Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

Jawbone54 · Jul 27, 2006, 04:31 PM

I've been switching between Safari, Firefox, and Camino to see the differences between the three. I know that Mozilla makes both Firefox and Camino, correct? So what is the difference between the two? Could someone please explain this to me?

wataru · Jul 27, 2006, 04:36 PM

Camino is a Mac-only side project. It doesn't support extensions or XUL, but it does use Cocoa widgets and services.

brod(d)ers · Jul 27, 2006, 07:32 PM

I use firefox religously, but I do try out the other browsers when upgrades come out. The one thing that made a difference for me was that I could not find anywhere in camino how to set up a proxy server that I'm using. This is a straight forward task for firefox!

Just my 2 c worth!

Cheers, Sam

StarCross · Jul 28, 2006, 01:25 AM

Camino (as do Safari and Omniweb) uses a system-wide proxy that is set up under System Preferences under Network settings.

TheoCryst · Jul 28, 2006, 05:16 PM

Both Firefox and Camino are based off Mozilla and utilize the Gecko rendering engine. However, they are very different beasts. Firefox is a cross-platform browser that is highly extensible and the second most popular browser in the world (second, of course, to IE, though the gap is narrowing). However, the current versions (both 1.5.0.x and 2.0 beta) are built in Carbon; subsequently, it does not have access to such things as Keychain, spell check, native widgets, etc*. Overall, it just feels a little ungainly on the Mac.

Camino, on the other hand, is 100% Mac-only, built from the scratch in Cocoa. It feels like a Mac app, and the current build supports all of the Mac OS X niceties, save for spell checking. Plus, the interface and rendering are all a little speedier than Ff. However, it doesn't support the bazillions of themes and extensions available for Firefox.

My vote? Use Camino over Ff unless you need the extensions. Now Camino versus Safari... that's a completely different question altogether...

*Note: Ff 3.0, code-named Minefield, will integrate much more tightly with OS X. However, it is still pre-alpha, seeing as 2.0 hasn't even been released yet.

selowitch · Jul 28, 2006, 05:42 PM

TheoCryst summed it up beautifully. The reason I use Firefox daily and Camino only occasionally is that Firefox's extensions are so unbelievably useful. I love Chatzilla and find the search engine pulldown menu to be a wonderful timesaver. It's true that you can kinda-sorta make Camino do similar things, but it's not as elegant as Firefox for that purpose. Camino is definitely a bit faster.

The other concern is that I wonder if Camino will survive long-term. I realize it's meant to be a different, Cocoa-native beast, but in reality, if Mac users continue to favor Firefox, how long will Camino continue to be developed? Yes, Mozilla will tell you until they're blue in the face that they will keep working on Camino. But do you believe that story? I'm not sure I do.

TheoCryst's remark about Minefield only tends to confirm my suspicion that Camino will someday go bye-bye. It's too bad, really, because it's a very good browser with more speed than Firefox, but it just doesn't match Firefox for usability day-to-day.

nforcer · Jul 28, 2006, 06:03 PM

Originally Posted by TheoCryst

Now Camino versus Safari... that's a completely different question altogether...

I find myself using Safari for a few odd sites that Camino won't do. Camino + CamiTools (particularlly Flashblock, since flash is all over pages nowadays slowing down everything) is great.

drainyoo · Jul 28, 2006, 09:15 PM

Personally I will never use FireFox until they support Aqua widgets. It feels like a Windows app that was ported to OSX.

Safari with SAFT plug in is the greatest option out there imo.

Gordio · Jul 30, 2006, 12:38 PM

I used to like FF since i used to be a true PC fanatic who used FF. however, i realized FF was indeed very slow. yes, while on the PC FF > IE, but at a performance cost. on the mac, FF is slow and safari and opera run smoothly.

the main beefs i had with camino was 1) didn't have type-search mode, which lets u search for phrases immediately as you type on the keyboard 2) can't move around tabs 3) can't ctrl+back, foward, home, to create a new tab with previous/front/home page.

#1 was the biggest problem, which was fixed hwen my firend showed me camitools, which you can find in pimpmycamino.org also. one thing i love about camino that iono why FF does not do is when you have too many bookmark buttons, they get returned to the next row, while in FF you can only fit as many icons the horizontal space you have allows, which is stupid. camino will create another row to accomodate more icons

lars30 · Aug 4, 2006, 12:36 AM

Originally Posted by drainyoo

Personally I will never use FireFox until they support Aqua widgets. It feels like a Windows app that was ported to OSX.

Safari with SAFT plug in is the greatest option out there imo.

http://www.beatnikpad.com/archives/2.../firefox-1505/

And by the way, I mostly agree, though I use windows, linux and a Mac and FF doesn't really feel like a windows app either.

Check out these custom mac builds to get as close to a mac browser feel as you can get with firefox. In fact if you use one of these builds with an "aqua" type theme it's pretty darn close.

Cheers.

selowitch · Aug 4, 2006, 12:55 AM

If Camino supported FF extensions and/or search engine plugins, it would surely rule the Mac browser roost. Safari and Opera are eating Camino's lunch otherwise.