DISCLAIMER: This is a review of pre-release (beta) software as version 0.9a1 is not considered the official release version by The Mozilla Project (however, we found it interesting enough to write about). As such, keep in mind that you may encounter some instabilities. In testing, Camino 0.9a1 was sufficiently stable, but your mileage may vary. We hold no responsibility for anything this product may do to your system. Now that we covered our butts, on with the review!

It’s been a long road for Camino’s developmenmt. I discovered it three years ago, back in the days of 0.6 and when it was still called Chimera. At the time, the Mac web browser scene was rather bleak. You had two choices, really; slow and bloated. But when i found Camino, I saw what a web browser could be. It lacked the bloat of Mozilla, and was faster than IE and OmniWeb. It was the best Mac browser in terms of performance.

The Mac browser landscape has come a long way since then. Safari raised the bar and since then the competition has become much tighter. Internet Explorer for the Mac is no longer being developed. Netscape is all but dead on the Mac--and Windows for that matter. OmniWeb has adopted the faster WebCore render engine. New browsers such as Shiira have hit the scene. Firefox fas gone 1.0 and is taking a bite out of IE. Each have impressive features and solid performance. Despite all this, Camino still shines brightly.

Let’s start where I always start--with the interface. As has always been the case, Camino’s interface is very much Aqua-compliant. In my opinion , Camino is what Firefox for the Mac should be. On Tiger, Camino now uses the unified toolbar look, which gives Camino even cleaner lines than before. Camino uses new tabs in 0.9a1. Instead of centered tabs, the tabs are pinned to the left a la Safari. The Centered tabs are fine for static tabs, but not as good for dynamic tabs that are constantly being opened and closed (the same criticism is often made about the Dock). Just like Safari tabs, you can close a background tab. While the tabs aren’t draggable, you can drag the favicon from tab-to-tab to open that page in those tabs, or drap it to an empty part of the toolbar to open the pasge in a new tab. Also, you can move a tab to another window. This will open another window with the tab and will close the tab in the other window.

I just wrote a long paragraph on the toolbar and tabs. Gotta love the attention to detail on the Mac.

Mozilla--based browsers are prone to somewhat slower launch times than other browsers. While Camino’s launch time is slower than Safari’s, it seems to be a bit faster than previous versions of Camino. Just to think at one time Camino’s launch time was so long that they used a splash screen.

Like other Mac browsers, Camino features a web search box. By default, Camino lets you choose between searching Google, Google Images, and the current site. However, Camino also includes instructions on how to set another search engine. Unfortunately, it takes a little messing with the Camino preferences file, as opposed to being something a little more obvious. However, the ability to change the available search engines is welcome.

Managing bookmarks in Camino is very similar to Safari, except Camino one-ups Safari with more organizational features, like--yes!--separators in the Bookmarks menu. Bookmarks can be added to the Camino Dock menu for easy access from anywhere. Also, keywords and descriptions can be appended to bookmarks. One feature I haven’t seen in any browser are smrt folders for organizinf bookmarks.  If any browser developers are reading this, consider this an ever-so-subtle hint.

For the most part, Camino has the prerequisite suite of web browser features, but it also has some nice touches. Camino has more flexible cookie management than Safari. Camino has more flexible security settings than Safari. Camino also includes some handy “Annoyance blocking” features, like the ability to block all ad banners and keep sites from moving or resizing the browser window (yay). Unlike Safari, you can allow certian sites to bypass the popup blocker. You cannot, however, resume paused downloads. Camino also lacks RSS feed support, a feature increasingly common in browsers. And even though it is Cocoa-based, Camino inexplicably lacks the Cocoa spell check tools (at least it has web form undo; Safari didn’t get that until version 1.3). But these are fairly minor quibbles at most.

Although Camino doesn’t have the most features (that title goes to OmniWeb 5), it is a very good browser. And at version 0.9, it is as full-featured as a number of browsers that are over version 1.0. In many respects, Camino is transparent. It isn’t especially flashy, but like the Mac OS itself, it gets out of the way and lets you do what you want. If you’re using something else and looking for an alternative, give Camino a try. It’s damn good.