[gregpins]

If you haven't tried Camino lately, check out a nightly. It has made substantial leaps forward in the last week or so. New look to the tabs and much improved compatiability (I'm having trouble finding sites it doesn't handle properly).

Most importantly, the speed difference between Camino and Safari is now even more pronounced. Camino is dramatically faster than Safari and much less buggy and problematic in regard to certain websites (MSNBC and some boards, most noticeably, but there are others). And of course, Camino has had a "Send Link" function for quite some time, something Safari inexplicably sill lacks (though there are ways to hack one).

My compliments to the Camino team. One piece of advice: go ahead and call it 1.0 and "release" it. There is no re reason why it shouldn't be widely adopted, and less adventurous types aren't as likelyh to try something with a .9 version number. Silly, but true.

My advice to Apple, get 1.3 out there and don't wait for Tiger for 2.0. You are being left behind.

Just my two.

[sideus]

I dropped Safari for OmniWeb.

[ManOfSteal]

Camino is damn good; however, until it has spelchekc I'm going to continue using Safari...

[Macanoid]

Originally posted by sideus:
I dropped Safari for OmniWeb.

same here. Although Camino is way faster and more standards compliant, Omniweb has the better features. Still, I agree, the latest nightly of Camino look great with those new tabs.

[:haripu:]

Originally posted by manofsteal:
Camino is damn good; however, until it has spelchekc I'm going to continue using Safari...

You don't seem to have turned it on. Yes, I know, that was a joke. I got it.

[nooon]

Camino has replaced both Safari and Firefox in my dock!
The new tabs are just delicious!

[monkeybrain]

Yep I'm using it too. The new tabs are great and should be getting better as well as they plan to put in things like drag ordering.

I don't really miss the spellchecker, if you just take your time and read what you've written.

A big missing feature though is the lack of forms autofill. I didn't realise how much I used it in Safari because it was all automatic. Camino also doesn't remember recent things you typed in boxes, such as searches.

[wuzup101]

I've been using camino since I purchase my powerbook in july... love it! Was always a mozilla fan on the PC side!

[RedHerring]

I tried the "official" Camino... .8.1 is it? And it showed promise, but I didn't really like the "feel" of it.

So after reading this post, I got the Sept 6 nightly.... and you were right... it rocks. I got that java plugin thing that makes it use the latest java plugin, and I'm completely happy! It didn't take very long before I'd tested all of the pages I frequent, and with a few font tweaks and pref settings, I "defaulted" it and kicked Safari off the dock.

It's much faster than Safari, and those hideous tabs from .8 are gone. Plus, if you change the toolbar to show only text (instead of icons and text), you get a crap load of extra screen real estate.

Is there a place where people testing these nightlies post problems, issues, etc? I'd like to keep up with the progress and check to see if there are any new issues, new features, etc popping up as they develop this bad boy.

[passmaster16]

Originally posted by monkeybrain:
Yep I'm using it too. The new tabs are great and should be getting better as well as they plan to put in things like drag ordering.

I don't really miss the spellchecker, if you just take your time and read what you've written.

A big missing feature though is the lack of forms autofill. I didn't realise how much I used it in Safari because it was all automatic. Camino also doesn't remember recent things you typed in boxes, such as searches.

Yeah I've been using Camino since it was Chimera .5 and even with Safari, Omniweb, and Firefox, I still go back to Camino. I just like its simplicity but also its feel...it feels like a true OS X browser...it has that "look and feel" to me. But my only problem with it is the lack of native text widgets (so lack of spell check) and autoform fill. I'm glad people are using it. For the longest time there was discussion of whether or not it would continue to be developed but I would hope that Pinkerton and the rest of the developers would see that there is a very good interest in this product and that their efforts are appreciated

[monkeybrain]

Originally posted by RedHerring:


Is there a place where people testing these nightlies post problems, issues, etc? I'd like to keep up with the progress and check to see if there are any new issues, new features, etc popping up as they develop this bad boy.

