The best browser for the Mac, Camino, has gotten even better with the release of Camino 1.6. I know what some of you are thinking, 'How can you say that Camino is the best browser for the Mac? It doesn't support extensions, it isn't made by Apple, and it won't buy me a pony!'All of those things are true (though I'm still hopeful that I'll get a Camino pony in the mail any day now), but for my money no other browser on the Mac feels more like an OS X app than Camino does (your opinion may vary, and I'm sure you'll let me know why I'm wrong in the comments). New in Camino 1.6 are a host of UI changes that make the browser much nicer to look at, as well as improvements in navigating tabs, and a search interface more like Safari's (though Safari's highlighting of search terms within webpages still bests Camino's).
Camino 1.6 is available now, and is free and open source.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
4-18-2008 @ 2:37PM
Vinod Ponmanadiyil said...
Will they ever make that Tab Bar a bit more bigger?. Commenting from Camino now.
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4-18-2008 @ 2:40PM
Jake said...
i had the lead developer for the camino project as a professor for a course. he seems cool until it comes to grading projects. then he becomes a dou***bag.
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4-18-2008 @ 2:42PM
Christina Warren said...
I keep trying to make Camino my default browser but I always end back in Safari's bed -- even though Safari uses me and takes up too many resources.
1.6 is really nice though. kudos to the Camino team!
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4-18-2008 @ 3:53PM
Stuggy said...
Awww, Christina, I'd never use you like Safari, nor would I hog your resources! :)
4-18-2008 @ 2:43PM
anon said...
I have to admit, WebKit nightlies have done what I thought was the impossible - replace Camino entirely for me. I'm tired of various pages not loading properly with Gecko/Camino. But security is still a major issue on the Safari front that I'm watching closely.
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4-18-2008 @ 4:13PM
Luigi193 said...
Yeah, I love the WebKit nightly builds, and thats why I use that now!
4-18-2008 @ 2:45PM
Brandon Martinez said...
I tried using Camino, it was just too limited; Safari even tops it from a Web Devloper's point of view. Safari and Firefox, best friends for life :)
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4-18-2008 @ 2:52PM
mbowman said...
@Vinod.
It is the same exact size as Safari's tab bar. Both should be bigger and are absurdly small.
@anon
Pages not loading correctly? Like where? I've been using Gecko forever and can't remember the last time I've had page rendering issues. As good as Safari has gotten, ignoring Firefox's Extension advantage, Webkit is the one more likely to have page rendering issues over Gecko.
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4-18-2008 @ 3:10PM
5cents said...
Looks like Caminicon doesn't work for 1.6 and growlcamino as well as unifycamino are unsupported (though both are working at the mo' for me).
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4-18-2008 @ 3:29PM
ME said...
humm, only scores 53/100 on the Acid3 test, and that’s a major fail!
http://acid3.acidtests.org/
Safari scores 75/100...i really want to like camino...
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4-18-2008 @ 5:10PM
Furies said...
Heh, need I remind you the Webkit devs wrote most of that test? I don't see a bias there anywhere...
As for me, I'm using Camino 2.0 alpha and getting a 71....
4-18-2008 @ 3:32PM
shawn said...
I removed 1.5 early last year because it was randomly causing my MacBook to freeze and gave me the grey screen with the "Your computer has momentarily died, please reboot" message all the freakin' time. I wasn't even using it and it was killing me. Checking through the crash logs and the one thing that always stood out was 'Camino'. I removed it and haven't had that screen in OVER A YEAR.
So, f*** Camino.
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4-18-2008 @ 9:35PM
Furies said...
Congratulations, your comment made it on my Top 10 rudest.
The likelihood that one web browser caused your whole system to crash while running god knows how many other processes is slim to none. Perhaps a combination of trying to run Camino with a processor maxed or unavailable RAM MAYBE, but Camino crashing your system without even using it is ludicrous.
I must say though, Webkit and Firefox nightlies and trunk builds are very impressive, but the fact boils down to this:
Would you like a WebKit or Gecko based browser, and if Gecko:
Would you like it with a Cocoa UI or XUL? Gecko provides more security and compatibility, Webkit provides more AJAX support and speed. Both serve their purposes. To sit here and hate on Camino for not having the same sort of dev power the bigger projects have is unproductive.
People also fail to mention the main accomplishment of the Camino project: connecting the Cocoa API to a Gecko core. Not to mention Firefox 3 is using Camino's code to provide Cocoa widgets in their 1.9 branch.
4-18-2008 @ 3:36PM
Chris G. said...
I have been using the Firefox 3 Beta's on my Macbook and will not use anything else. Spectacular browser. Firefox 2 for Mac stinks, but they really improved Firefox 3.
The new "Awesome Bar" alone is worth the upgrade.
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4-18-2008 @ 4:09PM
Macskeeball said...
Another addition to Camino with version 1.6 that McNulty forgot to mention is better checking for and installation of updates, using Sparkle.
There are some add-ons and themes of sorts available for Camino (although it's more limited than Firefox), and you can find them on http://www.pimpmycamino.com
Camino forums: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=12
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4-18-2008 @ 5:02PM
anon said...
Most of the recent nightly webkits fixed all the bugs tested in the acid3 test. This isn't to say it's better but the improvement is visible.
Run some memory and load tests with Camino, Firefox, and Safari under your normal usages -- I found that Camino and Safari had a considerably smaller memory footprint than Firefox (I've never liked Ff for its port like feel). Firefox 3 looks interesting, but since I don't use extensions or profiles, there's nothing about it that compels me to move away from Camino. I prefer simple, functional web browsers than all the extensibility.
Particularly I find Camino slower than WebKit on Google apps like gmail and reader.
Regarding pages that render poorly in Camino, nearly anything with a lot of embedded media on it has a tendency to run funny. I admit that this is almost certainly the fault of the developers.
Safari seems to have gained enough legitimacy for web developers to finally test on it (though they should be testing on Ff cross platform, Safari cross platform, and IE6,7,8 - damn IE). If they're testing on Ff, they're testing on Camino more or less - the analog is not perfect it seems, however, and I'm not exactly sure why.
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4-18-2008 @ 5:14PM
Manu said...
SVG font support is still very bad, i.e. not usable.
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4-18-2008 @ 5:15PM
pscs said...
I really don't like this "The best browser for the Mac, Camino".
OK, I know it's an opinion, but this thing runs on Firefox's engine (Gecko)... Have you guys tried FF3b5?
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4-18-2008 @ 8:40PM
Ranger said...
Camino 1.6 is decent in the world of Firefox 2.0 and Safari 2.0. So if this were 2005 then this would be the best browser out there.
Unfortunately it's 2008. Firefox 3b5 blows Camino out of the water in so many ways. Safari 3 is faster, has the ability to use input managers, renders sites better and feels more fluid with the overall mac experience. Even the latest 2.0 pre-builds of Camino feel so antiquated in comparison...and that's not even comparing Camino to the vastly superior Webkit nightlies.
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4-19-2008 @ 2:42AM
Macskeeball said...
There are input manager based add-ons available for Camino as well, and they're listed on http://www.pimpmycamino.com See my previous comment (#15).