OS X browsers: Safari vs. Camino

Sure there are plenty of browsers for OSX, but there are only two that matter.

Camino, formerly known as Chimera is a lean, fast browser based around the gecko rendering engine, the one used for Mozilla. It is quite simple and fairly robust, especially considering it is still in beta. Its most notable feature is tabbed browsing, which allows pages which are simultaneously loaded to be in different tabs in the same window, instead of spread among multiple windows.

Safari is a browser built by Apple, although it uses the opensource khtml rendering engine, orignally developed for KDE’s Konqueror. It is slightly faster than Camino and also fairly simple. The application has a brushed metal appearance similar to itunes or iphoto. Its most notable feature is its bookmark management, which uses an itunes like interface to manage one’s bookmarks.

O’Reilly’s MacDevCenter has written an interesting article comparing the two browsers. Via MacSlash.

I use both browsers extensively. My official default browser (in my system) is Camino (version 0.6, from back when it was called Chimera), but I actually use Safari more often. The speed difference isn’t huge but Safari does load much faster. I also like Safari’s bookmark management. Safari just feels cleaner and more pleasant to use. This entry is being posted via Safari.

Safari, however doesn’t handle weird pages or situations as well. I use Camino for reading my webmail (which requires entering a username and password) and for obtaining a daily pass and browsing Salon. Safari can’t handle either task.

I also love Camino’s tabs. However Safari may be coming out with tabs soon. An internal beta of Safari, which was leaked to the public (including myself) has tabs.

Both browsers also block popup windows, a necessary feature these days. I occasionally use Internet Explorer and I am amazed at how many popups I encounter.

Both browsers are still in beta, and so there is still plenty of development which will be done. For betas both are quite stable and capable.

Of course both browsers can, and should, be expanded using 3rd party software. My absolute favorite is Cocoa Gestures, which can be used by both browsers (or any Cocoa program). This allows you to make “mouse gestures” by pressing a button (usually the right mouse button) an moving the mouse. These gestures can be mapped to commands such as going back or opening a new window. It is similar to mouse gestures found on Opera

Another necessity is blocking images (mostly ads) from certain servers. PithHelmet brings this functionality to Safari. To get it on Camino, you need to do a few things to the application package (its not hard though).

Did I mention that both applications are free and should continue to be free for some time?

I am very happy about the state of OS X browser development an look forward to even better things in the near future.