Camino

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For other uses, see Camino (disambiguation).
Camino
Image:Camino icon.png

Camino 1.5.1 under Mac OS X 10.4.10
Maintainer: The Camino Project
Stable release: 1.5.1  (August 17, 2007) [+/-]
Preview release: none  (n/a) [+/-]
OS: Mac OS X
Use: Web browser
License: MPL, MPL/GPL/LGPL tri-license
Website: www.caminobrowser.org

Camino 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.

As Camino's aim is to integrate as well as possible with the Macintosh OS, it uses the Aqua user interface and integrates a number of Mac OS X services and features such as the Keychain for password management and Bonjour for scanning available bookmarks across your local network. Other notable features include an integrated pop-up blocker, tabbed browsing, and support for open standards.

The browser is developed by the Camino Project, a community organization. Mike Pinkerton has been the technical lead of the Camino project since Dave Hyatt moved to the Safari team at Apple Computer in mid-2002. The latest stable release is 1.5.1, released on August 17, 2007. Camino 1.5 runs on Mac OS 10.3 or later, but Camino 1.0.6 is available for Mac OS 10.2 users.

Contents

[edit] History

In late 2001 Mike Pinkerton and Vidur Apparao started a project within Netscape to prove that Gecko could be embedded in a Cocoa application. In early 2002 Dave Hyatt, one of the co-creators of Firefox (then called Phoenix), joined the team and built Chimera, a small, lightweight browser wrapper, around their work.

The first downloadable build of Chimera 0.1 was released on February 13, 2002. The early releases became popular due to their fast page-loading speeds (as compared with then-dominant Mac browser, Microsoft's Internet Explorer version 5). Many claimed it was the fastest Web browser on the Mac, although it was not as feature-complete as its competitors.

Hyatt was hired by Apple Computer in mid-2002 to start work on what would become Safari. Meanwhile, the Chimera developers got a small team together within Netscape, with dedicated development and QA, to put together a Netscape-branded technology preview for the January 2003 Macworld Conference. However, two days before the show, AOL management decided to abandon the entire project. Despite this setback, a skeleton crew of QA and developers released Camino 0.7 on March 3, 2003.

The name was changed from Chimera to Camino for legal reasons. Because of its roots in Greek mythology, Chimera has been a popular choice of name for hypermedia systems. One of the first graphical web browsers was called Chimera,[1] and researchers at the University of California, Irvine, have also developed a complete hypermedia system of the same name.[2] Camino is Spanish for "path", and the name was chosen to continue the "Navigator" motif.[3]

While version 0.7 was primarily a Netscape-driven release kept afloat at the end by open source, version 0.8 was, according to lead developer Pinkerton, "a triumph of open source and open process. People from all around the world helped with patches, QA, bug triage, localization, artwork, and evangelism."

In February 2005, Josh Aas, one of the lead developers of Camino, was employed by the Mozilla Foundation to improve support for Mac OS X in projects such as Firefox, Thunderbird, and the Mozilla toolkit. He began working full-time for Mozilla in May 2005.

In September 2005, Pinkerton accepted a position at Google where he will work closely with Google's Firefox team and continue to work on Camino during his "Twenty percent" time.

Camino 1.0, released on February 14, 2006, was the first browser of the Mozilla family to appear as a universal binary, thanks largely to the efforts of Mark Mentovai, another of the Camino developers.

[edit] Version history

0.1 February 13, 2002
0.2 April 6, 2002
0.4 July 24, 2002
0.5 September 9, 2002
0.6 November 5, 2002
0.7 March 6, 2003
0.8 June 25, 2004
1.0 February 14, 2006
1.5 June 5, 2007

[edit] Comparison to Firefox

One of the major advantages of Camino over Firefox is the use of native Mac OS X widgets, instead of the XUL interface, which means that Camino blends in with other applications better. It is also faster than Firefox. [4] [5]

Another advantage that Camino has over Firefox is in its bookmarks management. It allows tab groups to be 'auto-tabbed', providing the ability to open a group of tabs with a single click. Also, Camino provides a much more intuitive bookmarks management system similar to that of the Safari web browser (which in turn borrowed its bookmarks management system from the popular music jukebox iTunes). This has provided a familiar environment for users of Safari which comes as the standard browser in Mac OS X.

Furthermore, Camino uses the Mac OS X built-in Keychain, which is preferable for many Mac users to Firefox's built-in key management.

However, Camino is not compatible with Firefox add-ons.

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.chimera.org/
  2. ^ http://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/chimera/
  3. ^ http://www.caminobrowser.org/support/faq/#about_name
  4. ^ http://www.linux.com/articles/52987
  5. ^ http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html#macspeed

[edit] See also

 Free software Portal

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Mozilla projects
Browser related projects Camino · Firefox · Minimo · SeaMonkey
Other projects Bugzilla · ChatZilla · Lightning · Penelope · Sunbird · Thunderbird
Obsolete projects Application Suite · Calendar Project
Infrastructure Gecko · Necko · XBL · XPCOM · XPConnect · XPInstall · XUL · XULRunner
Components Composer · NSPR · Rhino · SpiderMonkey · Tamarin · Venkman
v • d • e
Mac OS X web browsers
Mac OS X exclusive Camino · iCab · OmniWeb · Shiira
Cross-platform Firefox · Flock · Internet Explorer · Konqueror  · Netscape · Opera · Safari
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