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Mozilla The Internet OS X Operating Systems Programming Technology

Interview with Camino Developer Mike Pinkerton 116

Posted by michael from the anything-but-ie dept.
An anonymous reader writes "As someone who has used Camino for much of the time since the OS X-centric Gecko browser was released, I've been hoping to see it hit version 1.0 (it's at 0.8 now). ArsTechnica has an interview with Mike Pinkerton, the lead developer for Camino in which he talks about the history and future of Camino along with his thoughts on Safari and Firefox."
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Interview with Camino Developer Mike Pinkerton More

Interview with Camino Developer Mike Pinkerton

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  • Safari on Mac, Firefox on PC (Score:3, Interesting)

    by danigiri ( 310827 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @11:03AM (#10329905)
    Mmmmm... the interview is interesting and I'll try Camino for a while to test the waters.

    Any obvious advantages from day to day use? I see from their website it has some OSX-specific features that look cool enough, any highlights?

    [Swimming in the calm waters of alternative browsers, Safari and Firefox when on Win]

    • Re:Safari on Mac, Firefox on PC (Score:5, Interesting)

      by the pickle ( 261584 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @11:09AM (#10329967) Homepage
      I find Safari to be better on slow connections, but only because PithHelmet is so effective. Camino is typically faster (PB G4/800, 512 MB RAM) on anything better than a 56K dialup.

      Both browsers have their rendering quirks, though both are Good Enough(tm) for government work. I prefer the interface of Camino overall, because I find it less visually jarring than the brushed-metal look of Safari (which, before anyone comments, looks downright *weird* in its Aqua "theme," with the brushed-metal look removed).

      I still use Camino as my primary browser, though if there's something absolutely critical that I need to get to on a slow connection, I'll use Safari.

      Also, Camino tends to play more nicely with sites that (stupidly) exclude browsers based on the user-agent string. Yes, you can change it in Safari, but Camino Just Works(tm) more often than not, and it's one less thing you have to mess with.

      I can't really think of a good reason to recommend *against* either one, though. That says a lot for the current state of browsers on the Mac.

      p

      • Re:Safari on Mac, Firefox on PC (Score:5, Informative)

        by the pickle ( 261584 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @11:16AM (#10330047) Homepage
        Oh, I should add that Safari isn't an option for anyone on 10.1, and isn't really that good of an option on 10.2 (slower, some major bugs that have been fixed in 10.3-only versions, etc., IIRC), which really helps make an argument for Camino on those older OS versions.

        p

      • Re:Safari on Mac, Firefox on PC (Score:5, Informative)

        by Zoop ( 59907 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @02:04PM (#10332300)
        Table rendering, especially for long lists, is MUCH faster on Camino. I usually use Safari for blogging, due to its built-in spell checking, but if I need to mess with MT-Blacklist and its gigantotable of denial rules, I switch back to Camino.

        So for day to day browsing, Camino is my default.

        At work I use Firefox, mainly for its Web development features.
      • I find even Safari is not so reliable on a slow connection and will consistently timeout after 60 seconds. I had the same problem with Camino in the past and actually had a situation where it repeatedly submitted a form because the response took longer that it expected, resulting in the request and data being posted 9 times. If I have something real critical to do, I use Mozilla.

    • Re:Safari on Mac, Firefox on PC (Score:5, Informative)

      by Arcane_Rhino ( 769339 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @11:59AM (#10330585)
      I primarily use Safari. I like the brush-metal look and, as a long time Mac user, am usually fairly comfortable with what Mr. Jobs likes to spoon feed us. Being unaware of Camino when I acquired my G4 (10.2, now running 10.3), I immediately abandoned IE in favor of Safari.

      I currently utilize a cable modem and my experience has been that Safari is generally as fast, maybe a little faster in most instances. My comparison method was to delete all of my caches and see which browser brought the pages up faster. It also seems that I can drag images to my desktop a little easier/quicker with Safari.

      Camino, on the other hand, handles saving a web page a WHOLE lot better than Safari - I frequently do not get any graphics with a Safari-saved webpage. Camino handles this flawlessly. Camino also has cookie/security controls that are more precise. So, if I have any concerns about security surrounding a website or when I am cruising around looking for eWomen, I use the old el Camino!

      All in all, I think Camino is a very good browser and agree, as the article points out, that it is very benificial to the consumer that Safari has some very close competition.

