I was really disappointed when Google released their Chrome web browser for Windows only. When it comes to browsers, I've tried them all. Right now I regularly switch between Firefox and the latest nightly build from Webkit (essentially Safari). Firefox has the extensibility I rely on, while Webkit has the performance I crave. I had hoped that Chrome would magically combine those two crucial traits and become my new go-to browser. Unfortunately, Chrome is not yet nearly as extensible as Firefox, and isn't available for Mac (yet).

So imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon the latest experimental Firefox build from Mozilla, called Minefield. This Minefield should not be confused with the unofficial optimized builds of Firefox that Brett wrote about, which are also referred to as Minefield. Minefield is Mozilla's code-name for this generation of Firefox, and the code name is used for unofficial builds to avoid infringing upon the Firefox name.

So, what's so special about the Mozilla Minefield build? It's fast... smokin' fast. This is essentially a version of Firefox with the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine under the hood, and as Ars Technica reports, it tests even faster than Google's V8 JavaScript engine.

As most Mac users have noted, Firefox is kind of pokey on the Mac platform, particularly compared with WebKit or even Safari, and even when compared with Firefox on a similarly spec'd Windows machine. Version 3 of Firefox was supposed to fix the performance problem, and while it's somewhat better, it's still not great.

Well, Minefield is great. Using Gmail or even a complex content management system is a breath of fresh air. I feel like my web apps are finally keeping up with me.

There's one caveat, and it's a big one: though the current version number is 3.1b2pre (the "b" denoting beta status), this is really alpha software. That means there will be bugs, and you will experience problems. Surprisingly, though, Minefield has been very stable in my testing -- not yet crashing in a full day of testing. I have restarted it a couple of times due to suspicion that something strange was going on, but I can't say for sure if it was.

If you use it with your regular Firefox profile rather than creating a new one, Minefield will complain that most of your extensions are not compatible. Using Nightly Tester Tools, I re-enabled all of the extensions that it disabled, and every single one of them appears to be working normally, even the complicated ones like Better Gmail 2 and TabMixPlus.

I've only had a problem with one site so far, but unfortunately it's a big one: Google Docs. The page simply won't load. But for now, I'm willing to open WebKit or Camino to edit my Google Docs, because I'm just too smitten with the raw speed that Minefield offers.

One last note: being a nightly build, you will likely find that new versions are available, well, nightly. Mozilla makes the process of upgrading to the latest version virtually painless by using the built-in version monitoring process that Firefox uses.

[via Ubuntu Unleashed]

Camino, the best Gecko-based browser NOT named Firefox 3, has just been updated to version 1.6.3. This update, which seems to have rolled in 1.6.2 along with it (at least I never got the 1.6.2 notification, and I use Camino pretty frequently), sports the latest update to the Gecko 1.8.1 branch, including several critical stability and security fixes with better ad-blocking. Plus, it no longer crashes if a pop-up is displayed while dragging a bookmark.

Even though Firefox 3 is now a largely native Cocoa application, I still appreciate Camino's interface and speed. If nothing else, it's great to use as a Firefox 2/Gecko 1.8.1 testing agent when developing websites for compatibility.

You can download Camino here; optimized builds aren't available as of this writing, but check this site over the next few days for updates.

Just over a month after its 1.6 release, the Camino team has just released version 1.6.1. As Camino's own page states, "Camino 1.6.1 is a stability and security update . . . All users are urged to upgrade."

Camino should now be less crash-friendly and nitpicky about search engine additions and compatibility with Dreamweaver and other programs using deprecated AppleEvent has been restored.

1Password caused a "possibly incompatible" message to appear, although I haven't had any password or keychain related issues since installing 1.6.1, so keep that in mind if you use both.

Camino can be downloaded here and Intel-optimized versions of 1.6.1 are available here.

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.

I have an admission to make: I change browsers on a fairly regular basis (normally, I'm found swapping between Camino and Safari in short succession as I struggle to find a nirvana between the two of them). But what to do with my favourites? Some people I know like to keep browser favourites separate, but I can't stand that. If anything, I've yearned to be able to simply use the same bookmarks (and keyboard shortcuts for Bookmark-bar items) on all the browsers I possibly can.

