Camino Browser Mac

1. 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 Mac users. You’ll see the entire internet the way it was intended.
2. Camino (Spanish for way/path/road) is a free, open source, GUI-based Web browser based on Mozilla's Gecko layout engine and specifically designed for the Mac OS X operating system. In place of an XUL-based user interface used by most Mozilla-based applications, Camino uses Mac-native Cocoa APIs, although it does not use native text boxes.

• Camino Browser Mac
• Mac Web Browsers

As a user of older Macs, especially G3s, lightweight apps make your day-to-day usage a lot easier, and this extends to web browsers.

I recently tested as many browsers as I could find, but the test machine was my iMac Core Duo running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. After looking carefully at my results and some of the comments I received, I have retested some of the more lightweight browsers on my Pismo PowerBook G3.

I have tried all the browsers mentioned here but have returned to Safari for speed. I don't use Tiger much any more - the following was developed for Leopard but probably works on Tiger. I start my Mac once a day - Safari is started with the following AppleScript application in my login items: tell application ' Safari ' to quit.

It is a 400 MHz with 1 GB of RAM, a new 5400 rpm 40 GB hard drive with AirPort Card and running Mac OS X 10.4.11 Tiger with all the latest updates installed.

There are a lot of browsers for Tiger, but some of them I wouldn’t put in the lightweight category and therefore didn’t include in my testing. Some of them, like Flock, while they will work on a G3, require a G4 for decent performance.

Editor’s note: For those using older versions of OS X, we sometimes include system requirements for versions earlier than the one reviewed. Of the nine browser versions reviewed here, only four can run on Mac OS X 10.3.9 Panther – but that includes some of the best ones. Anyone still using Mac OS X 10.2 can’t run current versions of any of these browsers.

These are the browsers I choose:

So let’s get started.

Opera has come a long way in the past year, but it is still way behind its competitors. The app was slow to load, pages loaded slowly, and it was the only browser to not render my website home page properly, dropping the navigation pane to under the rest of the page.

It is also has one of the ugliest user interfaces I have seen in a long time; it looks very dated.

Opera 7 requires Mac OS X 10.1 or later; 8 requires 10.2 or later; 9 requires 10.3 or later.

Rating: 1.5/4

Camino is a great browser. It is a Mac OS X exclusive browser from the Mozilla team. I have used Camino on a number of systems, and the later versions (currently in beta stages) have been fabulous.

Camino is a neat and tidy browser, and with most older Macs not supporting the higher resolutions of more modern Macs, screen space is more of an issue – and this slim and trim browser helps maximise the browser window. Giant anteater husbandry manual.

A rock solid browser, which is incredibly fast even on my PowerBook with the usual features that are standard in browsers these days like tabs and password remembering.

Camino requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later.

Rating: 4/4

Okay, so Firefox isn’t exactly lightweight, but as it is the biggest Mac browser, I thought I would throw it in. I use it a lot, even on my Pismo.

As you would imagine, it is a lot slower to load than the others, and pages take a little while to load, but it renders them fine. The added bonus of having hundred of plugins for everything you could think of, makes this a highly customisable browser.

Firefox 2 requires Mac OS X 10.2 or later; version 3 requires 10.4 or later.

Rating: 3.5/4

iCab has been around for a long time. Its maker is one of the last software developers still making OS 9 software. This is the OS X version.

This was extremely fast – even on this aging G3 – and it rendered pages perfectly. Pages loaded very quickly, even those that I hadn’t been to before.

iCab 4 requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later.

Rating: 3.5/4

I have never been a fan of Shiira, even on higher spec’d systems. It is very unstable, and while it has gotten better with each new revision, it still has a long way to go.

The app took a few more bounces on the Dock to load than most other browsers, but once open, pages loaded quite quickly and were rendered properly.

Shiira 1.2.2 requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later; 2.2 requires 10.4 or later.

Rating: 2/4

I was pointed to the Demeter browser by a fellow G3 enthusiast and was looking forward to trying it. It is supposed to be a “slimline Shiira”, and Shiira in turn is a revamped Safari. https://wslp.over-blog.com/2020/12/vim-text-editor-mac.html. Is fast speed on old machines was touted as one of its best features.

Unfortunately I couldn’t get the browser to work. The app opened fine and was very quick, but halfway through rendering pages, it kept quitting.

Demeter 1.0.8 (stable) and 1.5 (beta) require Mac OS X 10.4 or later. Typinator 6 7 download free.

Rating: 1/4

Radon started off as a good browser, it was quite fast and rendered pages properly. However version 1.0 is the last version being developed for Tiger. Newer versions are Leopard-only, which considering you need a beast of a machine to run Leopard, you wouldn’t be too worried about a lightweight browser.

