15/02/06
Camino 1.0!
I never thought this would really happen, but today Camino is finally 1.0. I hope you’ll allow me a moment to celebrate this, and explain why if you’re a Mac user, you should have a copy of Camino in your applications folder.
What is Camino?
If you’re not familiar with Camino, first a little background. Camino is an open source browser that embeds the Gecko rendering engine in a native Cocoa interface, instead of the XUL that Firefox uses. This means it doesn’t support Firefox’s extensions, but, it does integrate more with OS X than Firefox (for example opening URLs in Camino via the Services menu or from Apple Address Book). More background information on all that here. Unlike Firefox, Camino, looks, feels and behaves like a true Mac browser, in fact, it was the first OS X only. It has a clean, well designed mac interface with superb crisp icons and some features that Safari lacks.
A few months ago, I wrote about how I was impressed with the recent Camino nightly builds, and how far it’d come since I’d stopped using it a year and a half ago. At the time, I didn’t think it would replace Safari or Omniweb in my affections, because of a lack of features. It still hasn’t replaced either, but it has become an equal default browser alongside Safari or Omniweb (I flit between those 2 a lot until Omnigroup get 5.5 out with WebKit).
Why Camino?
First of all, its speedy. Not just in rendering pages, but the whole UI feels snappy and responsive. This in itself makes it such a joy to use. Also, unlike some other browsers, Camino doesn’t seem to get bogged down by a large history cache. So while it doesn’t autocomplete bookmarks, it does do it for items in the history. I have a cache going back to July (almost 8000 items), and its stored all those urls without any performance issues.
While Camino doesn’t support XUL extensions, there is a range of extensions and apps available for extending Camino. First I highly recommend that (if you haven’t already) install CamiScript and CamiTools. These provide plenty of extra spice, from Ad Blocking, Bookmark Syncing and theming, to site styles and advanced preferences. See this thread for more.
Also, Mozilla bookmarklets play nicely in Camino too, so that goes a long way to filling the gap left by the Web Developers extension.
There are also those little things that help the Camino experience:
- You can specify per-site CSS rules using usercontent.css.
- When you drag an image, or HTML page to the dock icon, it opens in a new tab, rather than a new window.
- Images can be set to fit the window (like in Firefox).
- You can sort bookmarks.
- You can delete the label in the bookmark bar, leaving you with just the favicon.
- The location bar drop down contains the page title (Safari only shows the URL)
- You can set a groups of bookmarks to show up in the dock menu.
- Open bookmarks in new tabs (leaving your current tabs intact)
- Find as you Type as default.
- Finally, Camino has a excellent community centered around the Mozillazine Forums, which is no small thing.
Coming soon in Camino’s future
(To pre-empt some of the inevitable “I would use Camino if only it..” comments)
- Native spell checking in textfields. I imagine this is a big deal for many, it is for me too, but it is coming.
- RSS detection, to pass URLs on to your news reader.
As well as the move to using Cairo Vector graphics, which will mean an end to using Quickdraw and a move to the Core graphics rendering.
What I’d love to see in the future:
- Session saving / workspaces. This can be done at the moment, with the ‘bookmark all tabs’ function, but to be able to restore tabs on startup (especially with Crash Protection) would be superb. Also, CamiScript has a command to save tabs at close, and one to restore them.
- Omniweb style tabs, like this. This is my preferred way of browsing, and I can get it in Safari and Firefox with extensions. However, I know in my heart of hearts that this isn’t going to happen, even if someone comes up the patch. Something makes me think that that this would be against the idea of Camino.
In short I love Camino. While it doesn’t have the extensibility of Firefox, or the features of Omniweb, it is a fast, lightweight browser thats made precisely for that job. Rather than open Firefox to get a gecko view of a site, its Camino for me everytime. Its not the browser I use all the time, but its certainly a browser I use most of the time.
The Camino developers should be proud of themselves for releasing such a nimble, honed, browser. I’m certainly proud of them, for sticking to their guns, demanding that there be a native OS X gecko-based browser.
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Paul D said 823 days ago:
I agree, Camino’s a great browser, and your wishlist contains the only important additions I can think of.
Nikita said 823 days ago:
nice! now i just have to get a mac…
Matt Lindop said 823 days ago:
Unless things have changed recently the web developer toolbar doesn’t work in Camino, and for me that’s a clincher.
If I want to browse (hee hee, nearly typed ‘surf’ then – like my dad!), I use Safari – if I want to do work, I use Firefox.