That's where Bookit comes in handy. There's three options: Manage, Migrate or Restore. You can manually edit bookmarks, and compare them to a 'master' set (in my case, Camino); Migrate will allow you to take a browser's bookmarks, and completely over-write existing bookmarks on any other browser (or overwrite a synchronised copy of your Bookit bookmarks on .Mac), while Restore will allow you to retrieve a previous configuration. With only Safari able to synchronise bookmarks via .Mac, the ability to do so with Camino and Firefox is a welcome relief for those of use who don't (always) use the default OS X browser.

I've used Bookit on three of my Macs around the home and office, with the application working perfectly in bringing my bookmarks across to all of them. Given that the application costs just $12, if you're working with multiple browsers, favourites and machines, I'd highly recommend Bookit.

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.

Google's Summer of Code is a really cool, really massive project focused on open source that first started back in 2005. It functions on a pretty simple concept: the company gives out grants to student developers (this summer they brought on 900 from a list of 6,200 applicants) to work on open source projects for the summer, and we all subsequently benefit in one way or another. Take a gander through the long list of projects on the menu for this summer, and click on any to see what the goals are.

Whether or not these goals are met by the end of the summer is another thing entirely, but there are some great projects and features on the list for such apps as Adium, Camino, Thunderbird, Inkscape and much more. Adium, for example, might gain features like basic voice chat, AppleScript and Bonjour support, while a juicy feature on Camino's todo list is Tabsposé, bringing the window management wonders of Exposé (much like the WebKit-based Shiira features) to the more Mac-like alternative to Firefox. In fact, one of the developers involved with working Tabsposé for Camino is blogging the effort, with a few posts already online covering developer-oriented topics like getting caught up with minor details and coding resources, but also including teaser mockups of what Tabsposé might eventually look like.

Long story short: Google's third round of Summer of Code looks like it will again do some great things for Mac OS X software and open source on a broader scale. Heck, those open source developers are even getting paid, which must be a nice change of pace for some of them. We'll keep an eye on what new features arise from this Google-funded coding powwow at the end of the summer.

Mac users have a dizzying array of web broswers to choose from, which makes finding a favorite a tricky thing. My browser of choice has been Camino for a long, long time. It just looks like a Mac app, and it uses the Gecko rendering engine so I get all the goodness of FireFox (sans extentions which I don't use) and none of the ugly controls.

Camino 1.5 has just been released, and it is a very nice update indeed. New in this release is:

• Spell checking using OS X's dictionary
• Session restore - in case the broswer crashes, it stores all your open pages in a session which it offers to restore on launch (this is very handy)
• Keychain compatibilty - use the same Keychain entries for both Safari and Camino
• Full screen mode - because it is the new hotness in apps
• Gecko rendering engine 1.8.1

All of this and more, for the low, low price of free. Camino 1.5 is available now.

Thanks, jimmy.

Update: I misread the 'Window Zoom' feature. The new feature resizes the Camino window to fit the content of the page it is displaying instead of taking up the whole screen (this is when you hit the green button on the menubar). My mistake.

Attention Camino users: Version 1.0.4 of your favorite browser is now available. I go back and forth between Camino and Firefox myself, and I've got to say that Camino is nice and snappy on my MacBook Pro. Changes in 1.0.4 include:

• Improved ad blocking (Yay!)
• Several security issues fixed
• Import iCab 3 bookmarks
• Camino can create/restore a backup of your bookmarks

Camino requires Mac OS 10.2 or better, is universal and free.

Camino is a great browser that exists somewhere in that place between Safari and Firefox. It's a spawn of Mozilla's darling browser, but it is decidedly far more Mac-like in its functionality and UI. Even cooler still is that Camino has plenty of tricks up its sleeve, such as the ability to add a folder of bookmarks to its Dock context menu, and turning folders into one-click tab groups.

First up: the Dock Menu option. Simply check this in the Get Info window (cmd-i) of any folder in Camino's bookmark manager and enjoy easy access to your 'marks from the comfort of a right-click.

