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Ilgaz · Jul 18, 2006, 12:00 PM

Camino is simple, modern and does the job. Just like OS X. It is native to OS X.

Windows and Linux users may keep getting impressed by Firefox, they won't get Camino anyway. It is a Cocoa frameworks application.

I use Omniweb here, I suggest it to everyone. I suggest iCab too. Safari is _not_ a bad browser, it is just sometimes too simple for some people.

What I don't suggest are "ported" applications which makes you feel like running some sort of different OS under OS X.

Just an example, I write this using Omniweb and it uses Apple Spell checking framework to underline my spelling errors. I already have a modern OS having frameworks like that, why not use them at least for UI as Camino does?

I remember people calling iPod a "joke" when it first shipped. It didn't have 90% of features other mp3 players had. It still doesn't have anything close to Creative Zen for example.

Why it became de facto standard? Simplicity and doing the job right with a common user friendly interface.

I am speaking about people only having OS X and liking something other than Webkit, should try Camino and iCab. Native applications. Doesn't feel like running windows or linux inside OS X.

wataru · Jul 18, 2006, 12:53 PM

Originally Posted by Chuckit

Functional in the sense of it slowly loads a page and then completely locks up? That kind of functional?

That doesn't describe my experience with Firefox, nor that of anyone I know. Maybe there's something wrong with your setup.

bmizar · Jul 18, 2006, 01:06 PM

I have switched exclusively to Camino and Thunderbird and I could not be happier. Simple, fast and gets things done. On Windows I use Firefox and Outlook 2003.

Kevin · Jul 18, 2006, 06:23 PM

Originally Posted by wataru

That doesn't describe my experience with Firefox, nor that of anyone I know. Maybe there's something wrong with your setup.

I said the same things he did.

Nothing wrong with my setup.

Why do people automatically assume that when software is dodgy that it's something wrong with the hardware?

Catfish_Man · Jul 18, 2006, 06:35 PM

Originally Posted by Kevin

I said the same things he did.

Nothing wrong with my setup.

Why do people automatically assume that when software is dodgy that it's something wrong with the hardware?

setup != hardware

Fact: Firefox messes up for you
Fact: Firefox does not mess up in stated way for him
Conclusion: Something is different between your two systems. Because it's causing problems for you, that "difference" can be guessed to be "something messed up". It certainly doesn't appear to be a good difference.

Why is this hard to understand?

wataru · Jul 18, 2006, 06:37 PM

Originally Posted by Kevin

Nothing wrong with my setup.

Evidently there is. I've installed and used Firefox on plenty of Macs, from clean installs to crufty old systems, and do not have the problems you describe. There are 7 machines in my house that run it just fine right now. That makes 7 vs 2 right there.

Why do people automatically assume that when software is dodgy that it's something wrong with the hardware?

Nice try. Already been said, but setup != hardware. Stop projecting, Kevin.

Kevin · Jul 18, 2006, 06:57 PM

Originally Posted by Catfish_Man

setup != hardware

Fact: Firefox messes up for you
Fact: Firefox does not mess up in stated way for him
Conclusion: Something is different between your two systems. Because it's causing problems for you, that "difference" can be guessed to be "something messed up". It certainly doesn't appear to be a good difference.

Why is this hard to understand?

Works the same way on my system at work too. Which is totally different.

AND on my assistants iMac

I see a pattern..

Now, if Firefox is picky or whatever about what it runs on, and or with, then that is yet another reason not to install it for me.

As in there is nothing faulty with the systems I have installed it on.

So the fault is on..... Class?

Chuckit · Jul 18, 2006, 07:20 PM

Originally Posted by wataru

That doesn't describe my experience with Firefox, nor that of anyone I know. Maybe there's something wrong with your setup.

My setup, and two of my friends' setup, and Kevin's setup — none related to each other, all with the same problem? That's fairly unlikely. There probably is some common factor that Firefox has a problem with, but it's unlikely to be a fault in the setup.

greenamp · Jul 18, 2006, 07:34 PM

By default firefox isn't all that great. But once you factor in all the addons and customization it's a whole new ballgame.

There are also lots of themes out there which make it look more "Mac like." Such as UNO for example. Firefox 2.0 will feature inline spell check aswell.

Kevin · Jul 18, 2006, 07:51 PM

The only thing I liked Firefox better than Safari for was it's ad blocking plugins.

Now that Safari has "Safariblock"

That isn't so.

Big Mac · Jul 18, 2006, 08:16 PM

Firefox is not a pretty browser, but it is functional. I have had so many more permanent beach ball (force quit prompting) situations with Safari as a result of it choking on a page than I have had with Firefox. In fact, I cannot remember a time when I have had to force quit Firefox. It has likely happened, but if it has, it has been so infrequent an occurrence that it's slipped my memory. The same can be said for Camino. YMMV.