Mark Norman Francis said 823 days ago:
It’s just the session saving that stops it being my primary browser. I am so used to leaving tabs open when quitting Firefox…
Geof Harries said 823 days ago:
I’ve been a Camino user since when it was a young Chimera. Every time there’s a new release I download it and use Camino for a few hours, then sadly head back to Safari. Why? Lack of RSS feed detection, weird button styles (some HTML buttons are hugely cartoonish and others are just plain distorted) plus I get kicked out of websites that only support Safari or Firefox, e.g. Macromedia and others. I want to love Camino, but these “bugs” really irk me.
dandavies said 823 days ago:
I’ve just installed v1.0 and imported my bookmarks from Safari, however they are all RSS feeds, and Camino doesn’t have a reader?! Blasphemy! That’s what I liked about Safari, the built in RSS Reader that worked so well. Am I being stupid and not seeing it or..??
Geof Harries said 823 days ago:
Dan: nope, Camino has no RSS reader or feed support. It’s a bare-bones operation. You’ll need to use NetNewsWire or NewsFire to do that.
J.D. said 823 days ago:
Yeah! Glad to see it out as a 1.0 finally. Great browser and will only get better.
Jon Hicks said 823 days ago:
Just because it doesn’t have a built-in RSS Reader, does not make it a “Bare-Bones Operation”
Neil said 823 days ago:
Yup, this is a long time coming, and a welcome development (pardon the pun). For those of you looking for optimized builds, I’ve been downloading them from this web site for some time now. No official 1.0 build there yet, but I’m sure it’ll be up soon.
My #1 complaint about Camino? That view source opens in a tab, rather than a new window. It’s one thing that drives me nuts, as switching back and forth between tabs is a PITA if you’re comparing the source of a page with its rendered view.
But, it’s just a quibble, isn’t it?
Yannick said 823 days ago:
That’s wonderful news. Now if only I had a mac. :)
Sam said 823 days ago:
Best. Browser. Ever.
Geof Harries said 823 days ago:
The lack of RSS doesn’t make it bare bones. RSS support is just one of the “missing features” that makes Camino slimmer than other browsers. If you compare Camino’s feature list against Safari or Omniweb it’s much more scaled down. That’s not a bad thing – in fact, it’s one of Camino’s greatest strengths – but these can be showstoppers for a lot of people.
Adam Schilling said 823 days ago:
Camino is my default browser. Its quick, slick, and erm, ...quick! Not just when browsing either: on initial load, Camino kills Firefox by tens of seconds. And, maybe its just me, but it feels like it even shaves a couple of seconds off Safari – not that this is a big deal, but still…
I’m eagerly anticipating the spell-checker, and RSS support… and hanging for a Dev Toolbar that compares with the one available for Firefox. The ‘restore tabs on crash’ doesn’t bother me too much. I get by just fine with the cool History/Bookmark Manager.
Well done to the Camino team!
Chris Pederick said 823 days ago:
I am of course biased, but unfortunately without support for extensions I cannot justify switching between Camino for regular browsing and Firefox for development.
People have asked me to add support for Camino to the Web Developer extension, but unfortunately it is just not possible or at the very least would involve an entire rewrite due to the lack of XUL support in Camino.
My hope is that the Firefox devs can use the work done in Camino to improve the browser experience on the Mac.
Tom Dyson said 823 days ago:
Camino looks and feels good, but I can’t leave Safari because of its support for Apple-# shortcuts: Apple-1 for my company’s calendar app, Apple-2 for my del.icio.us pop-up, Apple-3 for GMail, Apple-4 for stats and so on. Safari offers this shortcut for the first nine bookmarks in the bookmark bar; my fingers wouldn’t forgive me if I forsook it.
Travis Bell said 823 days ago:
I am still waiting for ONE feature. Why can’t Camino have the same saved form options as Safari. I am not talking about usernames and passwords here. I am talking about it remembering what you entered in the Amazon search field so you don’t have to re-type long names and titles. Or in Google. Or anywhere else you might be inclined to search for the same thing more than once. I LOVE that feature in Safari and can’t believe it hasn’t made it’s way into Camino yet.
Kenzie said 823 days ago:
Also a fan of Camino for a while, and as most have mentioned already, the only reason it hasn’t supplanted Safari permanently for me is that I rely heavily on Safari’s RSS. Built in RSS and Spell checking are my only requests.
Dan Perdue said 823 days ago:
Great article about the how and why of Camino.
