Mozilla’s other alternative to Firefox

Looking for an alternative to Apple’s Safari or Mozilla’s Firefox? Then why not take a look at Mozilla’s other offering, Camino.

Camino evolved from being a side project of Mozilla into a fully fledged open source browser for Mac. Built over the Mozilla architecture, it functions in a very similar way as Firefox, is as secure, yet offers a different sort of interface. The slight advantage over Firefox is that its much more lightweight and it won’t eat up memory like the latter.

Camino offers a limited degree of customization allowing you to add, remove and reorder all the search engines your own way. As far as passwords go, Camino also integrates with Keychain for storing all your passwords and certificate. However, there are several drawbacks.

One of them is that browsing simply isn’t as fast as in Firefox. It’s not unusual to see the spinning wheel of death occasionally as Camino processes certain pages. In addition, I kept receiving a strange error message related to the disk image it was being run from which kept popping up. However, the main drawback, is that unlike Firefox, Camino doesn’t offer addons so you can’t customize it half as much.

If you’re really sick of Firefox hogging your memory, then Camino might be for you but for most people used to the extendability and customization of Firefox, it’s not exactly up to scratch.

Upgraded to version 1.9.2.27 of the Mozilla Gecko rendering engine, which includes several critical security and stability fixes. Blocked versions of Adobe Flash Player 10 older than 10.3.183.15 and Flash Player 11 older than 11.1.102.62 on Intel Macs due to severe security issues. Tweaked the autocomplete algorithm to reduce the weight of visit count. Added a hidden preference to allow turning off autocomplete’s use of page titles in matches. The location sheet once again shows an autocomplete window. It is now possible to clear the “Recently Closed Pages” menu with the “Clear History…” menu item even when history is disabled. Improved the appearance of the bookmark toolbar in background windows on Mac OS X 10.7. On Mac OS X 10.7, Camino now appears in the “Productivity” category when sorting Finder windows by category. Camino now correctly checks for the presence of a Java plug-in on Mac OS X 10.7. The “open location” AppleScript command now supports optional “referrer” and “loading in background” parameters. Camino will now display an error message when the “open location” command’s direct parameter is empty or missing. A new “reload” command allows AppleScripts to reload browser windows and tabs. The status of Camino’s offline mode is now available to AppleScript, and scripts can toggle offline mode on and off using the application object’s “online” property. The AppleScript “visit count” bookmark property once again works correctly. Pressing Escape will now cancel Tab Overview. “Fill Form” no longer fills disabled hidden form controls. The “Block Flash animations” checkbox is no longer enabled if Flash is not installed. Camino now correctly resolves Bonjour services that do not include an initial forward slash in their “path” information.

Changes

• Upgraded to version 1.9.2.27 of the Mozilla Gecko rendering engine, which includes several critical security and stability fixes. Blocked versions of Adobe Flash Player 10 older than 10.3.183.15 and Flash Player 11 older than 11.1.102.62 on Intel Macs due to severe security issues. Tweaked the autocomplete algorithm to reduce the weight of visit count. Added a hidden preference to allow turning off autocomplete’s use of page titles in matches. The location sheet once again shows an autocomplete window. It is now possible to clear the “Recently Closed Pages” menu with the “Clear History…” menu item even when history is disabled. Improved the appearance of the bookmark toolbar in background windows on Mac OS X 10.7. On Mac OS X 10.7, Camino now appears in the “Productivity” category when sorting Finder windows by category. Camino now correctly checks for the presence of a Java plug-in on Mac OS X 10.7. The “open location” AppleScript command now supports optional “referrer” and “loading in background” parameters. Camino will now display an error message when the “open location” command’s direct parameter is empty or missing. A new “reload” command allows AppleScripts to reload browser windows and tabs. The status of Camino’s offline mode is now available to AppleScript, and scripts can toggle offline mode on and off using the application object’s “online” property. The AppleScript “visit count” bookmark property once again works correctly. Pressing Escape will now cancel Tab Overview. “Fill Form” no longer fills disabled hidden form controls. The “Block Flash animations” checkbox is no longer enabled if Flash is not installed. Camino now correctly resolves Bonjour services that do not include an initial forward slash in their “path” information.

The Camino project has worked to create a browser that is as functional and elegant as the computers it runs on. The Camino web browser is powerful, secure, and ready to meet the needs of all types of users while remaining simple and elegant in its design.

Camino combines the awesome visual and behavioral experience that has been central to the Macintosh philosophy with powerful web-browsing capabilities such as the Mozilla Gecko rendering engine. Built and tested by thousands of volunteers, the Gecko rendering engine brings cutting-edge innovations and capabilities to users in a standards-friendly and socially responsible form.

Sure, you can use a typical web browser, with typical features. Or you can use a browser that “also” supports the Mac. Or you can use a browser you have to pay for. What if one browser offered everything, for free?

That browser is Camino. Camino makes your web experience more productive, more efficient, more secure, and more fun. It looks and feels like a Mac OS X application should because it was designed exclusively for Mac OS X and the high standards set by its users. You’ll see the entire internet the way it was intended. Camino is the browser that gets out of your way, and that means Camino users need not worry about things they shouldn’t have to.