Camino browser reaches its end

by harshal • 13 years ago

200 123 13 years ago

kunai• 13 years ago

I find this extremely saddening because Camino offered the best native experience for OS X, with all the polish of a well-designed Cocoa app, on top of Gecko.

I'll miss Camino.

eightyone3• 13 years ago

I want to like Firefox, I really do, but the experience on OS X is awful. It doesn't fit well with the aesthetic of a native Mac app, and certainty doesn't' function like one. Multi-gestures in Safari are so much smoother. About a month or so back when the Firefox team was soliciting feedback for something here on HN, one of the designers or developers at Mozilla had screenshots of a version of Firefox that looked really good. I went to go download the latest version and realized that the screenshots most have just been Photoshop comps or something.

notatoad• 13 years ago

did it look like this [1]? that's the UX nightly available at [2]. it's a new theme they're working on, but it's got a few versions to go before it makes it into stable. i'm loving it, but they're removing/changing a couple of customization features so people are freaking out. we'll see what the final product ends up looking like.

[1] http://i.imgur.com/Gfns2MS.png

[2] http://people.mozilla.org/~jwein/ux-nightly/

MatthewPhillips2• 13 years ago

Couldn't disagree more. I think Firefox looks and feels great.

denzil_correa• 13 years ago

I would have to agree with most of what is said here. I prefer Chrome (or even Safari) over Firefox on OS X. Chrome is faster (I need to work on a slow Internet connection many times) while Safari being the bundled browser has few features like Reader etc. which I don't want to use. I still have FF installed for back up purposes but I don't use it unless something is broken on Chrome or Safari (which doesn't happen a lot).

I find it extremely surprising that some sites (ex:Facebook) are (or were a few months back) displayed differently on Windows FF vs OS X FF.

pilif3• 13 years ago

The one thing that drives me mad about Firefox on the Mac is it's Home/End behavior. Ever since migrating to the Mac, I have remapped the keys to work like on windows and Linux (operating on the current line instead of the current document).

You can do that using a custom key binding in ~/Library/KeyBindings.

Firefox ignores this and still insists on home/end working on the full document. But even worse: in the new Gmail compose window, not even Command-Left/Right works (it does in other Textareas - no idea what Google did here).

Now this might totally be a case of http://xkcd.com/1172/ but by the life of me, I cannot work without a way to move the cursor to the beginning of a line - especially when the keys that I usually use are so destructive (scrolling all the way to the top, making me lose my position).

This is the only reason why using Firefox is out of the question.

In the past, I patched some JS file inside the bundle, but now that Firefox updates so often and it's a signed binary, I can't really do that any more.

ancarda• 13 years ago

Since Camino is based off Firefox, is it possible to backport some of the OS X specific code? The primary reason why I'm still using Safari rather than Firefox is because it lacks Keychain support.

TwoBit• 13 years ago

I'm not a Mac fanatic, which might be why I prefer FireFox on Mac to other browsers.

msujaws• 13 years ago

We're actually very far along in implementing what you saw in those screenshots.

You can download a Nightly build of it (that auto-updates) at http://people.mozilla.org/~jwein/ux-nightly/

fleitz• 13 years ago

I loved Camino back in the 10.1 / 10.2 days. It was truly epic , and so much better than the god awful IE for Mac.

GigabyteCoin• 13 years ago

IE for Mac? That has to be an oxy moron of some sort.

theatrus2• 13 years ago

It also was the most standards compliant and performant IE of its time, being a totally different code base.

dietrichepp• 13 years ago

For a surprisingly long window of time, IE Mac was the best browser around. Apparently, it did not share a code base with Windows IE, which explains why IE Mac had all the features people were drooling over in 2001 like full PNG transparency and good CSS support. PNG support even included color correction, and IE Mac did not suffer from the "box model" bug that affected IE on Windows.

I think the Mac version of IE had something like 99% compliance on the first Acid test, before other browsers had robust CSS support. You could even find a copy of the Acid test in an easter egg in the browser.