Radon 1.0 requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later.

Rating: 2/4

Sunrise was another browser pointed out by fellow user of older Macs, and I was very impressed with it. I had never heard of it before this test, and I was very surprised by it. The app loaded blindingly quick (within 2 Dock bounces), and the pages loaded extremely fast.

There was one annoyance: When you type a web address in the address bar, it searches Google for it instead of taking you directly there.

Sunrise requires Mac OS X 10.3 or later.

Rating: 3.5/4

Apple would have you believe this is the best browser for the Mac, and it has some very good points – but being the best isn’t one of them.

Safari 3.1 loads fast, and pages load fast, although not as fast as Camino and Sunrise. Pages are rendered fine, but the lack of support for WYSIWYG editing in eBay, and the random page drops makes it an unreliable browser. Hopefully Apple will resolve these niggles and put Safari where it should be.

Safari 1.3.2 requires Mac OS X 10.3 or later; 3.0 requires 10.4.9 or later.

Rating: 3/4

I have thrown a bunch of browsers at you, with most of them similar in specs but missing a few vital points.

The best all rounder is Camino, as it is immensely fast, but for maximum compatibility and a whole bunch of plugins, Firefox is still good, although a little slow if you have an older G3. High-end 600 MHz with lots of RAM should cope with it fine. My wife had a G3 iBook 800 MHz with 640 MB of RAM, and Firefox 3 breezed on it, as fast as my Intel iMac running Leopard.

Don’t dismiss Sunrise, as it looks very promising, and I will be using a whole lot more. For very old G3s, look at Camino and Sunrise,; for faster G3s and low-end G4s, look at Camino and Firefox.

G3’s and low-end G4’s still have a long life left in them, but software developers and advances in web languages are forcing slower machines out of the picture. Fortunately there are still some developers writing with older machines in mind, and for this we are thankful.

keywords: #browser #9browsers #g3 #oldermac #macosx#techspectrum #simonroyal

short link: http://goo.gl/RH6UuM

searchword: 9browsers

Low End Mac users are always looking for ways to get better performance out of their aging machines. Most of these machines are used for web browsing, and this is one of the areas that lower spec’d machines suffer in.

I constantly flit from browser to browser, checking out new ones and new versions of existing ones trying to get that little extra speed. Firefox is good, and TenFourFox (a PowerPC build of Firefox 4) is impressive, but I wanted something even better.

Step up Camino. Camino is an open-source, Mozilla-based OS X-only browser. One of the common complaints about Firefox is its lack of integration with the OS X. Camino was created by an offshoot of the Netscape team to prove that Gecko, Mozilla’s rendering engine, could be embedded in a Cocoa application. As a native OS X application, Camino integrates with the keychain and Bonjour just like Safari does.

I have been following Camino for a number of years (since it was in beta), and it has developed in to a top class, reliable browser. Early versions suffered from sudden crashing and quitting, but since coming out of beta it has grown more and more stable. It is also one of the few browsers not to bloat over time or lose its streamlined edge.

Camino has a clean interface without huge icons or toolbars.

It may not be as fancy looking a Firefox nor have endless add-ons, but then again neither is Safari. Camino is clean looking without oversized icons or toolbars. Everything is just neat and tidy. It’s slimness is its strong point.

I am using all these browsers on a ten-year-old 500 MHz Titanium PowerBook G4 running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. (Camino also supports OS X 10.4 Tiger.) Stacks (rapidweaver plugin) 3 6 9.

Editor’s note: For those using older versions of OS X, we sometimes include system requirements for versions earlier than the one reviewed. Of the nine browser versions reviewed here, only four can run on Mac OS X 10.3.9 Panther – but that includes some of the best ones. Anyone still using Mac OS X 10.2 can’t run current versions of any of these browsers.

These are the browsers I choose:

So let’s get started.

Opera has come a long way in the past year, but it is still way behind its competitors. The app was slow to load, pages loaded slowly, and it was the only browser to not render my website home page properly, dropping the navigation pane to under the rest of the page.

It is also has one of the ugliest user interfaces I have seen in a long time; it looks very dated.

Opera 7 requires Mac OS X 10.1 or later; 8 requires 10.2 or later; 9 requires 10.3 or later.

Rating: 1.5/4

Camino is a great browser. It is a Mac OS X exclusive browser from the Mozilla team. I have used Camino on a number of systems, and the later versions (currently in beta stages) have been fabulous.

Camino is a neat and tidy browser, and with most older Macs not supporting the higher resolutions of more modern Macs, screen space is more of an issue – and this slim and trim browser helps maximise the browser window. Giant anteater husbandry manual.