      • As an off-topic tip, have you tried printing to a pdf instead of saving the page? I don't know if it meets your requirements (do you need to still be able to get to the HTML or images?) but it might be worth looking into. Back on topic, I agree with your comment about Camino's cookie management. I'd love for Safari to have a better method of management than what it's currently got.

      • Re:Safari on Mac, Firefox on PC (Score:4, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23, 2004 @05:03PM (#10334748)

        My comparison method was to delete all of my caches and see which browser brought the pages up faster.

        That's a flawed method. The first time you request the page, it will probably be stored in your ISP's proxy cache, so when you try it with another browser, it will come from a cached copy even if you've cleared your browser cache.

        Disabling proxies in your browser settings isn't enough as many ISPs institute interception proxies. For instance, virtually all cable modems I've come across have HTTP caches in them.

        • That's a flawed method. The first time you request the page, it will probably be stored in your ISP's proxy cache, so when you try it with another browser, it will come from a cached copy even if you've cleared your browser cache.

          Disabling proxies in your browser settings isn't enough as many ISPs institute interception proxies. For instance, virtually all cable modems I've come across have HTTP caches in them.

          Er, that's a good thing. He was testing browser rendering speed, not network performance (bey
        • I can't see how that would matter any, as you are still comparing a valid network request, and html render time. In fact, it may be more valid a test, as internet traffic between you and your ISP is relatively constant, where as internet traffic from your computer to, say, slashdot.org, is likely a more bumpy road.
    • I found out that on safary page scrolling is terrribly jerky on Macs with a graphic card not supporting Quartz Extreme. In that case Camino works just fine.
    • http://www.nada.de/mac/camino/cep.html [www.nada.de]

      Head on over to the above URL and do to Camino what most users do to Safari with PithHelmet!

  • KHTML vs. Gecko (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thirteenVA ( 759860 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @11:09AM (#10329968)
    Camino is a good browser, but once khtml matures its likely to outperform the gecko engine.

    For me the biggest difference is that safari still chokes on pages that the gecko engine will not but with the determination and skill of the Safari team this will not be the case for long.

    Safari is my default browser since its beta, and my money is on them for the long term. However it is really nice to have options.

    • Re:KHTML vs. Gecko (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Brandybuck ( 704397 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @01:15PM (#10331599) Homepage Journal
      I talked to a few Mac users the other day. It turned out that they all used BOTH Camino and Safari, because there were sites Safari would render correctly that Camino would not. This may sound like shocking heresy to some, but this information comes straight from the users' mouths.

      Until web developers start coding to realworld "LCD" standards, there will always be the need for multiple rendering engines.

      • Re:KHTML vs. Gecko (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I agree completely. As a Mac user I use Camino, Safari, and Firefox almost all equally. I even load IE when nothing else works. In this Windows only world, I find I often have to try multiple browsers just to load some information!

        My blood boils when a page won't work and I see the .asp file extension... Wtf is the point of the web when it is written for just one browser and platform?

      • Same here... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by solios ( 53048 )
        I use Safari and Firefox, because hey- there's shit Safari just fucks up on. Period.

        I think it's positively stupid that it's 2004 and there's no single Good Web Browser yet. :-| Hell, Safari has a ton of its own stupidities and neither Safari OR Firefox have a download manager that I like. :P
      • FWIW, as a Mac user, I use Mozilla (yes, Mozilla, not Firefox or Camino -- I just like it better) most of the time and Safari some of the time; I find that there are a very few pages that render in Safari but not in Mozilla, but far more pages that are the reverse. [shrug] I doubt I'll ever limit myself to one browser entirely, no matter how good; it's always best to have options.

        Every once in a great while I run across a site that won't render in either, presumably having been coded with all kinds of IE
    • Once khtml matures, I guess it will become as big as a gecko.

  • Competition is good (Score:5, Interesting)

    by HotButteredHampster ( 614950 ) <s@biickert.shaw@ca> on Thursday September 23, 2004 @11:29AM (#10330225) Homepage

    Camino is a good browser, which I started using at 0.4. It seduced me with its beautiful anti-aliased text rendering when the only alternative was IE 5. There were big issues in the day: I never bookmarked anything, because bookmarks were as permanent as writing in sand. Below the tide line. Even so, I used it over IE (mmm... beautiful fonts) and the laughable Mozilla 1.0.