It was a fantastic browser at the time, but didn't align with Microsoft's future interests and the development team was reassigned.

derleth• 13 years ago

There was an IE for UNIX back in the 1990s, which meant Solaris and HP-UX. The last version was IE5.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_UNIX

And before that, MicroSoft was best known for its BASIC implementation that wound up on a whole range of eight-bit microcomputers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_BASIC

The versions for 6502-based micros shared a codebase:

http://www.pagetable.com/?p=46

And, in some versions, they had an easter egg hidden in the constants used to implement SIN:

http://www.pagetable.com/?p=43

masklinn3• 13 years ago

I still love it. To this day it remains my primary browser, through its aged rendering, through its lockups on JS-heavy sites, through its dated icons, through everything. Because the UI of every other browser just feels wrong. Aside from Safari maybe, but Safari's tab bar makes it impossible to handle 50+ tabs.

progrock2• 13 years ago

Pick any of the main browsers, the main advance in the UI is the slimming down of controls. Even Opera went from a g'zillion toolbars down to a slim default interface. The rendering engines receive loads of attention while the basic browser UI is just plain boring and out dated. Camino doesn't really look that out of place even today.

Has Firefox gone completely native then on OSX? From what I can tell on Linux is that Firefox and Opera stand out (and even Chrome that shuns your system title bar..) These three apps are out of place on my desktop. At least Camino blended in.

lttlrck• 13 years ago

50+ tabs!!

eksith• 13 years ago

Well that marks one more end of an era. With Camino folding up and Opera going with WebKit - Camino too was on the way to this with Gecko being out of the question - the browser field is getting to be a one-horse race (since all the cool kids are going with Chrome these days).

battwell• 13 years ago

nitpick: Opera is going with Blink. Admittedly, Blink is very similar to WebKit at the moment.

elithrar• 13 years ago

> nitpick: Opera is going with Blink. Admittedly, Blink is very similar to WebKit at the moment.

Actually, Opera is leveraging Chromium—not just Blink. This includes the rendering engine (Blink), V8, networking, etc, etc.

potch• 13 years ago

That's news to me.

shmerl• 13 years ago

Arguable. Jolla uses Gecko with IPC embedding for their upcoming browser for Sailfish. Gecko is in no way out of the question. Mozilla are also working on the new Rust based browser engine (Servo).

jostmey• 13 years ago

Camino was my preferred browser on my old Macbook because it was the simplest and most easy to use browser available. All other browsers were irritatingly complex by comparison.

zachwill• 13 years ago

Such a great browser back in the day. It was absolutely my preferred browser of choice until Chromium came to the Mac.

pbreit2• 13 years ago

A shame the energy that went into Camino didn't go into MacFirefox.

wmf• 13 years ago

It seems like XUL required ten times as much effort to get comparable results.

pbreit2• 13 years ago

Fine, then make XUL better on Mac. But for the love of god, don't (obviously) waste so much precious energy on a (obvious) dead end.

cantankerous• 13 years ago

I remember Camino running really well on my old Powerbook and also looking great. Farewell, friend!

MatthewPhillips2• 13 years ago

Unfortunately/fortunately with browsers becoming more of an OS replacement, it makes it rather hard if not impossible for small teams to maintain them.

asperous2• 13 years ago

My opinion is that Google/Mozila is pushing HTML5 instead of plugins not because that's what's best for the web, but because exactly this-- it decreases the potential for competition.

mortehu2• 13 years ago

They must be quite bad at it, because both their browsers are split into components that can easily be reused in competing products.

lukeck• 13 years ago

In what way does using HTML5 over plugins decrease the potential for competition? If anything it makes for more competition as the need for browser-specific plugins is removed.

jmgao• 13 years ago

I think this is the first time I've ever heard anyone accuse Mozilla of stifling competition.

DannyBee• 13 years ago

If you really want to get a good conspiracy theory going, note that a lot of the main Camino people have worked at Google for many years now (longer than Chrome has existed), and the other main person went to Apple.

masklinn3• 13 years ago

Aside from that, Mozilla backed out Gecko embedding a long time ago, which is why Camino still operates with a Firefox 3.6 Gecko. That makes maintainership futile when the browser can only fall further and further behind on its ability to simply render websites.

exterm• 13 years ago

This is why opera is now using chromium.