A rock solid browser, which is incredibly fast even on my PowerBook with the usual features that are standard in browsers these days like tabs and password remembering.

Camino requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later.

Rating: 4/4

Okay, so Firefox isn’t exactly lightweight, but as it is the biggest Mac browser, I thought I would throw it in. I use it a lot, even on my Pismo.

As you would imagine, it is a lot slower to load than the others, and pages take a little while to load, but it renders them fine. The added bonus of having hundred of plugins for everything you could think of, makes this a highly customisable browser.

Firefox 2 requires Mac OS X 10.2 or later; version 3 requires 10.4 or later.

Rating: 3.5/4

iCab has been around for a long time. Its maker is one of the last software developers still making OS 9 software. This is the OS X version.

This was extremely fast – even on this aging G3 – and it rendered pages perfectly. Pages loaded very quickly, even those that I hadn’t been to before.

iCab 4 requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later.

Rating: 3.5/4

I have never been a fan of Shiira, even on higher spec’d systems. It is very unstable, and while it has gotten better with each new revision, it still has a long way to go.

The app took a few more bounces on the Dock to load than most other browsers, but once open, pages loaded quite quickly and were rendered properly.

Shiira 1.2.2 requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later; 2.2 requires 10.4 or later.

Rating: 2/4

I was pointed to the Demeter browser by a fellow G3 enthusiast and was looking forward to trying it. It is supposed to be a “slimline Shiira”, and Shiira in turn is a revamped Safari. https://wslp.over-blog.com/2020/12/vim-text-editor-mac.html. Is fast speed on old machines was touted as one of its best features.

Unfortunately I couldn’t get the browser to work. The app opened fine and was very quick, but halfway through rendering pages, it kept quitting.

Demeter 1.0.8 (stable) and 1.5 (beta) require Mac OS X 10.4 or later. Typinator 6 7 download free.

Rating: 1/4

Radon started off as a good browser, it was quite fast and rendered pages properly. However version 1.0 is the last version being developed for Tiger. Newer versions are Leopard-only, which considering you need a beast of a machine to run Leopard, you wouldn’t be too worried about a lightweight browser.

Radon 1.0 requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later.

Rating: 2/4

Sunrise was another browser pointed out by fellow user of older Macs, and I was very impressed with it. I had never heard of it before this test, and I was very surprised by it. The app loaded blindingly quick (within 2 Dock bounces), and the pages loaded extremely fast.

There was one annoyance: When you type a web address in the address bar, it searches Google for it instead of taking you directly there.

Sunrise requires Mac OS X 10.3 or later.

Rating: 3.5/4

Apple would have you believe this is the best browser for the Mac, and it has some very good points – but being the best isn’t one of them.

Safari 3.1 loads fast, and pages load fast, although not as fast as Camino and Sunrise. Pages are rendered fine, but the lack of support for WYSIWYG editing in eBay, and the random page drops makes it an unreliable browser. Hopefully Apple will resolve these niggles and put Safari where it should be.

Safari 1.3.2 requires Mac OS X 10.3 or later; 3.0 requires 10.4.9 or later.

Rating: 3/4

I have thrown a bunch of browsers at you, with most of them similar in specs but missing a few vital points.

The best all rounder is Camino, as it is immensely fast, but for maximum compatibility and a whole bunch of plugins, Firefox is still good, although a little slow if you have an older G3. High-end 600 MHz with lots of RAM should cope with it fine. My wife had a G3 iBook 800 MHz with 640 MB of RAM, and Firefox 3 breezed on it, as fast as my Intel iMac running Leopard.

Don’t dismiss Sunrise, as it looks very promising, and I will be using a whole lot more. For very old G3s, look at Camino and Sunrise,; for faster G3s and low-end G4s, look at Camino and Firefox.

G3’s and low-end G4’s still have a long life left in them, but software developers and advances in web languages are forcing slower machines out of the picture. Fortunately there are still some developers writing with older machines in mind, and for this we are thankful.

keywords: #browser #9browsers #g3 #oldermac #macosx#techspectrum #simonroyal

short link: http://goo.gl/RH6UuM

searchword: 9browsers

Low End Mac users are always looking for ways to get better performance out of their aging machines. Most of these machines are used for web browsing, and this is one of the areas that lower spec’d machines suffer in.

I constantly flit from browser to browser, checking out new ones and new versions of existing ones trying to get that little extra speed. Firefox is good, and TenFourFox (a PowerPC build of Firefox 4) is impressive, but I wanted something even better.

Step up Camino. Camino is an open-source, Mozilla-based OS X-only browser. One of the common complaints about Firefox is its lack of integration with the OS X. Camino was created by an offshoot of the Netscape team to prove that Gecko, Mozilla’s rendering engine, could be embedded in a Cocoa application. As a native OS X application, Camino integrates with the keychain and Bonjour just like Safari does.