    But I was seduced by Safari. It loaded quicker. It was faster. It was simple and elegant, which were things that Camino was going for, but wasn't there yet. I've used Safari ever since. Even as I did so, I was saddened, because I thought Camino would die because it was too late to the party.

    However, because Camino leverages Gecko, and Mozilla/Firefox are starting to kick some butt, Camino has had forward momentum even when it was standing still. I use Firefox every day at work (right now, in fact), and it is to Windows what Camino can be to Mac. I've installed Firefox on my web server (the current version of Safari doesn't support OSX 10.2.8). As the interview points out, Firefox is good, but it's not a Macintosh app. Camino is.

    There are now two excellent open-source HTML rendering engines which are actively being developed on the Mac platform, which is a much better position than it was when I was playing with Chimera 0.4. With the exit of IE, Apple still has a healthy competitive environment, thanks to projects like Firefox and Camino.

    HBH

    • A big blow to Camino would be a cross-platform Google browser based on Gecko...

      • Re:Competition is good (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Finuvir ( 596566 )
        How so? Mozilla and Firefox are already available on Mac OS.
        • Because google could conceivably 'do it better'. It could be a blow to the Mozilla project as a whole.

          Look at Gmail. Adwords, Adsense, all things done before by other people but google did it better. Hell, Google itself is the biggest example of taking something and making it better.

          I guess an even bigger blow to Camino/Mozilla would be a Mac OS X google browser based on khtml...
          • Nasty horrible competition. Someone should outlaw it!
          • Because google could conceivably 'do it better'. It could be a blow to the Mozilla project as a whole.

            It's odd that you think a good Gecko based browser could be a blow to the whole Mozilla project. I think it would be great. Mozilla could then concentrate on what they are good at: writing a browser core.

            Firefox might be more secure than IE, faster, etc., but it certainly doesn't have as nice of an interface as a whole. Not that it doesn't have useful features that IE doesn't, like tabbed browsing, bu
          • So a Mozilla-based browser developed by Google would be bad for Mozilla...how exactly?

            I don't understand.

            I was using Camino, but now I'm back on Safari. It's faster and cleaner, and I haven't found any problems with rendering. I went back to Safari because Camino's plugin architecture, well, doesn't exist.

            Firefox is dog slow on my Powerbook. It's also plug ugly IMO. So I'm back on Safari.
          • Adwords, Adsense on Google mail are the most evil agression against privacy on email yet.

            You call them "inventions"? Why bitch about adware then?
        • You obviously didn't RTFA... the entire point of Camino is that it's a browser designed specifically for Mac OS X, and therefore includes features and compatibility that Firefox and Mozilla don't (and can't).
          • I did read the f--ing article and besides, I know what Camino is. Why would you think a cross-platform Google browser would be any more native-looking than the cross-platform Mozilla and Firefox? Why would it be a blow to Camino any more than to another browser?

    • Re:Competition is good (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      the current version of Safari doesn't support OSX 10.2.8

      I think the more appropriate statement is that OS X 10.2.8 doesn't support the current version of Safari.
      • No, Apple could update frameworks etc and make Safari latest to run on 10.2.x, they didn't do it.

        Why Mozilla (Gecko) or Opera (Presto) can run on 10.2.x? Ask yourself...

  • Veee-rry Smart answer .. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by torpor ( 458 ) <.ibisum. .at. .gmail.com.> on Thursday September 23, 2004 @11:32AM (#10330268) Homepage Journal
    .. to the 'difference between open and closed source models' ..

    open source == -0day!

    I shall have to try Camino, but darnit, if it still takes forever to load and get itself started, its useless to me. web browsers need to open and close fast, on my system .. and Safari has the fastest startup time yet, so Safari it is .. but lets see if Camino is worth changing habits for..

    • Re:Veee-rry Smart answer .. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by BandwidthHog ( 257320 ) <inactive.slashdo ... icallyenough.com> on Thursday September 23, 2004 @04:11PM (#10334198) Homepage Journal
      I keep one or more browser windows open on four of my eight desktops [ironicallyenough.com]. Each of those browser windows has between one and ten tabs open. Unless something dreadful happens, my browser only launches after Software Update causes me to reboot.