Jate• 13 years ago

Would it be such a sin to continue to use it for a while practicing safe browsing techniques? Or am I naive to think that I can avoid being harmed browsing trusted sites with my beloved browser?

Seemed to be a favorite for marketing campaigns thanks to it's minimal interface.

Camino will be missed.

blibble• 13 years ago

your primary risk would be bad networks serving up malware, which is pretty hard to defend against

cmelbye• 13 years ago

Aw. Camino was awesome back in the day. Thanks to the developers for making the best browser for Mac at the time.

michaelrkn• 13 years ago

coherentpony• 13 years ago

I didn't even know this existed until this post happened.

racl1012• 13 years ago

I learned about it just last year and forgot about it again until today. It's just not even much of an option if we're going to be honest, unless you want a minimal experience.

No12• 13 years ago

A sad announcement, but the writing has been on the wall for a few years now (specifically, since Mozilla officially dropped support for embedding[0]).

I'm only surprised they waited this long to make it official.

[0] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.embeddin...

wtallis• 13 years ago

I only stopped using Camino when I became dependent on some Firefox extensions (AdBlock, NoScript, eventually others). The big downside to Camino having a fully native UI was that it didn't have XUL support, so no cross-compatibility with FireFox extensions.

As soon as one of the Mac-compatible WebKit browsers can replicate the functionality of AdBlock Plus, NoScript, and BetterPrivacy, I'll quit using FireFox on OS X, because it's still noticeably non-native and has some persistent annoyances.

redthrowaway• 13 years ago

AdBlock Plus is available for Chrome and NotScripts replicates NoScript. I'm not sure what BetterPrivacy gets you that you can't do yourself by changing your cookie settings.

lawl• 13 years ago

Betterprivacy can kill flash cookies.

NotScripts is still only mitigating JS and not fully blocking it, at least last time I looked at the source (I also almost puked). Plus it lacks feates like clear click (anti clickjacking), ABE etc.

jccalhoun• 13 years ago

Notscripts hasn't been updated since December of 2010. ScriptSafe (used to be scriptno) is still being developed https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/scriptsafe/oiigbmn...

However, the author of noscript has said that it isn't technically possible to entirely replicate all of the features of noscript on chrome because extensions on chrome don't have the same kind of access as they do on firefox.

http://hackademix.net/2009/12/10/why-chrome-has-no-noscript/

marban2• 13 years ago

Anyone still using OmniWeb these days?

rplacd• 13 years ago

Still the go-to browser for the diehards on NS/OS, I hear. I remember figuring out how to plumb in SSL and JS support just so I could access a butchered Dropbox...

jsolson• 13 years ago

Perhaps Mr. Shipley?

ams61102• 13 years ago

I use it on an old PowerBook G4. It's the only way to have a reasonably up-to-date/secure browser (the other choice being TenFourFox) on PPC/Tiger Macs.

marban2• 13 years ago

+1 for TenFourFox on a G4 Cube. iCab coming second.

gdonelli• 13 years ago

Thank you for your contribution to the Mac community

ivanca• 13 years ago

They lost such a good chance to say "Es el fin del Camino!" (which means "Is the end of the Road!" in Spanish)

shrikant• 13 years ago

Camino means road? I always thought it meant "I walk"..

jomohke• 13 years ago

Both are correct.

- As a noun, it means "road" ("El Camino" – "The Road").

- As a verb, it's a conjugation of "caminar" ("to walk" or "to go"). The -o ending makes it "I walk" or "I go".

harshal• 13 years ago

Here is the post from the most recent maintainer on his blog: http://samuelsidler.com/2013/05/the-end-of-an-era/

Thanks to all the devs who have worked on Camino over the years.

