Camino vs. Firefox vs. Safari

[dmetzcher]

There is one main browser that I use, and it's Firefox. I prefer it over Safari, myself, but I know that many people prefer Safari. I was wondering which of the these three browsers (Camino, Firefox, and Safari) others preferred, and was specifically wondering people's thoughts on Camino. I haven't really used it at all, and was playing around with it tonight. It seems to have greater Aqua interface support than Firefox, but I like that Firefox is extensible (that, and the fact that it's cross-platform, are the two main reasons that I use it myself, though I don't care much for the lack of autosorting bookmarks alphabetically.).

Anyway, just wanted to get people's thoughts on Camino, specifically, as it compares to the other two.

 

[Satcomer]

I use Camino because it is based on Cocoa (native OS X computer language) and loads MUCG faster than Firefox. Camino uses the same render engine that Firefox uses. Also Camino is now universal binary. I use the latest nightly Camino builds by using a program called CaminoKnight, also skin the program with CaminIcon. Camino even supports Ad blocking now to.

 

[Mikuro]

These are the main reasons I don't use Firefox regularly:
1. Terrible scroll wheel support (as with many Carbon programs), and poor scrolling performance from the keyboard.
2. Completely non-standard interface elements. (Not at all Mac-like.) I feel like I have to wrestle with it to get it to do what I want.
3. It's just never seemed like a finished product.

Camino has perfect, standard scroll wheel support, and good scrolling performance all across the board. It also has a completely Mac-like interface, which is much more responsive than Firefox's hackish design. And while each version of Camino does have its issues, it still feels solid to me.

But this is all coming from a Safari user. These are the main reasons I don't use Camino regularly:
1. Poor feature set. It has filters and a popup blocker, but they just aren't very good.
2. There are virtually no extensions available for it, so there's no way to fix its poor feature set.

The truth is, most browsers have poor feature sets by my standards. In Firefox, I rely on Adblock, among others. In Safari, I rely on PithHelmet. The only browser I consider really usable without third-party help is iCab (too bad its rendering engine is slow and outdated). The problem is that Camino doesn't have that third-party help that Firefox and Safari do.

The reasons I DO use Safari:
1. It's Mac-like, even more than Camino (for example, Safari gives OS X's standard spell checking in text fields like this one, whereas for some reason Camino doesn't).
2. It lets me specify a custom CSS file (I still can't believe Firefox doesn't have this feature, but damned if I can find it!)
3. Third parties beef it up with extensions like PithHelmet.
4. It has a better tabs system than Firefox (Camino's is good, too).

Basically, Camino is too weak for my liking, and Firefox is too frustrating and un-Mac-like. Safari wins by default. Thank goodness for PithHelmet.

Oh, how I wish I could go back to using iCab all the time.....

 

[mw84]

I use Safari over other browsers for no major reason. I like the way it looks more, as mikuro said it clashes less with all my other apps (looks wise). Other browsers like Firefox always seem a bit 'busy' to me as well and I don't use IE for the obvious reasons.

 

[RacerX]

I was wondering which of the these three browsers (Camino, Firefox, and Safari) others preferred,

I don't prefer (or use) any of those... It is a good thing for me that there are other browsers.

 

[powermac]

I stick with Safari, mainly because all the reasons everyone has mentioned. Firefox, is great, needs to be more Mac like. Hopefully in the feature, it will be.

 

[perfessor101]

I use Safari, because I have become thoroughly accustomed to the look and feel, but my strong second choice is Camino. I agree completely with Mikuro's assessment of Firefox.

A fourth alternative browser is Shiira which is based on the OS X internet toolkit and is quite fast. I would probably use it a lot more, but as I said I have become completely accustomed to the Safari interface.

 

[powermac]

I think also, as Mac users we are accustom to using non bloated software, for the most part. Mail & Safari provide us with what we need, without a lot of extra bloated features.
One thing I wish that Apple would implement on Mail.app is a formatting palette for text, etc., when composing a new message.