While I haven’t switched to Camino full time, I do enjoy using it while trying to get a Gecko-view of my pages or for sites that Safari just won’t do (online banking comes to mind). For these tasks, it’s much nicer than anything else on the Mac.bwana said 823 days ago:
camino rocks and everything. great post. but i’m over here salivating over this site’s layout. my God man, this is beyond uber.
Joel said 823 days ago:
Great review, Jon. There should be a link at caminobrowser.org pointing to this article.
I use NewsFire as my RSS reader and the Dashboard as my “extensions.” I don’t see why Camino should be a Safari or a Firefox. Camino is great as it is.
Sebastian Schmieg said 823 days ago:
Hey, this might be my new favourite browser! However I’ve to admit that I’ve installed it only 5mins ago…
ecco said 823 days ago:
well written article, jon, as always! it brings a lot of information to Camino newbies. and thank you for mentioning the extensions :-)
beside the extensions there are bookmarklets and some little apps available, especially made for Camino.
Mathew Patterson said 823 days ago:
well designed mac interface with superb crisp icons
Maybe the people at Walker should have got in touch with Camino instead of their new branding agency :)
iBob said 823 days ago:
While Camino sounds cool, I’ll stick with Safari. No RSS is a biggy. Oh, OmniWeb was the first OS X only browser. I was using it on OS X Server even before the OS X Public Beta. This was in ‘98 or so. At that time OmniWeb was free to all takers and worked best on sites with text, images and no scripts of any sort. I use Safari for fun and work, and Firefox for compatability checking. For web development, I use OmniWeb. It’s very cool and worth the price.
heckthewhat said 823 days ago:
iBob, you are correct. OmniWeb has been around since the NeXTSTEP days: I used OminWeb on an old NeXTStation runningg NeXTSTEP 3.3. But I think what was not effectively communicated is that Chimera/Camino was the first Gecko-based web browser that was native to OS X.
While I applaud the fine folks at OmniGroup for an excellent web browser, most people (and many web developers) find it a tough sell to pay money for a web browser.
Uncle Asad said 823 days ago:
There’s a patch ready for review that’ll put view-source in a separate window…just waiting for all the 1.0 maddness to be over.
The Cmd-1 through 9 shortcuts for bookmarks bar bookmarks are planned, too, but no patch waiting there….
Small Paul said 823 days ago:
How, pray tell? I can’t currently get userContent.css to work at all.
Jon Hicks said 823 days ago:
Small Paul – like this:
@-moz-document domain(google.com) {
body{ background: green !important; }
}
Andrew Hamann said 823 days ago:
“I flit between those 2 a lot until Omnigroup get 5.5 out with WebKit”
/ME drools
I tried Camino, but it never really clicked for me. Safari always had that “it” factor that made me want to use it.
Michael said 822 days ago:
No spell checker? Also, can’t live without Acid Search. It is snappy and looks nice but no spell checker and Acid Search kills it for me. Extensions would be nice as would autofill.
steve mcfarland said 822 days ago:
I have Camino, think it’s a tremendous browser, and will upgrade tonight, but I’m not going to give up Safari to go Gecko if I can’t get any extensions to run. I’d take Camino over FF any day – it’s beautiful and smooth, two things FF on OS X has never been – but without extensions, there’s not enough to take me away from my PithHelmet and SafariStand-laden install of Safari.
Ryan Clark said 822 days ago:
Camino’s UI definitely has “teh snappy.” If you have a lot of unsorted bookmarks: try opening the Bookmarks menu in Safari; then try it in Camino. Huge difference.
Dave Martin said 822 days ago:
I can’t stand using Firefox because of its inability to use the OS to the user’s advantage. Much is made of FF’s extensions and such, but so many of those have no place (old school alert!) in a browser.
I miss RSS support, and look forward to it, in Camino, but having recently discovered CamiScript, which provides a script that ties together Camino & my RSS reader of choice, NewsFire (which is browser-less)... I’m in a certain amount of browser heaven.
Funny how others talk of how they can’t live without this or that feature in Safari or Firefox. Camino certainly lacks the XULness of FF, but I’ve come now to being absolutely abhorrent of Safari. A few iterations ago, it was crashing all the blasted time, driving me inexorably and permanently to Camino.
Ryan Clark said 822 days ago:
P.S. I find it hard to stick to one Mac OS X browser (it’s always a toss-up between Safari, Camino, or Firefox). If you’re not using delicious, I highly recommend the shareware gem Bookit — it synchronizes all your browser bookmarks. I’ve found it to be extremely useful for compulsive bookmarkers like me.