These forums: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=12 seem to be where a lot of discussion goes on, not sure the devs check them though.

I really think if they got autofill/address book/spellcheck integration worked out they'd convert hordes of users. Those features have been on the cards for literally years but no progress as of yet.

[Truepop]

Originally posted by manofsteal:
Camino is damn good; however, until it has spelchekc I'm going to continue using Safari...

Same here.

[wataru]

Until Camino supports extensions, I'll stick with Firefox.

[CaptainHaddock]

Okay, so this is neither here nor there, but since I switched to Mac, it's such a pleasure being on bulletin boards where people spell correctly and even capitalize at the beginning of sentences! It's like the average IQ of everyone around me just went up by 20%.

Anyway, since my spelling is already pretty good, I think I'll check out the new Camino build. Feature-wise, Omniweb is the best browser I've ever seen, but it's not as snappy as it should be on my G4.

[OwlBoy]

Holy crap! It is fast.

Aww, no spell check...

-Owl

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally posted by CaptainHaddock:
Okay, so this is neither here nor there, but since I switched to Mac, it's such a pleasure being on bulletin boards where people spell correctly and even capitalize at the beginning of sentences! It's like the average IQ of everyone around me just went up by 20%.

You don't hang around the Lounge much, do you?

[Thain Esh Kelch]

Originally posted by RedHerring:
So after reading this post, I got the Sept 6 nightly.... and you were right... it rocks. I got that java plugin thing that makes it use the latest java plugin, and I'm completely happy! It didn't take very long before I'd tested all of the pages I frequent, and with a few font tweaks and pref settings, I "defaulted" it and kicked Safari off the dock.

What is this java plugin you speak of?

[RedHerring]

Originally posted by Thain Esh Kelch:
What is this java plugin you speak of?

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/23790

It lets browsers besides Safari use the most recent java plugin. For instance, my bank website doesn't work in Camino with the java plugin it uses by default.

But when I throw this bad boy in there, bingo - it works! So far that's really the only site I frequent where it makes a difference, but I'm sure there are others.

[TheIceMan]

I'm using the latest nightly from 9/6/04 and the speed boost is INCREDIBLE! I honestly did not expect it to be this fast. And I'm on dial-up too! AWESOME. Just awesome.

[yskar]

My pros and cons on the new style tabs:

Pros:
1. Safari-like, left-to-right, not centered tab: I didn't like the old style tab because as you open a new tab, the existing tab(s) move(s) to the left. Awkward.
2. Close button on each tab: You can now close a background tab with the single click on the close button.
3. Takes up less vertical space

Cons:
1. Lacks contrast: with the old style tab, you could easily distinguish what tab is on the frontmost and what tabs are in the background.
2. The new style tabs don't go well with the browser design as a whole. They are a bit too square, I think.
3. Looks like Safari tabs, especially when Safari is demetallifized.

[cszar2001]

I like it. Very much.
I think I just found my new browser.

[foamy]

Weird. I just downloaded it and found it annoyingly slow compared to Firefox.

Anyone else think Firefox is much faster?

[Millennium]

Does it do Midas yet? I know there was interest in hooking it up before 1.0, but has that been done?

[Krypton]

Originally posted by Millennium:
Does it do Midas yet? I know there was interest in hooking it up before 1.0, but has that been done?

I don't know what Midas is, but I do know there are builds with it included available on the Mozillazine forums, Camino section.

[Toutgood]

I loved it until I started scrolling a page (on my tibook, with sidetrack). Scrolling sucks, slow as hell.

Bummer.

[Mr Scruff]

The good:

1) New tabs are fast and responsive, unlike the Safari tabs which bog down the program incredibly when a new page is loading.

2) Overall speed is v. good.

The bad:

1) Page rendering is ugly compared to safari, especially rendering of paragraphs of text

2) No spell check

3) No smooth-scroll.

