Firefox 0.9 and Camino 0.8b

june 17, 2004

Update: 6/19/2004 As seen in the comment below from Mike Pinkerton (Camino project lead), the redraw bug has been fixed by him this week and "it will be in 0.8final which should show up next week or so." This is some great news, I will prepare to switch back over to Camino now! I can't wait to get Camino 0.8 final next week. I know it is tough to develop a large application like a web browser -- and even more so when one is developing on their free time with a small band of developers. I give lots of praise to the developers of Camino for their hard work. It is a wonderful browser and I really like how it looks like a true-to-life Mac OS X application. The only problem is that it still has the redraw bug. Many people say that Apple introduced this bug into the OS when it upgraded from 10.2.x to 10.3.x. I would not be one to argue, except for the fact that Firefox for Mac OS X does not seem to have the same problem. Are they done totally differently with respects to the way that they render to the screen? The nasty bug does not seem to exist with Firefox and hasn't ever shown up. Somehow it continues to plague Camino. The redraw bug is one that can drive one practically nuts. Here is what happens. If I am surfing a page and I start to scroll around while the page is still loading, a strange phenomenon happens: The screen breaks up into blocks and seems to scramble itself; as if Camino broke the screen down into a mosaic while rendering. This has been happening for the longest time now, I have tried and tried to use Camino with this bug resident, but I have given up now. I hate how this bug affects my surfing experience -- it is especially bothersome because it happens when tabs are loading in the background. Again, this does not seem to happen with Firefox, only in Camino. I read that the Camino development team is aware of the redraw problem and are not planning on fixing it -- they are saying that Apple should fix it on their end since it is related to the OS and not the application. All I have to say is that with Firefox 0.9, even with the funky non-Mac OS X widgets and the new theme, it works just fine. I want to use a Mozilla browser. The suite is too large for me. Firefox has non-native widgets. Camino would be the perfect Mozilla browser for me except for that redraw bug. I will keep my eye on Camino and try it out from time to time. But, unless that redraw bug gets addressed, it is hard to find a reason to use Camino for daily stuff. The experience is just not there.


<< back || ultramookie >>