Via con Dodos, Camino.

September 25, 2014 8:59 PM

I've been holding onto the Camino browser as my primary web vehicle far past its sell-by date. Given a recent flash update and the impending modernity of mefi, it's time to find an acceptable substitute that will satisfy most, if not all, of all the features that i've grown so dependent upon.

Background:
I'm running OSX 10.6.8.
I have run down most of the non-chrome-safari-firefox browsers listed here. They range from massively slow/unstable to infuriatingly bad.
Things I find most irreplaceable about Camino:
The separate search window, with wikipedia, imdb, etc as addable options. Also, if I cannot add ddg as a search default, that there is a fatal default failure for the browser. I'm developing a severe google allergy as I get older. Therefore Chrome is right the fuck out, and I heartily dislike anything built off of it with its damnable omnibar.
Flash blocking/click to play.
Cookie micromanagement. I want to be able to decide, on a site by site basis, if I keep cookies for session, for ever, or never allow them in the first place.
Might be nices:
Adblocking is great in concept, but in practice I prefer to do as little management of this as possible.
In browser PDF viewing.
Lightweight browsers are fantastic, I don't run any applications in the browser so anything more is superFluidous.

So mefites, what still developed/unabandoned browsers are out there in the world for hardcore Camino devotees/dependents?

posted by Cold Lurkey to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

You might ask this question on the Camino forums.

You might also do a simple duck duck go search.
posted by blob at 9:30 PM on September 25, 2014

All those functions are handled by numerous browser plugins for Chrome, Firefox, or Safari. Camino is unsafe to use now, by the way, and there's a reason the above mentioned browsers dominate the market. Large user bases mean constant development and many add ons.

I use Chrome for everything but web development, for whicy I have Firefox specifically set up. I resisted at first Because Google, but frankly Chrome is simply the most capable tool for me. Safari has gotten much better in the last two or three years to the point that if I were starting from scratch I'd consider it, and given the virtues of handing off between mobile and laptop settings for me as an Apple ecosystem user I am using it more and more. But on the laptop I always end up using Chrome for any intensive web use, mostly because of its tab handling and my specific suite of ad blocking/tracker blocking/cookie management plug in tools just working. I still think it renders better and faster than Safari too, but that's just subjective I guess.

Definitely step away from Camino. It is really not secure anymore.
posted by spitbull at 1:09 AM on September 26, 2014

You can make Firefox do all of these things.
posted by oceanjesse at 4:19 AM on September 26, 2014

I much prefer Safari, as Firefox acts like a dick most of the time, and I don't trust the Google hegemony of Chrome. Please give Safari a go for several months and see what you think.
wow, Camino! I wonder if iCab is still an entity....
posted by BostonTerrier at 5:53 AM on September 26, 2014

For the searching thing, I don't know how Camino works at all so I don't know if this would be an acceptable substitute really, but I don't use the search bar thing to search in firefox. I search in the address bar using the keyword things to trigger other search boxes.

"imdb butts" pulls up an imdb search for butts
"def butts" pulls up a dictionary definition of butts
"syn butts" pulls up the thesaurus entry for butts
"wiki butts" pulls up the wikipedia page on butts
"gis butts" is a google image search for butts (you're welcome)

Really easy to set up (just right click in any search bar on any site and set up your keyword). You can even do one for metafilter! "mefi butts" will probably bring up a whole bunch of stuff from cortex!
posted by phunniemee at 5:54 AM on September 26, 2014

Best answer: Firefox has all these features built in except cookie micro-management, which you can get via an add-on. To enable Firefox's built-in Flash blocking, go to "Add-ons" manager, choose the "Plugins" tab, and change the setting for Shockwave Flash to "Ask to Activate." The UI is a little cumbersome (on purpose, since it's mainly designed to protect users against drive-by attacks through insecure plugins). There are a number of add-ons with more streamlined click-to-play UI.

Note: While Firefox and Safari don't include the same cookie micromanagement features as old Mozilla-based browsers like Camino, they do include features to block "third-party cookies." (They are blocked by default in Safari; the Firefox preferences window has a drop-down menu to enable blocking.) This blocks abuses like cross-site tracking cookies, while generally allowing benevolent cookies to work by default. You might want to give this a try, maybe along with an add-on like Disconnect that adds additional tracking protection.

Also take a look at SeaMonkey, a community-driven project based on the old (pre-Firefox) Mozilla source code, which is perhaps less polished than Firefox or Safari but includes more options built in (probably including many of the ones you are used to from Camino).
posted by mbrubeck at 8:41 AM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

Seems like Firefox is the obvious choice here.

Speaking of security, Snow Leopard hasn't received security updates in 7 months. Unfortunately, you're running an insecure operating system. It sucks, and I'm guessing you have older hardware. Most Apple hardware that supports Snow Leopard also supports Lion, which currently receives updates. However, they'll be retiring support for Lion any time now, and a lot of hardware can't go past Lion.

Your only real alternative is new hardware.
posted by cnc at 8:45 AM on September 26, 2014

Response by poster: All right, thank you mbrubeck, with your detailed instructions, I was able to get seamonkey to behave quite acceptably.
posted by Cold Lurkey at 9:22 AM on September 26, 2014