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It’s been quite a while since the 0.6 milestone build of the open source Chimera browser was released, and there was speculation, especially after Apple’s release of the Safari browser, that the Chimera project might be abandoned. Happily, that’s not the case, and the real holdup turned out to be a legal problem with use of the name “Chimera. “ A new name had to be found, and the one settled on is “Camino,” which I like better than Chimera anyway.

With the name issue dealt with, the way was cleared to release what would have been Chimera 0.7 as Camino 0.7.

I downloaded Camino Thursday night, and have been using it instead of my usual standby, Mozilla, for the past several days. Camino and Mozilla have a fair bit in common, both being based on the Mozilla.org developed Gecko browser engine, but Camino is a Cocoa app., with Cocoa interface conventions like a slide-out drawers, and it is also substantially smaller than Mozilla or Netscape, thanks partly to omission of the latter applications’ mail and HTML authoring modules.

However, Camino supports that great innovation: tabbed browsing, and is also very fast. I didn’t run any timed comparisons, but it’s in the same ballpark as Mozilla 1.3, and perhaps even a bit quicker on some pages. The slide-out drawers for bookmarks and history are convenient features that Mozilla doesn’t have.

You can import bookmarks from another browser. Run Camino, choose ”Manage Bookmarks” from the Bookmarks menu, and choose “Import Bookmarks” from the submenu. In the resulting file dialog, choose the bookmarks file you wish to import, and click Open. The bookmarks will be imported.

Camino’s rendering, scrolling, etc., are very good, --better than I’ve experienced with Safari. On the downside, I’ve found that pages saved as plain text are still cluttered up with a lot of residual formatting garbage characters, and I experienced an unexpected quit or two for no particular discernible reason. Start-ups is also pretty slow -- as with all Gecko browsers.

Those niggles aside, I’m delighted that Camino development continues, as I like the Gecko-based browser is better than Safari, whose appearance and performance I found underwhelming so far.

Camino 0.7 incorporates the following changes and improvements have been made since the Chimera 0.6 release.

• New Download Manager, with auto-download and auto-dispatch.
• Compatible with URL Manager Pro
• Page Text Encodings menu
• Global History in the sidebar
• Send Link menu item, and other new toolbar buttons
• Dragging of images and links to the desktop, and other applications
• Support for Shockwave Directory content
• Uses Rendezvous to show local FTP and web servers
• Supports Proxy Auto-config

Details

User Interface

• Camino now has a Text Encoding submenu, allowing you to override the character set of a page when it doesn't display correctly.
• Camino now supports the Menu Sharing protocol, allowing applications like URL Manager Pro to work.
• Popup windows no longer do an ugly resize-flash when they appear.
• If you type something in the URL bar before Camino finishes loading the first page, it will no longer get replaced by the page URL.
• Global history is now visible in the sidebar (and is much faster than before).
• Redesigned content-generated dialogs (like cookie and JavaScript dialogs) to autosize. JS dialogs are identified by a ‘[JavaScript Application]’ label to avoid spoofing attacks now.

Menus and Toolbars

• New, brighter toolbar icons.
• Added a “Send Link” command to the File menu (with an optional toolbar button), which opens a mail message with the URL of the current page in your favorite mail application.
• Added additional optional toolbar buttons for New Tab, Close Tab, Search etc.
• Added some new items to the context menus, relating to frames, and copying images.
• Added support for copying images to the clipboard, and dragging images and links to the desktop, and to other applications.
• Fixed an issue that would cause the wrong window to be used for loading a bookmark, or URL sometimes.
• The “small icons” toolbar mode is shorter now to save screen space.

Downloading

• Downloads are now shown in a Download manager, reducing the number of open windows.
• If you quit while downloads are in progress, Camino will warn you now.
• Downloads now start automatically, saving into your Downloads folder, without asking you where to save the file. Option-click a link if you want to specify a different location at which save the file.
• Added a preference (in the Downloads tab of the Navigation pane) to automatically dispatch downloaded files to helper applications. For security reasons, this defaults to being off.

Plugins

• Shockwave Director content now loads in Camino.
• The Default plugin (which displays when you're missing the plugin for some content) correctly remembers which MIME type you've seen before now.
• Context menus for plugins now display correctly, RealPlayer video displays more reliably, and plugins are less likely to draw incorrectly when being scrolled.
• The QuickTime plugin now correctly handles more MIME types now.
• Fixed various MRJ (Java) plugin issues (but not, as yet, the problem of typing and dragging in applets).

Web Page display
• The default resolution was set to 96dpi, to better match other Mac browsers. You may have to adjust your preferred font sizes to compensate.
• The User-Agent string now contains ”Mach-O” and “Camino” to allow web authors to more accurately identify the browser.
• Framesets loaded in background tabs show correctly now
• Typing performance in textareas was somewhat improved.
• Tabbing to a text field now selects its content.
• If JavaScript on a page calls window.close(), we now close just the tab for that page, if there are multiple tabs.
• Form controls no longer draw in ”bold”
• Pages loading in background tabs now show errors if the load fails, as they should.
• Camino now respects the “autocomplete=off” attribute on web forms, for sites that don't want username/password filling for security reasons.
• Fixed an issue with the sizing of form controls when zooming.
• Fixed some "smearing" display problems with absolutely-positioned elements.
• If you need to see JavaScript errors, you can set a hidden pref ("chimera.log_js_to_console") to have Camino dump them to the console.

Bookmarks

• Command-clicking a toolbar link, or a bookmark in the sidebar will load it in a new tab now.
• You can put a bookmark folder in the Dock menu now (do a Get Info on a bookmark folder in Camino). Mac OS X 10.2 only.
• It's now possible to convert a bookmarks tab group to a normal folder, and vice versa (via a checkbox in the bookmark Get Info panel).
• You can import Camino-format bookmarks.xml files.
• It's now possible to export bookmarks to an HTML file now (via an item on the application menu)
• Site icons (“favicons”) are shown on the bookmarks toolbar now.

Networking

• Camino will now pick up changes made to the system proxy settings (e.g. when you change Locations in the Network System Preferences) without having to be restarted.
• Camino will only show “Connection Refused” and “Unknown host” errors for the main page now, rather than images and iframe contents. This helps those using proxy techniques for image blocking.

Other Changes

• The Print dialog now has a “Web Browser” panel that allows you to control the printing of background colors and images, among other options.
• Camino now supports the Services menu in web content.
• You can get the URL of the front window via AppleEvents now.
• Holding down the Shift key while using the scrollwheel scrolls sideways now.
• Fixed an issue with QuickDraw that caused a number of random crashes.
• Camino will now run if your home directory is on a network volume.
• Some memory leaks were fixed.
• Added the ability to set the preferred minimum font size, in the Advanced panel of the Appearance font prefs.
• Fixed an issue where Camino could use a lot of CPU when waking from sleep.
• Camino is more compatible with the “Metallizer” haxie now.

Camino is freeware.

For more information, visit:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/camino/

From: Melvin Krewall

Charles,

As you continue your FTP client roundup, I would suggest you give NetFinder a try (http://members.ozemail.com.au/~pli/netfinder/). NetFinder uses the Finder metaphor for FTP, in which the remote machine is just another Finder window on your desktop. To upload, you drag your file to the server’s window. To download, you drag the file from the server’s window to a window on your machine. It has robust bookmarking and shortcuts, and is very stable. I have used it for years, first on OS 9 and now the OS X native version.

Mel Krewall

The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here:
http://www.applelinks.com/news/odyssey/

CM

Charles W. Moore

Cool Mac Gear