I could disable its tab bar overflow ‘feature’, which as of the latest stable release is sub-par, anyways. The unreleased (in final form, at least) Firefox 2.0 already has such an option, albeit well-hidden, so I can’t see why its OSX-native cousin should be so sorely deprived.
Well, I guess I’ve gotten too used to Opera - the main browser on my desktop PC. The Firefox window I keep handy on my secondary monitor (for e-mail and such) has always been an emulation of the browsing experience I love most. I’ve employed all sorts of hacks and extensions to give the ‘fox an operatic feel. This includes, not in the least, the absence of tab overflowing, the presence of which I find a hassle in my frequent multi-tab browsing environment.
I’ve been using the excellent OmniWeb as my primary browser on the Mac. Due to its unique way of handling tabs (which is very aesthetically pleasing, too), there is no such problem of tab overflow. However in some situations I require a second browser for a quick surf, and Camino largely fits the bill with its small footprint and blazingly fast operation (I find the OSX versions of Opera and Firefox to be excessively clunky, and the incomplete OSX integration make them look ugly).
But even on a second browser, I want the option of turning this tab overflow off. My iBook has quite a low resolution in comparison to my desktop screen, and the presence of even a few open tabs causes the more recent ones to clump up in an inaccessible mess off the tab bar. This causes me to resort to playing a guessing game to select a specific tab.
I’ve read of some attempts to rectify this bad behaviour on Camino’s part: the Google Summer of Code project has made quite good progress, although not quite to my liking, as the solution employed to improve the tab bar seems to be a pair of Firefox 2.0-esque overflow buttons. Rather ominiously, the request to ‘Turn off any overflow interface.’ has been labelled ‘WONTFIX‘. Why not?
Fix this and I’ll have no more major qualms. Camino is elegant, fast in browsing and in launching, handles page rendering very capably, and is very stable. A robust tab implementation would make me consider it as possibly the best browser for OSX, right up there with OmniWeb.
Oh, Camino should also implement as-you-type spellcheck in its text boxes a la OmniWeb. That’s a true-blue OSX feature, right there. Perhaps it requires the use of Apple’s WebKit, though - but I’ve heard that the new revisions of Gecko, the ones used in Firefox 2.0, have such a built-in spellchecker.
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Camino would be near perfect if it was based on Webkit rather than Mozilla. Webkit is just plain faster than Mozilla, so Safari and OW will always perform better on the Mac. If Omniweb would upgrade its awful RSS support, I would use it full-time.
Perhaps. But it’s good to have variety. There’re already quite a few Webkit-based browsers. Shiira’s another fine example.