Safari is a proper OS X application. It uses OS services like spell check. It's supported by Apple. And for most things it works well enough, with sufficient speed. But, on the other hand, it does choke at times, and a number of complex sites are incompatible with it. If Safari were a third party application, many would probably prefer Camino over it, IMO.

ghporter · Jul 18, 2006, 08:28 PM

Kevin, there's something common among the Macs you mention having problems with Firefox on that is not standard on all Macs. There are thousands and thousands of people NOT having problems with Firefox on Macs, but you see problems on several Macs. Whatever it is that's causing the problems you're seeing has to be common to the Macs with the problems and DIFFERENT from what most Macs have.

There's no need for anyone to get argumentative or defensive, but YOUR experience is not universal enough to give you standing to say that Firefox is "dodgy." At most you can say that the Macs you've seen running Firefox have problems.

Kevin · Jul 18, 2006, 08:31 PM

gh just in this thread count how many people that have problems with it.

All I am saying in, there is nothing wrong with my computers.

Firefox just doesn't run great on all configurations it seems.

sushiism · Jul 19, 2006, 06:17 AM

Maybe what is considered acceptable freezing for some on Firefox (like say 1 second or 2, which personally I wouldn't consider locking up) and thus doesn't register as a problem for some is in fact a massive problem for others.

Horsepoo!!! · Jul 19, 2006, 07:01 AM

I can attest that the latest WebKits are much *much* faster than Camino or FIrefox in both JavaScript and HTML rendering. It's not even a contest anymore.

WebKit and Safari barely have anything in common nowadays. WebKit has more than a year of changes under its belt (and I'm talking about changes from people working pretty much full time on improving WebKit.) I suppose Leopard will finally unleash that beast.

People still refer to Safari as a KHTML browser...but it's really not. Not anymore at least.

Catfish_Man · Jul 19, 2006, 03:07 PM

Originally Posted by Horsepoo!!!

People still refer to Safari as a KHTML browser...but it's really not. Not anymore at least.

Entertainingly enough, there's a project to port WebKit to KDE...

Kevin · Jul 19, 2006, 04:54 PM

Originally Posted by sushiism

Maybe what is considered acceptable freezing for some on Firefox (like say 1 second or 2, which personally I wouldn't consider locking up) and thus doesn't register as a problem for some is in fact a massive problem for others.

Naw I waited a lot longer than 1 minute.

The Finder will even tell you the app has quit responding.

nforcer · Jul 19, 2006, 11:01 PM

All of the criticisms of Firefox in the article are correct; for non-Mac systems Firefox is great, but the Mac version is very poor compared to what we are used to. Nonstandard UI, sluggish, no compelling featureset over other browsers aside from a few neat extensions.

wataru · 11:30 PM

That "nonstandard UI" is exactly what makes the extensions and themes possible (and there are some very attractive, OS X-style themes available).

If you read the thread, you'd find that not everyone finds it to be sluggish, and many consider it to be faster than Safari.

And "a few neat extensions" doesn't appropriately convey the importance of extensions: Anything is possible through extensions, and none of the other browsers come even close to the kind of functionality available to Firefox.

Eug Wanker · 12:08 AM

Safari freaks out when trying to stream this Battlestar Galactica Season 3 trailer (AVI DivX 20 MB), even though it plays fine in QuickTime (with the appropriate codec installed).

It starts to play, but the video is all fscked up, and then Safari crashes.

Flock, Camino, and Firefox all deal with it fine, but what they do is load the complete file first, and then play it.

EDIT:

I just tried the video on both an Intel iMac and a G5 iMac. I get the same result: Garbled video, and then Safari crashes. However, if I drop the complete video into Safari from my desktop, it plays fine.

JKT · Jul 20, 2006, 06:28 PM

Originally Posted by wataru

And "a few neat extensions" doesn't appropriately convey the importance of extensions: Anything is possible through extensions, and none of the other browsers come even close to the kind of functionality available to Firefox.

Both a strength and a weakness. The unfortunate thing about Firefox's extensibility is just how long it takes to actually find any that do the things you would like them to do because there are so many of them. The rating system just helps to perpetuate those extensions that have become most popular and not because they are necessarily the best ones for the job anymore. The other problem is that many of them suffer from the typical Windows/OSS blight of offering far, far too many options just because one person in the world might want to use them. However, I am thankful they exist so that using Firefox is much less painful on my work PC. I'd still much prefer to have OmniWeb and a Mac though.

Ilgaz · Jul 21, 2006, 08:10 AM

Omni guys finally shipped Omniweb BETA 5.5 (not alpha, aka sneaky peek) and they were right on timing I think as a guy tried every single build of Alpha to build 16 (yes, 16 builds)

http://www.omnigroup.com/application...download/beta/

clevin · Jul 21, 2006, 02:25 PM

Firefox 3.0 will be a Mac Native Cocoa piece. and they have some preview out on the internet, just search google for "firefox cocoa"
Its all about webpage compatiblity and extension, I do feel safari/shiira is faster, but there is just so much stuff they can't do.