I have been following Camino for a number of years (since it was in beta), and it has developed in to a top class, reliable browser. Early versions suffered from sudden crashing and quitting, but since coming out of beta it has grown more and more stable. It is also one of the few browsers not to bloat over time or lose its streamlined edge.

Camino has a clean interface without huge icons or toolbars.

It may not be as fancy looking a Firefox nor have endless add-ons, but then again neither is Safari. Camino is clean looking without oversized icons or toolbars. Everything is just neat and tidy. It’s slimness is its strong point.

I am using all these browsers on a ten-year-old 500 MHz Titanium PowerBook G4 running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. (Camino also supports OS X 10.4 Tiger.) Stacks (rapidweaver plugin) 3 6 9.

At 46.6 MB, Camino 2.0.7 is quite small compared to Firefox 3.6.16 at 52.8 MB, TenFourFox 4.0 at 54.7, and Safari 5.0.5 at a massive 114.7 MB. It loads within a few seconds and only a handful of bounces on the Dock.

Page loading times are very impressive, easily the fastest of these four browsers.

It’s multiple tabs whether Camino really takes the lead. I have been trawling eBay lately looking for a good deal on an iPhone 3G, opening tab after tab of auction listings. Firefox starts struggling after three tabs, TenFourFox after four, Safari after five, but I opened 11 tabs comfortably in Camino. Now that’s impressive!

Other than its speed and rendering power, why would you choose Camino over more well known, better supported browsers? Or, more to the point, why shouldn’t you chose another browser?

I’ll tell you with a quick run down of popular browsers and their pros and cons.

• Pros: Lightning fast.
• Cons: Still a work in progress, not available for PowerPC Macs (there is an unofficial Chromium port for PowerPC), uses WebKit rendering engine, which suffers the same flaws as Safari.

• Pros: Tight integration with OS X and very fast.
• Cons: Terrible at rendering pages properly, constant page drop, lack of text editing features in sites like eBay selling pages make it a no for me.

• Pros: Good all around browser, multiplatform, infinite possibilities with endless plugins and add-ons.
• Cons: Very resource heavy, not ideal for low-end Macs, PowerPC support stopped at version 3.6, too many add-ons bloat this browser.

• Pros: Custom fork of Firefox 4 for PowerPC, optimized versions for G3, G4, or G5 Macs.
• Cons: Not a full port of Firefox 4, support and future builds are hanging by a thread as Mozilla moves further and further away from PowerPC and older versions of OS X.

• Pros: Tight integration with Windows. Once the de facto browser for Macs (pre-OS X and early OS X), it was good for its time. (Publisher’s note: Version 5.1.7 is no longer available from Microsoft, but you can download it here. It still works on OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, but it looks incredibly dated and has very poor support for modern Web protocols. dk)
• Cons: As with most Microsoft products, what was once trim and very good browser became a boat for bloat, with more features than most of us need or want. For Windows users, it has been losing market share for years, especially to Firefox and Chrome.

There seem to be hundreds of other browsers that just don’t cut it for me: Opera (current release version requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later on Intel hardware), Shiira (10.4), Stainless (10.5), Sunrise (10.5), iCab (10.3.9), and SeaMonkey (10.4), to name a few, all have their own pitfalls – either they are in early stages or they use the same WebKit engine that Safari does and fall in to the same traps as Safari.

If you have a lower spec’d Mac and don’t care for endless plugins and want to get the fastest browsing experience you can, Camino is for you.

Being Mozilla-based leads to the question of whether Camino will continue to be developed for PowerPC Mac users, or will it be yet another great tool that goes the Intel-only route? If it does, then TenFourFox will be our only saviour. After that, who knows.

For now, enjoy Camino’s raw speed.

Publisher’s note: I’ve also been using Camino for years and appreciate the same things Simon does: It launches quickly, loads pages quickly, renders pages well, handles tabs very well, and is more Mac-like than other Mozilla-based browsers. It runs well on OS X 10.4 and 10.5 PowerPC Macs – and on Intel-based Macs. One pro Simon doesn’t mention: You can tab from field to field, which not all browsers support. And one con: Although Camino uses the keychain, it will only use one ID and password per site, so if you visit a site using multiple IDs (say Gmail), Camino will only remember one of your IDs. dk

Keywords: #camino #caminobrowser #macosx

Short link: http://goo.gl/1jSqxj

keyword: caminobrowser

keywords: #camino #alternative #browser #macosx#techspectrum #simonroyal

short link: http://goo.gl/FLR4XK

searchword: camino