      Launch time is bandwidth-bound, so whichever one launches less wins. Unfortunately, Safari was crashing every month or two. FlamingCougar hasn't gone out once since I switched a few months ago *knock on space age composite*.

      That was why I (somewhat reluctantly) switched, and extensions are why I'll never go back to Safari. Last time I used Camino (kept with it for about six months after Safari came out) it didn't support Mozilla or SmolderingChimp extensions. If that were to change some day, who knows?
      • I keep one or more browser windows open on four of my eight desktops. Each of those browser windows has between one and ten tabs open. Unless something dreadful happens, my browser only launches after Software Update causes me to reboot.

        yeah, i'd work that way too, if suspend worked properly on my aging tiBook .. but it doesn't, so i shut down and start up a lot, at least a couple times a day, so .. i likes my apps to pre-load, yo!

        be nice if there were a way to add 'proper suspend to disk and go to slee

  • OmniWeb (Score:5, Insightful)

    by metalligoth ( 672285 ) <metalligoth.gmail@com> on Thursday September 23, 2004 @11:53AM (#10330513)

    The first commercial web browser, originally written for the platform the WWW was invented on, is still the best. OmniWeb has more features than any other browser.

    I couldn't imagine using anything else, but if I had to use another browser, it would be FireFox. I don't care if my browser is integrated with Address Book. FireFox does almost everything OW does. Camino is stuck in a strange no-mans land, and with Safari out there, Camino will remain a nitch browser.

    Safari is for average users. OmniWeb is for people that want amazing features. FireFox is for power users that want a free and open source browser. Camino just doesn't bring anything vital to the table.

    • Re:OmniWeb (Score:4, Insightful)

      by thirteenVA ( 759860 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @12:32PM (#10330989)
      I couldn't imagine using anything else...

      And I can't imagine paying for a browser... otherwise I'd be using Opera.

      • Re:OmniWeb (Score:5, Insightful)

        by MinutiaeMan ( 681498 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @01:37PM (#10331948) Homepage
        Oh, of course, you just expect to get something for nothing, right? There's a reason why OmniWeb and Opera charge for their browsers -- they offer more powerful applications with a wider range of features. And of course, they don't fund their development from operating system sales or random volunteer work...

        Did you ever try using OmniWeb? Do you have any idea how many features have been packed into that little package?
        • I tried OmniWeb a few times. Even tried 5.x. Pissed me off. I couldn't believe I would have to pay money for this. OmniWeb will never take off when it costs money to buy. We have to buy enough software, and browsers shouldn't be in that group, period. I will never pay for a browser so long as there is a free one available.
          • Check www.omnigroup.com , they offer the network SDK etc Omni built on for free, would give you a clue.

            Also what are you doing on mac/ mac community anyway?

    • Re:OmniWeb (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MinutiaeMan ( 681498 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @01:26PM (#10331744) Homepage
      Camino just doesn't bring anything vital to the table.

      I strongly disagree. Camino is ideal for Mac users who want to have a pleasing, streamlined application but also need (or want) the features offered by Gecko. It's effectively the best of both worlds -- the power of the Mozilla-based rendering with the power of a native OS X application. Firefox (IMO) is just for Windows switchers who desperately need to have a familiar interface.

      Of course, I definitely agree that OmniWeb trumps them all! (I've been using OW5 since the second beta back in February.)

    • Re:OmniWeb (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Daleks ( 226923 )
      Per-site preferences rocked my world. OmniWeb innovates while others stagnate. A new feature in Safari for 10.4 is RSS feeds. Woo... Why not improve my actual browsing experience? OmniGroup focuses on doing this rather than adding stupid add-ons. The use of WebKit has freed OmniGroup from having to build a rendering engine (re-inventing the wheel) and allows all the talent flow to improving the act of browsing. Job well done.

      • Re:OmniWeb (Score:5, Informative)

        by Ilgaz ( 86384 ) on Friday September 24, 2004 @05:09AM (#10338415) Homepage
        " A new feature in Safari for 10.4 is RSS feeds. Woo... Why not improve my actual browsing experience? "

        As a licensed user since Omni beta 5 (now its final, doesn't crash) I smiled when I read it.

        WE HAVE RSS! While browsing slashdot for instance, check that newspaper icon with "plus" on it, click, there, RSS. It sees RSS feed as a "dynamic bookmark folder", a perfect practical, simple thing.

