Camino .8

Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
The folks at Mozilla who have been working on Camino (Pinkerton, et al) have begun a new branch off of the main trunk for .8, they are asking users to download these builds to hammer out bugs and get the app in best shape for the forth-coming beta, and eventual release. Find the latest nightly here.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 10
    moogsmoogs Posts: 4,296member
    Done deal. Posting with Camino right now. Everything looks very good bookmark-wise. Very similar to Safari only a bit more flexible. Text entry into web forms is still very choppy / shakey although it's not slow per se. The colors on the toolbar buttons are a little annoying compared to the last major build but you can't have everything.
  • Reply 2 of 10
    rhoqrhoq Posts: 190member
    As a fan of Camino, I have been waiting patiently for 0.8 to finally be released. It looks like it's almost here. This latest build (0.7+) is fast (faster than Safari), stable - it hasn't crashed on me like 0.7 does. but...the new color scheme is awful! I hope they at least make the colors customizable for the official release. This green has got to go.
  • Reply 3 of 10
    costiquecostique Posts: 1,084member
    Strange, but it constantly crashes on me. Almost every time I click a link. I've deleted prefs, caches, etc., but it keeps crashing. Judging from the crash log, something is very wrong because there don't seem to be similar crashes (more like totally random ones). Talkback is not working, I couldn't even find it in the app bundle. Maybe, the wrong nightly?
  • Reply 4 of 10
    danmacmandanmacman Posts: 773member
    In regard to the colors, in the latest .8 branch builds, the release notes do say that a simple gray color scheme will be available for the release of .8, much like in OS X itself.
  • Reply 5 of 10
    rhoqrhoq Posts: 190member
    Regardless of the colors, I love it.



    I have already made this beta build of 0.8 my default browser.



    It feels good to be using Camino again. Safari has went from something promising to a big disappointment.



    I anxiously await the official release of Camino 0.8 and hope that 1.0 arrives before the end of the year.
  • Reply 6 of 10
    gizzmonicgizzmonic Posts: 511member
    I liked the older Camino Aqua interface. It could use some work. Recent nightly builds have had either the ugly Safari rip-off or the "green" UI that a previous poster mentioned.



    I hope they can use the old "Aqua" style to make another understated and visually interesting UI. Otherwise, they should just go back to their original UI.
  • Reply 7 of 10
    moogsmoogs Posts: 4,296member
    After using it some more, all I can say is



    z-z-z-z-z-zoooom! Holy crap is it fast. Blows Safari away. The downloads panel is a lot nicer too.
  • Reply 8 of 10
    danmacmandanmacman Posts: 773member
    I am experiencing two incredibly annoying bugs/glitches. One is the constant "The document contains no data" pop up, it always happens! The next is while scrolling, when a page is still loading, the page gets all jumbled and completely out of whack. Very annoying.
  • Reply 9 of 10
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    I really used to think this browser had so much potential, but now it's just totally languished over the past year or two. The only noteworthy improvements have been the adoption of a new core from the Mozilla trunk, the Google field, a near verbatim copy of Safari's bookmarks/history, and a near verbatim copy of OmniWeb's download panel.



    It isn't an entirely bad browser. It has good speeds, but so does Firefox. Here are the reservations I currently have about it:
    • Tabs. I don't understand the desire to use "native" tabs when they obviously don't fit the content well. Adium uses a custom implementation that is very nice. Safari's is very good too. Camino's jump around trying to be centered, don't fit to the content, and IMO look ugly with the heavy use of blue.

    • Still no advanced preferences. I refuse to hunt down and memorize the syntax for manually editing some half-hidden JS file. Even Firefox has limited preferences, but it offers a *lot* more than Camino does.

    • No extension-like additions. I'm referring to Firefox's extensions here. Specifically, ad-blocking and similar privacy filters have become common use and I won't use a browser that doesn't offer at least some rudimentary blocking support. Even the really old Netscape/Mozilla builds offer basic server blocking for images. Safari has PithHelmet, OmniWeb has ad blocking, FireFox has the AdBlock extension, and Camino has nothing. Don't suggest using the hosts file; I know all about that and, frankly, it's too much trouble and too inflexible.

    • Text input fields. Oh the horror STILL after so much time. There are so many problems. First is the hyper-speed blinking cursor. Second is the bizarro selection behavior. Third is the Courier font. Fourth is that the NSTextView doesn't actually *fit* the area (see first picture, Camino on the right). Fifth is the overflow property and the mystical disappearing-reappearing scrollbars. (see second picture). Last and most annoying of all (and most disappointing that there are claims that it's not important to warrant a fix) is the complete lack of services.


    • Widgets. After several revisions of how Camino sizes up its widgets, it still feels wrong most of the time. Safari and OmniWeb are thankfully using the "small" and new "mini" widgets when they should. Camino tends to use the normal and small sizes far too often. Then there's the weird coloring behind some buttons.


    The problems I've cited here are not new; they haven't cropped up any time recently. Some have been present since the Chimera project first started.



    I think what I find most disappointing and perplexing of all is that Camino was dubbed as a project to bring a native look and feel and behavior of Mac OS X to the Mozilla project. It started out on the right track, but it seems the developers have either forgotten about or don't care any more about those original goals.



    These UI complaints of mine make Camino stand out like a sore thumb. For me and at least several people I know, these bugs lower Camino's usability below the real Mozilla-driven projects like Firefox. Firefox has its own host of problems, but I still prefer it to where Camino is today.



    *sigh* \
  • Reply 10 of 10
    kanekane Posts: 392member
    Yes Brad, but then again Camino behaves much more like a Mac app than Firefox in many ways. Firefox appears to have copied a lot of its behaviour straight from Windows. For instance, pressing key "up" when the cursor is placed in the adressbar does not instantly relocate the cursor to the beginning of the URL. That bugs me to no end.



    I'd rather have an app that looks wrong, rather than one that behaves wrong.
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