Camino, the Mac-only web browser has been around since the early days of Mac OS X, when it began as Chimera.
It was the inspiration for Phoenix, which became Firebird, which became Firefox.
For those who don't remember, Netscape Navigator became Communicator with much more than just a web browser, and is now Sea Monkey. It became bloated with version 6, as they tried to create a better way to handle the web and its changes.
Camino came along just in time for many early users on Mac OS X. We had the laughable Internet Explorer 5.x, based on Spyglass' Mosaic, that wasn't really compatible with Internet Explorer-focused sites even. The OmniGroup brought us OmniWeb, which had been on NeXTStep for quite a while. That platform being where the web started.
Camino gave us Mozilla/Netscape compatibility in a very responsive browser. It was everything a Mac application should have been and showed the potential for the platform in ways that Apple's development never has. Of course, as the years have passed, there are very good releases of Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Chrome to supplant Camino.
I often tried Camino but as of Firefox 2.0, there was no further need for me. Yes, it was incredibly responsive in comparison to all of the other available browsers I tried, but stability was a major issue for me. As the team integrated changes from Firefox, Camino tended to crash more. Firefox wasn't incredibly stable at 2.x but it was better overall.
I tend to keep Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Chrome on my system and updated because there will be incompatibilities, even though they're minimal now. Firefox to me is as good as they come, but Chrome works well and Opera is no longer weird, and Safari is a browser you need to keep but may not ever use, except to change preferences for the browser.
In any case, I salute the developers and various testers of Camino. They made Mac OS X life so much easier way back when. May they find something even more interesting to keep them busy.
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