Jon Hicks said 822 days ago:
For everyone who is saying “I like Camino, but I can’t use it as it doesn’t have xxxxx” I say this:
Try Camino for a week
Install CamiTools and CamiScript and get to know what they can do
See how you feel after a week.
andru said 821 days ago:
* “Open bookmarks in new tabs (leaving your current tabs intact)”
I can’t seem to find a preferance that will make this work. Am I just missing something? I also can’t find any mention of this on the camino homepage. Does anyone know how to get this working. It’s a major habit in how I browse.
Jon Hicks said 821 days ago:
Andru -when viewing the bookmark manager, ‘Open in New Tabs’ becomes an option when you ctrl-click a folder (or using the cog menu)
andru said 821 days ago:
Jon, thanks. As mainly an FF user, I’m not used to using the Bookmarks Manager but the Menu item. I guess I’ll have to try the manager while testing Camino out to get the full effect. Thanks, again.
Uncle Asad said 820 days ago:
andru, if you select “Open in Tabs” from any folder in the Bookmarks menu or Bookmark Bar, holding down the command key while doing so will non-destructively open that folder full of tabs (command-clicking on a tab group will do the same); no need to visit the Bookmarks Manager itself ;)
Ian Lloyd said 820 days ago:
For me, there are two reasons why I can’t move to Camino:
1 – Since discovering that I can simply hit Command + B to bring up bookmarks in Firefox and then type as it automatically filters the bookmarks for me, folder heirarchy for bookmarks has become irrelevent. I now rely on that capability to find stuff in bookmarks, I don’t have to consider taxonomy. In Camino, hitting Command + B brings up the bookmarks but I still have to wade through my mess of bookmarks
2 – Web Developer Toolbar. Disable stylesheets. Use this soooooo much that I’d need to have something in Camino that lets me do the same.
It does look nice, mind, but functionaility is stopping me from trying it out.
Jon Hicks said 820 days ago:
Ian,
1. In Camino’s bookmarks manager (apple B) you can search your bookmarks and history using the search field (bottom right( – same as firefox.
2. Isn’t this possible with bookmarklets or camiscript? Or is it a permament ‘disable’ that you need?
Ian Lloyd said 820 days ago:
Jon, thanks for that. I can tab to the search field which is nice – I am a keyboard shortcut man through and through. Speaking of which … I’ve noticed that I cannot tab through links on Camino,or Firefox (so I’m not picking on Camino) – I can’t tab to anything on the page, for some reason. Side issue, I know, but if you have any ideas.
As for disable – not needed as a permanent thing, but I like the ability to toggle on and off with Command+Shift+S (or CTRL+Shift+S on PC). Like I said – I like the keyboard shortcuts, yeah boyeee!
Jon Hicks said 820 days ago:
Ian, in System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts do you have ‘Full keyboard access’ set to ‘all controls’? If not, selecting that may solve your tabbing problem.
Its shame that invoking the bookmark or history manager doesn’t focus on the search field.
However with CamiScript, you can set keyboard shortcuts for any of the scripts, including the ‘Toggle CSS’ one!
Ian Loyd said 820 days ago:
Yep – that setting is checked. Don’t understand why tabbing is not working for me now, and have no idea at what point it stopped workin’. All a bit strange. Will battle on regardless
Marcus said 819 days ago:
John, when you write:
Does that imply better font-rendering? Since I installed CamiTools, this seems to be my only gripe with the browser. I doubt I could eat the amount I want to vomit when I look at Lucida Grande Italic in Camino. I guess I’ll make do, but gosh, it sure would be great we could get decent text-rendering in a Moz-browser.
Jon Hicks said 819 days ago:
Yes it does! Font rendering should be much better (and I know what you mean, WebKit does have the edge with font rendering).
Uncle Asad said 819 days ago:
At some point, the Bookmarks search field will be focusable with a keystroke…once we figure out what to do with the Find panel if it’s open when you visit the Bookmarks Manager ;-)
Simon Starr said 806 days ago:
Camino became my favourite browser on OSX shortly after I started using version 1 :)
As much as I love Firefox on the PC, the Mac version just doesn’t seem as nippy and I’ve never really got on with Safari.
The only minor niggles I had were the lack of Firefox style find as you type and the fact that NatWest’s online banking didn’t like it. CamiTools fixes both of those things and makes Camino the best thing since sliced bread imho.