        Maybe Omni as a company tries to be nice to Apple but, dear Steve, Omni invented RSS feed sensing ;)

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Interesting quote on tabbed browsing (Score:4, Interesting)

    by chia_monkey ( 593501 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @11:58AM (#10330576) Journal
    Pinkerton was quoted as saying "For instance, we looked hard at the tabbed browsing style of OmniWeb even before they did it and decided that while it was very pretty and a great demo of Aqua, it wasn't all that usable on a day to day basis."

    I have to admit that I'm a tabbed browsing junkie now. I go absolutely nuts if I have to use someone else's computer that doesn't have a tabbed browser. It seems like such an insignificant little feature, but it really does add a lot to my browsing experience. I'm really glad it's in there now, but I still found that quote to be quite interesting. It seems that if you want to be on the cutting edge, you'd want to put in the features and let the users decide on whether it's useful or not.
    • In case you didn't know, I believe he was actually referring to OmniWeb's specific style of tabs (a sidebar of thumbnails) rather than tabs as a whole. Camino does have a regular tab bar like Safari, Firefox, etc.

    • That's not what he meant. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Millennium ( 2451 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @12:32PM (#10330993)
      Camino has had tabbed browsing for a long time.

      What he was talking about is the "tab" paradigm used by OmniWeb 5.0. This paradigm doesn't actually use tabs at all; rather, it's a drawer filled with thumbnails of the sites on it. You can typically fit four or five thumbnails into the drawer before needing to scroll.

      Very pretty, but not nearly as useful in the real world; the thumbnails add less than you'd think and there's even less room for sites in the drawer than there is on a toolbar. I'm glad that Camino went with actual tabs.

      • Re:That's not what he meant. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by MinutiaeMan ( 681498 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @01:30PM (#10331819) Homepage
        Very pretty, but not nearly as useful in the real world;

        As opposed to the tendency of Camino or Safari to squish the tabs down until you can hardly read their titles? I'd much rather be able to scroll through my tabs (not to mention drag-n-drop to reorganize them!) than be forced to stick to a single order of tabs.

        I was initially very dubious of OmniWeb's tabs, but after using them for a week or so I really started to see the benefits. You should give it another try.
        • any site that use favicon.ico will have it's tab using the icon, at least in Camino and firefox
          • And what happens when you've got multiple tabs open from the same site? When you happen to have similar page names? Duh.
            • it's not perfect, but I regulary have 20 to 30 tabs open at once, and i still manage. In fact, i think i develop a mental model of the horizontal position of the tabs linked to the opening order, having the icons only as reminders.
              What could be cool (warning : it is obvious, and discussed in public. No patent allowed ;-) is an intra browser expos&#233;, where, with the press of one key, all tabs become small windows, you choose one, and then they become tabs again.
            • And what happens when you've got multiple tabs open from the same site? When you happen to have similar page names? Duh.

              In Safari, if you have two tabs open with similar names, it just shows the different sections.

              There's a site I developed which uses some (perhaps excessively) descriptive page titles, and Safari works fine with it. For instance, the following page titles:

              'Thingy Workgroup Site - Calendar for Smarch 2004'
              'Thingy Workgroup Site - Advanced Search - User Profiles'
              'Thingy Workgroup Site - A
        • You mean camino and firefox, right?

          I've seen that behavior in firefox (I haven't used camino for a few versions), but after tabs stop fitting into the window, safari stops shrinking them. It puts a pop-down menu on the far right that contains any that didn't fit into the window.

          Whether you think that's a better solution or not, it's what it actually does. Personally, I find it annoying for numbers of tabs slightly over what will fit, but much nicer if I grab a whole page of of thumbnails and open them at
        • They're extremely aggrivating for people on 12" laptops with a 1024x768 resolution. They take up way too much space, leaving nothing for the browser window.

  • I Prefer Firefox (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Goo.cc ( 687626 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @12:25PM (#10330877)
    Don't get me wrong, I have tried Camino and I really do like it, but I use Firefox for the same reason that I use Vim: my experience is the same regardless of the operating system I use. Cross platform tools rock.

  • I used to use Camino (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Isbiten ( 597220 ) <`isbiten' `at' `gmail.com'> on Thursday September 23, 2004 @12:40PM (#10331083) Homepage
    But then I switched to Safari because I just loved pithHelmet, but Safari is prone to weird rendering errors and the timeout of 60 seconds is enough to drive one mad.