Catfish_Man · Jul 21, 2006, 03:38 PM

Originally Posted by clevin

Firefox 3.0 will be a Mac Native Cocoa piece. and they have some preview out on the internet, just search google for "firefox cocoa"
Its all about webpage compatiblity and extension, I do feel safari/shiira is faster, but there is just so much stuff they can't do.

Not quite. Firefox is switching away from Quickdraw to Cairo layered on top of Quartz, and switching away from their fake aqua widgets to ones drawn using Cocoa. That does not mean, however, that the app as a whole is going to be a native Cocoa app. It's still XUL, just XUL is now a bit more amenable to doing nice Mac stuff with.

Kevin · Jul 21, 2006, 07:31 PM

Originally Posted by clevin

Firefox 3.0 will be a Mac Native Cocoa piece. and they have some preview out on the internet, just search google for "firefox cocoa"
Its all about webpage compatiblity and extension, I do feel safari/shiira is faster, but there is just so much stuff they can't do.

I might try this FireFox native Cocoa when it comes out.

Sounds interesting.

I am ALWAYS willing to try out new browsers.

It's just that the current version of Firefox simply doesn't cut it for me.

clevin · Jul 23, 2006, 10:53 AM

Originally Posted by Catfish_Man

Not quite. Firefox is switching away from Quickdraw to Cairo layered on top of Quartz, and switching away from their fake aqua widgets to ones drawn using Cocoa. That does not mean, however, that the app as a whole is going to be a native Cocoa app. It's still XUL, just XUL is now a bit more amenable to doing nice Mac stuff with.

no, im not talking about UI, Josh Aas is the one who put this build out, he is the producer of camino, so you know this cocoa firefox is exactly same as camino, and its fast. Its JS test speed is 30% faster than latest webkit nightly.

clevin · Jul 23, 2006, 10:54 AM

Originally Posted by Kevin

I might try this FireFox native Cocoa when it comes out.

Sounds interesting.

I am ALWAYS willing to try out new browsers.

It's just that the current version of Firefox simply doesn't cut it for me.

this is the firefox 3.0 cocoa build by Josh Aas
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/josh/archives/2006/06/
its still buggy tho.

Catfish_Man · 02:50 PM

Originally Posted by clevin

no, im not talking about UI, Josh Aas is the one who put this build out, he is the producer of camino, so you know this cocoa firefox is exactly same as camino, and its fast. Its JS test speed is 30% faster than latest webkit nightly.

I've done a bit of coding on camino (nothing committed, but I at least have some understanding of how the code works), and I read Josh's blog daily. You're mistaken. The two changes are:

1) XUL will use Cocoa to handle widgets (buttons, etc...) <-- This is what Josh is working on

2) Graphics will be drawn using Cairo, which will be layered on top of CoreGraphics (aka Quartz). <-- This is a project being done by a large group of Mozilla developers

Also, Cocoa is generally slower than Carbon, and has NOTHING at all to do with Javascript speed. I suspect that you really have no idea what XUL is, how Firefox and Camino differ internally, or what the real advantages of Cocoa are.

<edit>
Here is the post explaining Josh's rationale for the switch to Cocoa widgets, and how it benefits the switch to Cairo-on-CoreGraphics: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/josh/...a_widgets.html
</edit>

Enforcer5981 · Nov 23, 2006, 02:02 AM

All I know is that I can automatically sync my bookmarks between Firefox on my iBook at home and Firefox on my Windows machine at work with the Foxmarks add-on. Until I can get Safari to auto-sync bookmarks with a Windows-based browser (i.e. never), I'm sticking with Firefox.

sessamoid · Nov 23, 2006, 11:50 PM

Somebody's doing a third party build of Firefox 2 with Cairo text rendering. It looks great, the text renders just as nicely as on Safari now. It's still a development build, so there are lots of little things that don't quite work right on that build, but it's promising. Scrolling is also faster and much smoother than on the official releases. Hopefully, this will get into an official release soon.

[FX] Simon: 20-11-2006 [Trunk/OSX] (G5/Intel) Cairo-Cocoa - MozillaZine Forums

Thinine · Nov 27, 2006, 10:11 PM

Originally Posted by clevin

Its JS test speed is 30% faster than latest webkit nightly.

Haha, no. Unless you would like to tell us what JS benchmark you're talking about?

tkmd · Nov 30, 2006, 10:35 PM

I just downloaded Omniweb (5.5.1) and um wow its fast. Just wondering- if OW uses the same engine as Safari why is it so much quicker?

Horsepoo!!! · Nov 30, 2006, 11:03 PM

I'll tell you guys one thing...when ya gots a Mac Pro, you don't much care what browser you're running anymore.

(Or at least speed isn't an issue anymore...so it all boils down to taste.)

Catfish_Man · Nov 30, 2006, 11:33 PM

Originally Posted by tkmd

I just downloaded Omniweb (5.5.1) and um wow its fast. Just wondering- if OW uses the same engine as Safari why is it so much quicker?

It doesn't use the same engine. It uses a newer version of the same engine.