When it comes to browsers, there are many options for Apple users such as Safari, Opera, and Firefox. And then there is Camino, a browser that combines the visual and behavioral experience of a Mac with the speedy Gecko core. Originally called Chimera, it has been nearly four years in the making.
While it is not as visually stunning as a Safari, it is a brisk browser, that makes its peers seem almost asthmatic. While I miss the wonderful extensions that come with Mozilla Firefox, the speed and performance of Camino makes up for its shortcomings. I have been using Camino as my primary browser for sometime. After many months of hard work, the team from Camino is about to announce Camino 1.0, an apt Valentine’s Day gift for Mac users. I emailed the Camino guys a list of questions, and Mike Pinkerton, the project lead of The Camino Project emailed back in what amounts to be a short yet snappy e-interview.
Om Malik: Mike, who are the key folks behind camino project?
Mike Pinkerton: The project is comprised solely of volunteers (nobody gets paid to work on Camino). The “core” team of developers, testers, and support staff hovers around 10-15 people, with hundreds of other volunteers contributing code and testing. The names most worth mentioning are:
- Core developers – Mark Mentovai, Josh Aas, Simon Fraser
- Core QA and testing – Smokey Ardisson, Nate Weaver, Chris Lawson, Ludovic Hirlimann
- Website, Content, and Design: Jasper Hauser, Samuel Sidler
- Localization: Ludovic Hirlimann
(Of course) we would be nowhere without our loyal community.
OM: What prompted you folks to start The Camino Project?
MP: Dave Hyatt and I started Camino as an experiment, but we quickly realized that Mac users wanted something that integrated much better with Mac OS X than the current Mozilla products were able to deliver. We wanted to harness the speed, stability, and standards support of Mozilla’s Gecko HTML engine and wrap it with the ease of use, simplicity, and consistency provided by Apple’s Cocoa development platform. It would be the best of both worlds. Dave left the project about six months after we started and I took over as project lead. (More here)
OM: What are the main differences between Mozilla Firefox and Camino?
MP: The core difference is in philosophy. We want to make the best Mac-native browser, not just one that happens to run on Mac as a port. The browser internals are very similar to those of Firefox (the Gecko rendering engine) but the front-end is pure Mac OS X native. We also support many Apple technologies that Firefox does not, including Address Book, Bonjour, Keychain, Spotlight, etc.
OM: I miss all those Firefox extensions. Any plans to add extension support?
MP: We recognize this is a problem for our users, but extensions only exist because of the cross-platform UI layer upon which Firefox is built. It’s that same cross-platform UI layer that makes Firefox feel “wrong” on Mac OS X. Camino’s use of Cocoa for the user interface makes it fit in with the rest of the platform, but prohibits us from using extensions. We feel this is a trade-off worth making. That said, we are investigating ways to allow non-user-interface extensions to register and work correctly.
OM: What can the users expect in the near future?
MP: We really hope to have RSS discovery, spell checking, improvements to the download manager, and much more for 1.1. We’ve been in a holding pattern for a while getting 1.0 ready to be released and we’ve got a bunch of other features piling up that weren’t quite ready for prime time, but will start showing up in nightly builds very soon.
The best option for firefox or for that matter any browser that wants to compete with IE, make the DOM model of these browsers IE compatiable otherwise only edgecases will be the only adopters. Testing web applications for multiple platforms and browsers is a non starter for most ISVs.
how sweet.. so am i even i seem to have been using camino for the last 4 weeks i guess and ya as my primary browser
“…make the DOM model of these browsers IE compatiable [sic] otherwise only edgecases will be the only adopters.”
You are joking, right? Camino already supports web standards. IE does, mostly, but not fully. The problem lies with IE – not Camino or Firefox.
That said, congrats to the Camino team on the birth of 1.0!
Camino ROCKS. 🙂
Dumbing down proper browsers like Camino, Firefox and Safari is an absolutely asinine idea. Slow adoption of non-IE browsers for Windows users has nothing to do with how they differently (correctly)render pages, but rather with the users’ own ingnorance of the superior alternatives.
Adherence to Web Standards is becoming a huge priority for many developers. I’d challenge anybody to call themselves Web 2.0 without at least attempting to stick to standards. The best developers and designers have abandoned the idea of developing exclusively for Microsoft’s abomination of a browser.
The energy spent on Camino would be much better spent on MacFirefox.
The Mac Firefox port doesn’t need much attention (It’s actually pretty good), although I do seem to occasionally lock it up with 100% CPU usage (particularly on sites with Flash, Java’n’stuff).
Camino’s faster and feels more Mac-y, but I can’t live without my extensions (Net Usage Item to monitor my download allowance, Bugmenot for those stupid register-so-we-can-spam-you websites, GreaseMonkey etc)
I’m liking Camino, but I must have some sort of mouse gestures plus live bookmarks like in Firefox to make the change for good.
Drives me crazy though that Camino can’t sync bookmarks through .Mac, a la Transmit / Yojimbo. That alone is what’s keeping me from using Camino.
While I miss Firefox extensions, CamiTools cover most of the stuf I care about — better ad blocking, FlashBlock, lots of manual preference tweaks.
http://www.nadamac.de/camitools/index.php
And….should have mentioned that CamiTools 4.1 adds bookmark syncing.
Andrew Miller – ditto on the CamiTools. I couldn’t live without my search option “plug-ins”. And CaminIcon is very useful too. Having used Safari, Firefox, and Camino actively w/in the last year, in the end, I feel about Camino the way I feel about my Mac, there are certain advantages to other options but overall this is by far the best choice (over Firefox: LOVE the Keychain integration!!! and super-fast). There are more and more options with Camino every month, if not every day.
Camino is so sweet – its fast, has style, and uses the Keychain. Lack of Keychain support in Firefox has always been a real pain for me, but I liked the Firefox extensions so much I just had to use it.
I personally use Camino as my first choice while browsing; use Firefox for all my web development (the development environment the best IMHO); use Flock if I want to write a quick blog entry; and lastly use Safari for testing.
All this tabbing about used to be real pain because these browsers didn’t share passwords; this is why I had to write 1Passwd.
1Passwd is a Password Manager & AutoFill program that integrates with the OS X Keychain. 1Passwd integrates directly with Camino, Safari, Firefox, and Flock so that no matter which one you are using you never need to leave your browser to find your passwords.
Slow to mac, I immediately knew I didn’t want safari. Fortunately I found Camino and have been happy ever since!
I use Tyepad and the interface is a bit shy compared to firefox I can live with it! Long live Camino!