can you get a screenshot?

Recent nightlies have a pref to always show the tab bar.

cl
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Uncle Asad
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Post by Uncle Asad »

danny_w wrote:1) The ablity to setup multiple home pages (tabs) rhat opened automatically. Is there any way to get this functionality in Camino?


bug 189930

danny_w wrote:2) The "Find" box at the bottom of the screen. I found that the "/" enters find-as-you-type mode, similar to the "Find" box, but does not display the box itself. Is there any way to add the box?


bug 258211, although the status bar already does show what you are typing, and the find next/previous keyboard shortcuts work, too.

I don't like how Fx is contantly putting overlays across your webpage (one for plugins, one for popus, one for find, etc.), and Camino's FAYT works very well for finding while not cluttering my screen with additonal nonsense :-)

As Chris already mentioned, always show tab bar is already a pref in the nightlies :-)
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vprice509
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Post by vprice509 »

danny_w wrote:I have used FF on Winodws and then on Mac, but was curious about Camino. I constantly switched between FF and Safari on the Mac, because each had thngs that Iliked better than the other. I finally decided to try Camino, and it lacks two of the features from FF that I liked best:

1) The ablity to setup multiple home pages (tabs) rhat opened automatically. Is there any way to get this functionality in Camino?

2) The "Find" box at the bottom of the screen. I found that the "/" enters find-as-you-type mode, similar to the "Find" box, but does not display the box itself. Is there any way to add the box?

Also, there doesn't seem to be a way in Camino to show the tab bar if there is only one tab open like you can do in FF and Safari. However, Camino does seem to be much faster than Safari and just seems more "right". Since I have just started using it tonight I am sure that I will find other differences.
Multiple home pages! I have switched to Camino, mainly, and missed that from FF as well. Here is how I did a workaround:

Create a folder, put it in the bookmark bar, put in bookmarks for the pages you want for homepages. Set prefs to have Camino launch with a blank page. Once it launches, click on the folder you created and all pages contained within will launch.
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vanity
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Re: Why Camino

Post by vanity »

Camino was my browser from 2004 to summer 2006,when I switched to Safari. Since then I've looked into every release, but not even 2.0 is tempting. Am I missing something? The FAQ (that points to this thread) mentions differences to Firefox, but not what the advantages over Safari are.
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