Camino vs. Firefox: What's the difference?

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jason2811

macrumors 6502a

Original poster

• Jul 12, 2006

• #1

I have been wondering what is the difference between Firefox and Camino. I know that they are both made by Mozilla but what is the difference between them? Which is better? Why would Mozilla make two different browsers? Thanks.

 

Monkaaay

macrumors 6502

• Jul 12, 2006

• #2

Camino is a Mac OS X only browser developed by Mac OS X developers on Mac OS X. Obviously Firefox has a larger audience. Camino is a bare bones browser not meant to be a full featured as Firefox. If you want extensions and themes, stick with Firefox.

 

MisterMe

macrumors G4

• Jul 12, 2006

• #3

jason2811 said:

I have been wondering what is the difference between Firefox and Camino. I know that they are both made by Mozilla but what is the difference between them? Which is better? Why would Mozilla make two different browsers? Thanks.

Click to expand...

Camino is a Gecko-based browser in a full-fledged MacOS X application. FireFox is a Gecko-based browser running as an XUL-based app. To most Mac users, the most notable difference is that FireFox accepts extensions, but Camino does not.

I have no idea what Monkaaay means by full-featured browser. The traditional meaning of the phrase referred to such browsers as iCab, Internet Explorer, Mosaic, Netscape Communicator, Netscape/Mozilla/Seamonkey, Opera, etc. The whole point of Firefox is that it is just a browser with non-Web functions functions removed. The one thing that FireFox has that no browser had before is extensions support. Camino follows much the same phiolosophy, albeit without extensions support.

 

lOUDsCREAMEr

macrumors regular

• Jul 13, 2006

• #4

Camino is mac only [no Windows, Linux versions + yada yada], more native [those super techie thingies that idk], cannot change the "skin" by default or add/remove extensions as you wish, has safari-like aquafied control buttons [vs Firefox's Linux/Windows-like control buttons], is a bit faster than Firefox.

thats what i know.

 

d wade

macrumors 65816

• Jul 14, 2006

• #5

ive been doing some reading and such. i was back and forth between the two. i ended up going with camino, and i like it so far. maybe one day i'll decide to download firefox too and give it a shot. for now i like camino alot.

 

Nermal

Moderator

Staff member

• Jul 14, 2006

• #6

Camino came first. In some ways, Firefox can be considered a cross-platform version of Camino. As such, it has a larger audience and therefore has extensions etc. that Camino lacks.

 

solaris

macrumors 6502a

• Jul 14, 2006

• #7

jason2811. The main difference is that Camino use Mac OS native Cocoa API's, while Firefox use a cross-platform XUL user interface. With the pro's and con's that follow each of them.
Hence Camino is Mac OS X only, while Firefox is available for most operating systems. Like Mac OS X, MS Windows, GNU/Linux, *BSD, etc...

Firefox is developed by the Mozilla Corporation, while Camino is not.
Camino is a community developed project, with no paid developers. Just like SeaMonkey..

Camino (Chimera) was released 6 months before Firefox (February 2002 vs. September 2002). So you better ask the Mozilla Corporation why they decided to develop a new Mac OS X browser when Camino already existed. 😉


Some reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camino
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FireFox

 

rockstarjoe

macrumors 6502a

• Jul 14, 2006

• #8

I'm a recent switcher. I love Firefox, but I want to give Camino and Safari a try. One thing I really like about Firefox is the ability to have all of my bookmarks in a bar on the left side of my browser window. I can't seem to figure out how to do this in either Camino or Safari... is it possible? Thanks.