[madmacgames]

Originally posted by Krypton:
I don't know what Midas is

Where I come from it's a popular automotive maintenance service chain. Dunno what the heck you guys are talking about.

[OAW]

Camino 0.9+ is definitely very speedy. I also like the "native" Aqua feel of the app. My beefs are few:

- No spell check

- No autofill

- The favicon in the tab is ugly, distracting, and quite frankly a waste of space. The various icons kill the clean look of the brower's UI. The space would be better utilized for the text.

- The tabs are not very visually distinctive. Not very easy to tell at a glance which tab is active unlike Safari. I think this is due in large part to the presence of the favicons in the tabs. If they weren't there it would probably be easier to tell which tab is active.

- Tabs don't position the page title text intelligently like Safari. For instance, if I have several tabs open with the Macnn forums, Safari is smart enough to know that they all start with "Macnn Forums - " so it doesn't display that part. A small but extremely useful functionality detail. Camino just lists the text from left to right which provides no way to distinguish which tab contains a particular forum.

- The cursor has a rather fast and annoying flash in text input boxes.

Overall, I keep Camino around to tackle the few sites that don't work in Safari. It's coming along nicely, but the lack of the "finishing touches" that will keep me in Safari despite the speed boost. At this point Camino doesn't have much going for it that Safari doesn't have other than speed. Safari, OTOH, has a few features that demonstrate a certain "polish" that Camino lacks ... and once Safari 1.3 is released I suspect it will catch up or even leap frog Camino in the speed category.

Bottom line for me is that Safari is still top dog on my machine.

OAW

[ManOfSteal]

Originally posted by OAW:
- The favicon in the tab is ugly, distracting, and quite frankly a waste of space. The various icons kill the clean look of the brower's UI. The space would be better utilized for the text.

Amen, I totally agree! In fact, I agree with everything you just said OAW...

[Mr Scruff]

Another thing is that they need to implement support for the small aqua widget set in web forms (although that may break jaguar support).

[bookofjames]

Nice speed improvement for the nightly build, indeed.

I wish they had this kind of progress when it comes to Thunderbird for the Mac OSX. that thing is still unbearably slow..

[RonnieoftheRose]

Using the latest nightly. Don't like the text rendering but the speed is outrageous.

[nooon]

Originally posted by yskar:
My pros and cons on the new style tabs:

Pros:
1. Safari-like, left-to-right, not centered tab: I didn't like the old style tab because as you open a new tab, the existing tab(s) move(s) to the left. Awkward.
2. Close button on each tab: You can now close a background tab with the single click on the close button.
3. Takes up less vertical space

4. Themeable

Cons:
none.

[monkeybrain]

Yeah exactly. Because Camino is a standard Aqua app (unlike Safari, which doesn't have standard toolbar for instance) it is easier to theme.

For instance, I felt the close boxes on the tabs didn't stand out enough so I switched the pressed and inactive state.

I imagine that once these tabs have been around a while people will bring out mods just for them (say to make them aqua or to match a theme). Shiira has these advantages also, I'd use that but it's unstable and Camino is faster.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by madmacgames:
Where I come from it's a popular automotive maintenance service chain. Dunno what the heck you guys are talking about.

It's Mozilla's API for in-browser rich-text editing. It's based off of a model IE uses, so that you can do it cross-browser.

Unfortunately, IE has two models, and the upcoming rich-text editing in Safari is based off of the other model. End result: a truly cross-browser solution is going to be extremely difficult, if not impossible.

[radii_22]

I think that the most refined interface is the Safari's interface. The widgets of firefox are so simple, and the tabs of Camino are not good designed.

I still like more the renderisation of the Webkit. However, Safari has a big problem : its bookmars dont support comments, so there are no way to organize them by keywords (searching a keyword in Launchbar for example).The Caminos bookmark manager is the best part of it, I guess.