Samuel_Michon2• 13 years ago

“Camino is not receiving security updates” “Camino reaches its end” “Camino is no longer being developed”

I don’t like the tone of this press release. They make it seem like they’re not responsible for the lack of updates and that Camino died a natural death. They didn’t offer an explanation nor did they give any advance notice. Not very classy.

gaius2• 13 years ago

From http://caminobrowser.org/blog/2011/#mozembedding

As a purely community-based open source project, no one is employed to work on Camino; all Camino developers are volunteers, working on Camino in their spare time, as a labor of love. While maintaining embedding in a fork of Gecko is theoretically possible, we don’t have the manpower for a sustained effort of that kind

Samuel_Michon2• 13 years ago

Ah, that explains a lot. It also shows the shadow side of open source software development: if the developers get bored, they can just up and leave. If all the devs do so, the project is dead but there’s no one there to call it. Users aren’t owed any explanation.

patchfx2• 13 years ago

Could they not turn the development over to the community? Put the source code up on Github? Seems a shame to kill it off.

*I'm not a user and not sure how popular the browser is.

supercoder• 13 years ago

http://caminobrowser.org/contribute/

patchfx2• 13 years ago

They should definitely add this to the frontpage.

stuartmorgan4• 13 years ago

Camino has been open source and developed entirely by a community of volunteers for most of its life. There were extensive instructions on getting involved on the website for many years. There was even a specific push to recruit new people a year ago to make the transition to WebKit so that it could continue to use a modern engine, which is the only way it could have survived once Gecko stopped supporting embedding.

If there were a community of people with the time/interest/skill to develop it further, the project wouldn't have shut down in the first place.

kmasters• 13 years ago

Give Opera Next a chance. I have been using it since it came out and although it has a couple rough edges it feels more user focused than Chrome.

progrock2• 13 years ago

One rough edge is that it totally ignores my keyboard layout for keyboard shortcuts. It appears to use the Qwerty layout for shortcuts, even under a different layout.

(That's Opera next 12.50 on Linux, with Presto)

mhd• 13 years ago

One feature Camino ha and that I really miss in other browsers is that it displayed whether files in its download window were still there. That sounds rather trivial, but made it a perfect "file inbox", where I could quickly see whether I still needed to review/move a file.

And the fact that it was more in sync with the OS X desktop experience than Firefox (back in the days; got better) and Safari (brushed metal)...

Of course nowadays, a hierarchical tab sidebar is my one "exclusive" killer feature, and as of yet only Firefox has that (via add-ons).

freehunter2• 13 years ago

Chrome does that download behavior as well. You can see if a file has been removed from the downloads folder right from the downloads tab in Chrome.

joshmoz• 13 years ago

I worked on Camino quite a bit in the early 2000s, it was a great experience. It's funny to think that we really felt we were contributing greatly to the appeal of Mac OS X by providing the kind of browsing experience Apple should have provided on the OS much earlier, given their focus on it being designed with the Web in mind.

Eventually Mozilla hired me to help re-write the Firefox port to Mac OS X because the product lagged so far behind Camino. Once I got deep enough into that project my Camino contributions dropped off. Dedicated volunteers carried on. I had forgotten that they still hadn't shut it down yet.

Anyway, congrats to Camino on the long run! It was a great option, particularly for earlier Mac OS X users, and a joy to work on.

fuzzywalrus• 13 years ago

I used Camino for a year or two. It wasn't much of a choice, run Omniweb or Camino.

Anyone else remember when Camino was Chimera?

racl1012• 13 years ago

You could say Camino has ...

* puts on shades * Reached the end of the road!

* Cue the CSI theme * YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Domenic_S• 13 years ago

whoa, am I on reddit now?

officemonkey• 13 years ago

I used Camino since the beginning and I still have it installed my old iMac desktop. To me, it felt more like a Mac OS Browser than Safari.

I've switched my main browser from Safari to Chrome to Firefox, but I always kept Camino around. It's going to bum me out to delete it finally.

Tycho• 13 years ago

I think it was the only browser that really gelled with the 'Aqua' UI style. IE for Mac did so too, to an extent, but Camino had more advanced features.

Camino browser reaches its end

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