And Suddenly
posted on march 25, 2003, tag: software
The browser war between Camino and Safari is getting really great. The latest leak of Safari, build 67, contains an updated pref pane with tab settings and a functioning auto-complete feature that utilizes the keychain properly (including a new toolbar button that will fill out forms automatically (just like IE for the Mac) that's still a little buggy but getting there). Safari also seems to be faster at both starting and rendering. That's never a bad thing.
The surprising part, however, is that Camino now feels faster. One of Apple's largest argued benefits to Safari was that it started, rendering and handled Javascript faster than any other browser on the Mac platform. I agreed with this until today, when I downloaded the nightly build of Camino (2003032408). The new builds are now based on the Mozilla trunk (1.41 I believe), rather than the stable 1.2 branch, so the new speed increases in both rendering and startup that I've been seeing on my PC are now even more apparent on my Mac. It's fucking fast. Amazingly so.
Also, Camino has a new bookmark manager that mimics Safari's. This is a bold move on Camino's part, since everyone has been comparing the two as enemies. That's not to say that Safari hasn't been using Mozilla code, because it has. Licensing allows for this, and I think it's a benefit. The unfortunate thing is, with the screwy Mozilla licensing scheme, Mozilla can't use Safari code. Maybe in the future this will be fixed (I believe they're trying to relicense right now).
The great thing about these two browsers is that the principles of their development each have a weblog (Mike Pinkerton (Camino) and Dave Hyatt (Safari)), and development has been rather quick over the past few weeks. I'm really looking forward to more.
Comments
There are 8 comments, comments are closed
n3verm0re on 03/25/2003:
I wasn't aware that the Safari source was available. If it isn't, then the Camino people can do whatever they like to reimplement features seen in Safari.
Garrett on 03/25/2003:
The Safari KHTML code will be released back to the KHTML project. I don't know about the whole browser being open, though.
When I said Safari could use Mozilla code, I mean it literally... not Safari using feature ideas. Safari can actually take Mozilla code. Mozilla can't take Safari code. It absolutely can mimic features, though, which it's doing now.
n3verm0re on 03/25/2003:
Well that's what I meant. Mozilla's inability to use Safari code has absolutely nothing to do with the Mozilla licensing scheme. The only portion of Safari that Apple will ever make available is that based on KHTML (as is likely required by the license under which they used it in the first place). It's highly unlikely that this code would be useful to the Mozilla crowd, but even so, it would only be beneficial to the rendering engine (i.e. Gecko).
"Unfortunately," there isn't much that can be done to restrict Apple from utilizing Mozilla code. Safari won't be a commercial (for profit) browser, and as long as they release any modifications that they've made to the Mozilla base code, then they're in the clear. Without restricting all developers, I don't believe Apple can be restricted.
Josh on 03/25/2003:
Really you think Camino feels faster. I think it runs alot slower. Definitely noticeably slower. Nothing about Camino would want me to switch, it was an 'alright' browser back in the day as Chimera but now that .67 of Safari is out and supporting CSS alot better than before. I can live full time in Safari. Gotta keep all 3 around though for site testing.
Garrett on 03/25/2003:
If you're speaking of the current stable release, yes, it's much slower. I'm talking about the nightly from last night (build 2003032408). On my G4 867 it is definitely faster at rendering than Safari in limited tests I've run.
monkiboi on 03/25/2003:
oh you OSX users and your 'safari this' and 'safari that'. spare a thought for those less fortunate than yourselves held to OS9.2 and crappy versions of mozilla until quark get off their corperate backsides and move the codebase over to OSX.
ahem er... i'll get me coat.
Garrett on 03/25/2003:
Don't get me started on Quark. It's ridiculous that they've taken this long to make the move (at least to fucking Carbon, for chrissakes), and they know they're going to hit it rich when they do.
The thing is, Apple will sell a ton of copies of OS X the moment QuarkX is released. I don't understand why they didn't help Quark to get their product out sooner.
Also, on top of that, why didn't another software dev group make a program like Quark and start selling it? Quark kinda left the market open...
On a side note, though: I don't understand why you don't just install OS 9, and then upgrade to OS X. This will keep a fully functional "Classic" mode of OS 9 on your machine. You can then install Quark and run it in this mode. As far as I know this works (I do this with a few programs at work), and allows you to have the best of both worlds.
monkiboi on 03/26/2003:
we've only one machine with OSX. a dual cpu G4 that came with it pre-installed. we needed an upgrade for the repro side of things here.
unfortunately after a bit of experimentation we found things to be a little hit and miss in classic mode, not so much with quark but with the imposition software we use so we've deceided to wait a while. if we just did layout and design i don't think it would be an issue.