    So atm, Im using Firefox with adblock. But Camino + adblock would be a dream setup.

    Anyone know if it's possible?

  • Camino's biggest fault. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Yaztromo ( 655250 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @02:05PM (#10332323) Homepage Journal

    FireFox is my day-to-day browser on OS X, and while there are some integration items I wish it had (like the integration with the Adress Book, the various Services like Grab, Mail, Speech, Summerize, and most importantly the Keychain), Camino has one major functionality lack which keeps me from running it -- no image blocking.

    I can't understand why they haven't implemented this. It's in every other Gecko-based browser out there. I don't visit websites to see big flashing ads at the top and bottom of every page. I have better uses for my bandwidth.

    FireFox has ad blocking. Camino doesn't. For this (and pretty much only this) reason, I'm not using Camino.

    The day they implement ad blocking, I'll probably switch on my PowerBook.

    Yaz.

    • Why not use CSS to block ads [texturizer.net]? Works with any browser that allow you to set a custom style sheet.

      • Because I want more control than that. And I don't want to have to edit CSS to get it.

        Personally, I like that I can right-click on ads in FireFox to block or un-block them. There are some sites I permit ad-sized graphics from. There are others I kill as soon as I first visit them.

        The CSS solutions are good if you don't have access to a better solution -- but with FireFox, I have access to a better solution :).

        Otherwise, I really want to like Camino. While I don't use it extensively, I'd like to be ab

        • I like that I can right-click on ads in FireFox to block or un-block them.

          Right click? What's that? :-p /me glances over at the iBook...yep, one big button.

          I started using Camino when I got back into the mac world (10.1 days), after being utterly unimpressed with Mozilla, and hating the carbonlib ugliness that is IE.

          I used it pretty much regularly until 10.3 came out, when I switched to Safari.

          Firefox still is an abortion on the mac, although it's better than the old builds of Mozilla were. And I se
        • But that lack of integrated ad blocking just bugs me. It's the same reason why I don't run Safari.

          I know it's not strictly integrated, but you are aware of PithHelmet [culater.net] for Safari, right? It integrates seamlessly into Safari (only appears in the preferences pane and in the contextual menu 'right-click'). I'd be completely lost without it ...

    • I've said this on /. before, but can't find that post now, so I'll have to say it again:

      For me the biggest fault are lacking certificate controls, i.e. the inability to install custom root CA's (except by creating a DB on Firefox and moving it to Camino's directory). When these are added, I'll drop Safari for Camino, but not before.

      Preferably it should be done following Camino's "Mac-way" philosophy, which would mean using the certificates of X509Anchors system keychain instead of Mozilla's own cert.db.

    • Ad blocking == bad (Score:3, Interesting)

      by oldosadmin ( 759103 )
      I understand there are some obnoxious ads... but if you want free content, deal with the ads. I mean, blocking flash ads... popup blocking... understandable. But I have a lot of people who block my google text ad and my sponsor banner on my site... which keeps me from having a lot of money come out of my pocket each month.

      • I understand there are some obnoxious ads... but if you want free content, deal with the ads. I mean, blocking flash ads... popup blocking... understandable. But I have a lot of people who block my google text ad and my sponsor banner on my site... which keeps me from having a lot of money come out of my pocket each month.

        I just took soe time off my busy day to drop by and say: "Awwww".

        I'm sorry, but I never gave you permission to use my bandwidth to send me ads. I don't have to consume them if I don't


        • I'm sorry, but I never gave you permission to use my bandwidth to send me ads.

          Cry me a river, yourself. You would prefer to pay for content how? He's talking about Google ads. Are you really trying to claim that they seriously impact your bandwidth allotment? Obviously you browse the web with images turned off, otherwise you wouldn't even slightly have a point. Do you really need blocking for text ads as well?
        • The total size of ads on my page: 25kb.

          One of which is a persistently cached 13kb image, which is loaded once and never again, per my apache setup.

          You don't wanna look at my ads? Thats fine. You have the choice of not visitng my site, or hell, if you're one of those people who don't mind donating, then block my ads, but my problem is that people expect to get quality content for free, then wanna block the ads that pay for it. I'm a member of a stuggling family, using free AOL disks to keep my website u

          • First off, I'm not now, nor have I ever been a visitor to your website. So I haven't cost you anything.