Next is that Tab group: this is useful for creating a set of bookmarks that all open in their own tabs at a mere single click of your mouse. Do you consistently open webmail, Amazon and - of course - TUAW when you sit down for a stroll through the web? Camino's Tab group just might save you hours of clicking... after using this feature for, like, 20 years.

TUAW reader Chris Roberts was right: it's been far too long since our last post in The Little Things series, so I figured I'd pick up the slack with a really handy feature of Mac OS X: drag and drop. Sure, most OSes these days can drag and drop at least some things, but Apple has gone to great lengths to build this workflow-enhancing feature into so many facets of Mac OS X's experience, I don't really have time to cover them all (and there's no doubt that I don't even know about them all). Take my screenshot for example: I'm dragging an image of our puppy out of iPhoto on the left into iChat's icon well on the right. A simple gesture, sure, but a tiny example of how powerful this functionality can become. Try a few of these other drag and drop operations on for size:

• Drag a file onto an app's icon in the Finder or Dock; its icon should darken, signifying that it can handle whatever you're throwing at it. Hold the Command key to force an app to open a file if it isn't initially cooperating.
  
• Drag images from a browser (except Firefox and Camino) into a Mail message or iChat window to easily share them; no clunky 'right-click, Save, Open' workflows here.
• Pause a QuickTime movie, click on the video and drag out to the desktop to create an instant snapshot of the frame you paused on (this might only work in QuickTime Pro - can anyone verify?).
• Drag a file onto a Terminal window to instantly create a path.
• Highlight text in most apps, then click and drag it to the desktop to create a text snippet, or into another window (Mail, iChat and Yojimbo are great examples) for a drag 'n drop take on copy/paste.

I'm sure there's a ton more where this came from, so try it on for size or stay tuned to the comments on this post where readers can share their own tricks and tips for dragging and dropping one's way to productive bliss.

Over at the Office Google Mac Blog, Mike Pinkerton, Google Mac Team Software Engineer, just announced a Google Tech Talk he gave back in January. Now the reason this is of interest is that Pinkerton also just happens to be the project lead for the Camino web browser and the talk he gave (as part of Google's Open Source Developers series) discusses the history of the Camino and Mozilla projects back from the Netscape days, as well as some future plans for Camino.

Check it out over at Google video (where else?)

The hard working folks behind Camino have released Camino 1.1 beta to an eager world. The most important change since alpha 2 is an integrated restore pages feature as you see above. Although it was previously possible to get a plugin to do this called CaminoSession (as we mentioned earlier), it's nice to see it baked in. Camino 1.1b will now ask you if you want to restore pages that were open if Camino crashes (or is force quit). At this point, I simply cannot use a browser without a restore feature, so I'm quite happy to see this. Although I used it regularly back in the Chimera days, I had of late moved completely to Safari (with Saft). But I've been using Camino more and more lately since I'm now regularly having to access a website that won't render properly in Safari, and I'm continually more impressed. Maybe our fearless leader knew what he was talking about after all.

As before, Camino 1.1b is a free download from the Camino beta page.

[Via Daring Fireball]

Correo is an open source mail app that aims to blend Camino with Thunderbird to create the best darn OS X email client out there. This 0.1 isn't exactly feature rich, but you can't expect lots of features from a 0.1 release. At the moment you can check both IMAP and POP email accounts, send email via SMTP, and choose a 2 pane view or a 3 pane view. Here's hoping that Correo really takes off, since OS X is really lacking a top notch email client.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

We just let you know about a session saver for Safari called Forget Me Not, and now I'm happy to find a similar utility for Camino. At this point in my internet life session saving is an absolute must for me, and the lack of it was a huge strike against Camino in my book (despite its being favored by our fearless leader here at TUAW). It's incredibly annoying to open a bunch of tabs for later perusal only to lose them all when your browser crashes. CaminoSession will automatically save and then restore your tabs when you restart and is a most welcome addition to the more Mac-like Firefox alternative.

[Via Daring Fireball]