Apple has to do serious efforts to contrarest the efforts of Mozilla, including more features as a refined bookmarks manager, a "full screen" view and a view without the navigation and the bookmarks bar, importing bookmarks, etc.

[clarkgoble]

The big problem with the 10.3.5 Safari is that annoying as hell "bring to the forefront when it finishes rendering." Damn that bugs me. Reminds me of Windows hell where you're typing in one window, look up, and discover that some other window has brought itself to the front. On the Mac the only program that does this is Stuffit (may it rot in hell for that behavior) Now, for reasons that completely escape me, Safari is doing that.

It is almost enough to make me go to Camino or Firefox. What keeps me on Safari is the spell checker.

[Amorya]

Originally posted by clarkgoble:
The big problem with the 10.3.5 Safari is that annoying as hell "bring to the forefront when it finishes rendering." Damn that bugs me. Reminds me of Windows hell where you're typing in one window, look up, and discover that some other window has brought itself to the front.

I hate that.

Some sites use JavaScript to do that - so it happens on all browsers!

[ambush]

Camino=main browser now.

was OW5 but I disliked the way it crashed/was slow/downloaded corrupt torrent files.

and it's shareware

[CarbonG4]

I had been using Firefox recently but wow... Camino is growing up. Definitely my default browser at the moment, and will continue to be if they keep their pace up. Job well done Pinkerton and Team.

That said, it does need some minor interface tweaks here and there... I've removed Favicons, blocked banner and flash ads w/ custom userContent.css, and tweaked the icons used in the bookmarks toolbar (note the Safari folder down-arrow icon)



Later
//Carbon

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by OAW:
At this point Camino doesn't have much going for it that Safari doesn't have other than speed.

Except for, oh, type-ahead find. And toolbar shortcuts.

And being able to browse FTP sites...

[F_Elz]

Slow scrolling...it sucks.

[timmerk]

I love it, but if it would just put the URL of the auto-complete box in teh URL box, so you could just start typing macnn and then enter, like Safari, I would be sold.

Also, why doesn't the normal page up and down work? (command up and down on powerbooks)

[Millennium]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
Except for, oh, type-ahead find. And toolbar shortcuts.

And being able to browse FTP sites...

...or at least honoring the user's system settings for the default FTP browser.

[monkeybrain]

Originally posted by CarbonG4:

That said, it does need some minor interface tweaks here and there... I've removed Favicons, blocked banner and flash ads w/ custom userContent.css, and tweaked the icons used in the bookmarks toolbar (note the Safari folder down-arrow icon)



Later
//Carbon

I like those folder/menu icons Carbon, any chance of posting them?

F_Elz, there must be something up on your system if scrolling is slow, it's a lot faster at scrolling than safari for me.

[Gerrit Vanoppen]

Originally posted by CarbonG4:
That said, it does need some minor interface tweaks here and there... I've removed Favicons, blocked banner and flash ads w/ custom userContent.css, and tweaked the icons used in the bookmarks toolbar (note the Safari folder down-arrow icon)

Nice job ! Here's my Plaster skin I'm working on :



May I ask, how did you remove Favicons ?

[ManOfSteal]

Originally posted by CarbonG4:
That said, it does need some minor interface tweaks here and there... I've removed Favicons, blocked banner and flash ads w/ custom userContent.css, and tweaked the icons used in the bookmarks toolbar (note the Safari folder down-arrow icon)

Very nice! I'd love to hear more about how you did all of this...

Thanks!

[cszar2001]

I�ve been using Camino for a few days now and will use it as my main browser till something better comes along.
The speed is fantastic!

[120db]

I'd love to plug in my css file that i've been using in safari to get rid of ads. where does it go to work in Camino? that would make a huge difference.

[Lateralus]

I've been using Camino since Navigator 0.2.4. And after having lived through the dark year immediately after Safari's release when there was pretty much zero development done on the browser, I couldn't be happier with the speed at which it is currently being developed and the direction it is headed in.