            However, ad blockers are a part of the business of the web, and if you can't make sufficient money off your website through them, you need to stop blaming the visitors who block your ads and look for a different source of income.

            It's just like when Ted Turner a a year or so back claimed you were stealing if you didn't sit down and watch the advertisements on his channels. Do you sit through and watch e

        • I'm sorry, but I never gave you permission to use my bandwidth to send me ads.

          Yes, because you live in some magickal world where the browser fairy takes you to unwanted sites and fills your screen with advertisements.

          Er, rather, you requested content from a site that looked like:

          GET /page.html

          And it gave you page.html and all that it entails. So, at least from a httpd server point of view, you did request the advertisements.

          • Er, rather, you requested content from a site that looked like:

            GET /page.html

            And it gave you page.html and all that it entails. So, at least from a httpd server point of view, you did request the advertisements.

            Your own argument works completely against you.

            An HTML file contains no bitmap data -- it merely links to it. If I ask for "page.html", I expect to get a text file called "page.html". This is how HTTP is designed to work, and is indeed how it works virtually everywhere.

            Your browser has to

          • [i]Yes, because you live in some magickal world where the browser fairy takes you to unwanted sites and fills your screen with advertisements.[/i]

            You mean he uses IE on a PC?
  • I used to use iCab for a long time, but then development (and speed) really fell behind. I started looking around for a replacement, and there was Firebird (or whatever Firefox was called back then), Camino (which I think had a different name, as well), and Safari.

    Firefox is obviously not an OS X application. Sure, they have Gecko running really quickly, but non-native widgets? One of the big draws of OS X is the look and feel, and the consistency of the looks. Having what looks to be Windows-themed widget

  • but... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by chasingporsches ( 659844 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @08:57PM (#10336584)
    /. looks A LOT nicer on safari. camino, firefox, mozilla, etc. needs GOOD font smoothing on OS X.

    • Re:but... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Quobobo ( 709437 )
      A lot nicer? Sheesh, there's one tiny thing that isn't anti-aliased in Camino (parts of the left sidebar). It's had good anti-aliasing for a long time, which used to be one of its major attractions.

  • Camino + Japanese = still sucking (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bursch-X ( 458146 ) on Friday September 24, 2004 @12:23AM (#10337639)
    It still makes a complete visual mess when trying to display Japanese. It displays some words using different fonts for each character and quirks like this. Makes the page really ugly. I have no idea why that is, because Firefox renders those pages perfectly (as does Safari).

    It's a shame because I'd rather use Camino than Firefox. Firefox doesn't use native widgets and still doesn't really look & feel like a fully OS X "native" application (although they're really doing their best to get closer).

    • Re:Camino + Japanese = still sucking (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Quobobo ( 709437 ) on Friday September 24, 2004 @03:14AM (#10338130)
      Interesting, what pages are you talking about in particular? I just fired it up and checked out a few sites (of course the all-important slashdot.jp), and I don't see any problems. Are you unable to fix this even by changing the text encoding? Only thing I noticed is that a few words in Japanese seem a bit blurry, but I don't know if that's a Japanese-specific bug or not.
      • No it happens with any Japanese page I visit with Camino. Changing encodings doesn't fix the issue. The problem is that Camino for some reason uses the proper characters, but mixes all kinds of different fonts, so the pages looks unbearably ugly. I've experienced this with any version of Camino and I wonder why this is.

  • Camino Localization project (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 24, 2004 @01:57AM (#10337909)
    The Camino Localization project [mozdev.org], aims to translate and release Camino in non english languages. If you want Camino to be available in your language please join the project.

  • Actually They're All Good ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Socket Scientist ( 777417 ) on Friday September 24, 2004 @02:36AM (#10338008)
    A few years ago when OS X was new and OmniWeb and IE were it, who would have believed we'd eventually have such an embarrassment of capable browsers on the Mac platform?

  • Slow development (no more?) (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AvantLegion ( 595806 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @02:41AM (#10347047) Journal
    I stopped using Camino and switched to Firefox on my Powerbook because, at the time, the most recent Camino release was over a year old (this was around May, with tnen-current 0.7 having been released in March 2003).

    But now 0.8 and 0.8.1 have dropped, and I'm using Camino again - at least for the time being.

    Hopefully development will remain steady.

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