Camino .8
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
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.
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.
z-z-z-z-z-zoooom! Holy crap is it fast. Blows Safari away. The downloads panel is a lot nicer too.
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* \
I'd rather have an app that looks wrong, rather than one that behaves wrong.