We Mac users take our web browsers seriously, which helps account for the fact that there are just so many of them to choose from. For my money the top browser on OS X is Camino (though Safari 3 is closing in fast). Camino, as you can see from the accompanying picture here, makes a big deal out of its 'Mac Style,' and it does feel much more at home on a Mac than Firefox does (though the Firefox team is working on that).Camino is free, as are most browsers these days (Ominweb, I'm looking at you), but that doesn't mean you can't chip in to support development. The Camino Project recently announced that they can now take donations. Working with the Mozilla Foundation the Camino Project has setup a way for you to donate money to support the app, and get the added bonus of writing it off on your taxes. Best of all, the Mozilla Foundation will offer a 2 for 1 match until the end of the year, or until the donations reach $10,000, whichever comes first.
If you're a big Camino user be sure to head on over to their donation page and send 'em a few dollars.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-27-2007 @ 3:48PM
Rob said...
Why can't Camino use Firefox extensions? Same organization.
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11-27-2007 @ 3:53PM
Eric said...
Firefox 3 goes a long way to bridge the gap between firefox and the OSX platform. Sure it's still got some rough edges, but it's a lot better than FF2.
As to why FF plugins don't work for Camino, that's because Camino does not use XUL for it's widgets. FF plugins might work, but would require the developers to strip out all the layout code and replace it with stuff that is camino compatible.
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11-27-2007 @ 4:00PM
Chris said...
More specifically, Camino can't make use of Firefox extensions that rely on a XUL GUI (which, unfortunately for people who can't get by without extensions, is most of them). Extensions which have no GUI should work just fine.
cl
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11-27-2007 @ 4:06PM
Object-X said...
I'll gladly donate to anyone who makes a browser based on WebKit that supports full screen browsing like Opera. That means no stupid scroll bar on the right (Firefox) and no menu bar on the top. Automatically maximizing the window doesn't mean "full screen".
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11-27-2007 @ 4:17PM
paul said...
I'd donate to Camino if they ever actually worked on it. I keep having to switch between Camino and Safari over time because the Camino developers get lazy and don't update anything for like a year (like right now).
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11-27-2007 @ 4:26PM
aptenergy said...
Paul, your characterization there is simply 100% wrong. A ton of work is being done on Camino 1.6 and Camino 2.0. (I'm running a trunk build right now.) The difference is that the financial resources, developers, etc. don't exist for Camino like they do for Firefox. Camino is a volunteer effort, and the people who have been doing Camino work have been doing it for a long time.
If we want to speed Camino development, the team is going to need more experienced developers, esp those who can hack on Mozilla code and Objective-C. Funding is always useful too, which is exactly what donations are for.
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11-27-2007 @ 4:31PM
Rob said...
I don't see the point to Camino without Firefox extensions especially since the news release of the Mac OSX version of Firefox 3.
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11-27-2007 @ 4:33PM
Shahryar said...
yeah, I like FF strictly for its extensions. I like being able to use Foxmarks to sync between my work PC and my home apples. I'll start using Camino when I can have my bookmarks.
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11-27-2007 @ 5:07PM
Rhywun said...
Sometimes I feel the multiplicity of browsers on the Mac is a sign that there's no clear winner. Which would explain why I'm constantly switching from Safari to Firefox to OmniWeb and back.
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11-27-2007 @ 5:45PM
Mr.Kaiser said...
Honestly this is what Camino needs along with matching certain trivial features that firefox has (LIKE MOVING TABS). However Camino is still an excellent browser that needs a little be more features and little less polish.
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11-27-2007 @ 6:27PM
JeffDM said...
I stuck with Camino for a week, and it's actually pretty nice, and much more stable than the current Firefox.
The only reason why I switched back to Firefox was because I like to middle click items on my bookmark bar to open the bookmark in a new tab, the same with items in folders on the bookmark bar. Camino requires command clicking bookmark items to open a new tab, but oddly lets me middle click a link to open it in a new tab.
I'd like to see some Mac web browser allow me to do some bookmark reorganization without going into a bookmark manager, which is a bit much if I only want to move a single bookmark from one folder to another. Firefox for Windows allows this, but not the Mac version.
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11-27-2007 @ 6:37PM
vectr said...
Camino with Jon Hicks' "Camino Graphite Icons" running on
OS X Tiger with David Lanham's "Agua" icon sets and UNO (gui.interacto.net) themed windows... very close to interface nirvana.
I'd gladly donate to the continued development of these as a suite. As separate projects I'm less inclined. I guess that's the vagaries of open-source.
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11-27-2007 @ 9:26PM
kinetix said...
I second Shahryar's comment about Foxmarks. If I could do this between all browsers and platforms like FF, I'd easily switch to Camino or any other browser.
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11-28-2007 @ 1:58AM
Jake said...
I used to love this browser until I took the lead developer's grad course and he gave me a D..... Now, this browser sucks.
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11-28-2007 @ 11:31AM
Ian Charles said...
Camino = crud.
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11-28-2007 @ 12:52PM
Ernest Leitch said...
Whenever I try using a new browser on OSX I always come back to Firefox. Not so much because its good, but because it sucks the least.
I primarily use it for development and because it works better than Safari. Even Safari 3 still bugs me. It just doesn't work with everything out there. It has problems with Google Reader and I spend about 80% of my time there.
My biggest complaint with FF is its memory usage and the fact that if I hit a page with a lot of flash on it then the fans in my laptop spin up and don't spin down till I quit the browser.
The search for the perfect browser still continues.
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