Enter Camino

posted on march 6, 2003, tag: software

Finally, after much waiting and legal name-changing trouble, Camino 0.7 (formerly Chimera) was released today. There are plenty of needed changes and additions (namely a better download manager and much faster history functionality), but since I usually download nightly builds every few days at work, there was nothing new for me (except a new splash screen featuring everyone's favorite font, Myriad).

Regardless, it is a step in the right direction, as well as toward that ever waiting one-point-oh. Recently, I had a conversation about browsers with Shawn—mostly about Safari's promise and future possibilities—in which I mentioned that Camino's development is something to look forward to, but for the most part only because of improved stability. I say this because Camino is based on Mozilla and incorporates most of its features already. Therefore, unless they branch out and begin creating new features for Camino separate from the Mozilla center, the browser is limited by Mozilla's development. Basically, if you use Mozilla on your PC, you're using the PC version of Camino (albeit not as pretty or smooth feeling). So, the future for Camino doesn't seem all that bright in terms of fantastic new features.

The nice thing is, there are some Camino only features in action right now. One example: if you right-click (or command click (or just click and hold)) on Camino's dock icon when the program is running, you'll see a list of your toolbar bookmarks ready for the clicking (see image). A great addition to this feature is that you can actually tell Camino which group of bookmarks to use for this popup list*. These little additions are nice, but only go so far.

Safari, of course, is inherently different because it's being developed by Apple. They've got first-hand and inside knowledge of OS X and it's future, enabling them to actually create new features from the ground up if they wish. That's a power Camino will never have. It's unfortunate, but doesn't make Safari a better browser by default.

Aside from radical new features, though, there are a few things I would like to see Camino implement before hitting gold. I'm sure I'm not the first person to point some of these items out, but I've been thinking the past few days about what I would really like this browser to have that it's missing.

• Ability to enable "Check Spelling as You Type" feature. This is built-in functionality for Cocoa applications, and I'm not sure why Camino hasn't used it yet. You'd be surprised how nice it is to have your spelling checked as you type into textareas (like when you comment on this site, for instance).
• Reload Tab / Reload All Tabs options in tab contextual menus. This already works in Mozilla proper, and probably isn't in Camino only because it's using the older Mozilla milestone. It's a nice feature, though, when you have four weblogs open for a few hours in the background and you want to refresh them all. Sure, it only saves a few seconds, but none the less.
• Preload in background abillity. Mozilla for Windows allows you to enable an option that loads Mozilla upon startup into memory, making for a faster first launch time. I know I can specify Camino to be launched at startup via OS X, but I don't want to do that. I don't because I don't want to load the whole program at startup. Something that would load a majority of the code would be nice, though, so if I never actually use Camino in a session it doesn't waste as much time, but if I do the first load would be faster.
• Form auto-completion. Mozilla for Windows allows you to save common form entry (like your name, address, etcetera) for reuse later. This is obviously useful.
• Option to remove the splash screen.
• Give me all of Mozilla's options and functionality. The preferences dialog for Camino is so slight and bare compared to Mozilla proper. Put at least some of the more important stuff in (like the Helper Applications and Popup Window Exceptions).
• Flash. Handle. It. Better.
• Allow me to view my history in different ways (order visited, alphabetically, time spent, etc).
• I really love the Safari activity window (shows errors, loading information and more). Something like this would be nice (or at least show me javascript errors).
• Allow me to right-click an image and get its properties (again, this is built into Mozilla). Sometimes this is very useful.

From time to time I might add to this list. I apologize to everyone who reads this and doesn't have an Apple computer. I'm not trying to waste your time, I just wanted to get these thoughts down. If you do have an Apple machine, and you use Camino, feel free to post your ideas. I'd be interested to see what others think this browser is lacking.

* To change which group of bookmarks is used for this contextual menu, simply choose any bookmark folder, Get Info, and check the box that says "Use for Dock Menu."

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