Ok, I’m a power Instant Messenger user, at least specifically for AIM and slightly MSN. The more features the better *and I mean FEATURES not PROTOCOLS cough Adium* Anyway, I immediately saw the new AOL Desktop 1.0 for Mac had just been released today, so being tempted by a pretty screenshot and feature list, downloaded the file from their FTP site of all things. Now, let’s find out it didn’t last three minutes on my hard drive.

My first place to go before I download any application is the homepage so I can read the feature list and the “fine print” of the application. Anyone who downloads from MacUpdate knows that sometimes you just end up downloading demos of applications marked as “Free” and being extremely disappointed and cheated. Following my tradition I follow the link to AOL Desktop’s homepage. Not to bad, colorful, javascript, clean, etc. But wait, where is the real information about the application? The information they put on that page doesn’t even classify as a summary. Ignoring my instincts however, I download the DMG anyway.

Well, now the download is on my Desktop, and I open it just like any other file. It mounts successfully, and what do I find? A PKG FILE?!?!? Those files remind me of Windows, and I despise them with every fiber of my being, especially since it’s unneeded being just one .app file. 50 seconds totally wasted. I look at the icon of the app too and find that the registered trademark icon is in the bottom right corner, wow, even more disappointing.

After the harsh installation process, I open the installed application. Not a bad loading time, same old creepy welcome voice, same old YOU’VE GOT MAIL voice, same old, same old. The interface wasn’t too bad, and neither was the built in email client. Overall, everything was looking fairly well until I tried the AIM client. The contact list wasn’t too bad pretty standard for instant messenger clients these days. Then, disaster strikes. A friend IM’s me, I look at his profile, and disaster strikes. THERE’S AN ANIMATED AD ON THE BOTTOM OF THE WINDOW! This almost made me sick to my stomach, because even Microsoft doesn’t do that anymore. Then, I find that they don’t even have a decent history viewer for chat logs. After this huge disappointment, I go back to send an email, and find the same issue again: There’s an ad in the email viewer! This was enough for me, and immediately move the hideously implemented app to the trash.

AOL, please, learn something. Ads inside applications are totally 1990’s and people will not stand for them, not with applications like Trillian and Adium ad free, even Microsoft Messenger is ad free now too *at least for Mac.*

Everyone is well aware that there is a major war being fought among the popular web browsers, especially since the internet boom of the 2000s. This is a direct result of the popularity of the internet, as well as the introduction of free web browsers. Internet Explorer and Netscape ruled the ruled for a time, and the peace was unstable but lasting. Then, Netscape crumpled, giving birth to projects like Mozilla and eventually Opera, though indirectly (idea of a free, universal browser). Now a greater war is taking place, especially in the Mac community, the fight between browsers based on Gecko and WebKit. However, I’m not really interested in all this jazz, just interested in explaining why Camino is currently my favorite browser, and dispelling some myths about the browser.

First, lets give a definition of what Camino is:

Camino combines the awesome visual and behavioral experience that has been central to the Macintosh philosophy with the powerful web-browsing capabilities of the Gecko rendering engine.

So, if your like me who loves Mac OS X and loves Gecko, this is like a dream come true right? Well, some may wonder why I use Camino over Camino. The reason is pretty simple. I don’t need all those stupid add ons or themes, just a browser that’ll display websites, view media, and provide some pretty good features to boot. Firefox is bloated, ugly in Mac OS X (that’s suppose to change in 3.0 apparently), and does not have native widgets. Firefox honestly doesn’t offer any feature that Camino 2.0 alpha or Camino 1.6 does not offer:

• Website Search Engines in toolbar
• Feed Detection
• Automatic Updates
• Session Saving and Restoring
• Spell Checking
• Keychain support (if your a big password freak like I am this is a god-send)
• Camino also supports Applescripting, something still impossible in Firefox.
• Beautiful pop up and ad blocking features and options
• SPEED SPEED SPEED! *not however, on Javascript or Flash heavy sites, a quite noted downfall*

Now, personally, I think Camino also has much more versatility and features than Safari, or at least more control over them *got to about:config in the location bar and tell me what kind of control you have over the browser.* Not to mention the added features that CamiTools provides. *I won’t go into detail about all of them, but go to the devs site or download it and be amazed.*

Now, lets dispel some myths about Camino:

Camino doesn’t have Add-on support
Well, to a certain extent yes, but it does have Applescript and preference pane support, providing very similar features to add ons.

Camino doesn’t have theme support
Again, correct to a certain extent, but at PimpMyCamino you can download toolbar and tab images to change the appearance of the browser.

Safari has more plugins available for it!
Any input manager available for Safari has the capability of working for Camino *Flash, PDF viewers, etc.* AND, again at PimpMyCamino, even more plugins are available for Camino, not to mention Applescript support.

Camino scores a really low score on the Acid 3 test WAHHH!!!
Well, since the Webkit devs wrote most of that test…its not a valid judgement plus the Gecko rendering engine isn’t written to pass a test. Not to mention Safari 3.0 scores a 75/100, and Camino scores a 71/100, its not that big of a difference.

Camino’s interface is outdated for Leopard
Personal opinion I guess, but if it really is that out of date, change the icons and tab theme via PimpMyCamino.

Even with all these features, etc, people also need to remember why Camino was and remains, so special: It ported Gecko to use the Cocoa API, all native Alert panels, widgets, buttons, CustomViews, and a buildable Xcode project to boot. The class and view is called CHBrowserView. All of this was done for the Camino project, and is being used today to make Firefox more native in it’s alpha version 3.0.

I hope I cleared up some myths about Camino, and explained my viewpoint over the browser and why its my favorite. But then again, its a blog, so it could be all my opinion and fake, you never know ;). Just try the browser, with CamiTools and version 2.0a, and tell me what’s the best browser for your needs.

So, today I downloaded my latest nightly build of Camino, and naturally stripped it of its Intel architecture, like I always do. Suddenly, as I watch the list of stuff stripped goes by, I see something magical. I see a framework stripped titled “Sparkle”. GASP! SPARKLE SUPPORT! That’s right people, genuine future Sparkle support in the next version of Camino. Want proof? Here’s some screenshots:

Sparkle Shot 1

Sparkle Shot 2

Increasingly, many applications including Nemo have been advertising that they are, or clients of Newsgroup. This got me wondering what the heck is Newsgroup. Check this excerpt from Wikipedia.

A newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from many users at different locations. The term is somewhat confusing, because it is usually a discussion group. Newsgroups are technically distinct from, but functionally similar to, discussion forums on the World Wide Web. Newsreader software is used to read newsgroups.

Basically, its like a giant server full of discussions for things like businesses and internet groups. You can reply to discussions, administrate them, etc. It acts like a non-themed forum. It’s been around forever, designed for UNIX servers for businesses. The idea is a good one, but in this day and age, most would agree, they’d rather use a forum.

Back to Nemo though. It’s a beautiful new Newsgroup client for Mac OSX that is being actively developed. It features all the necessities for a good Newsgroup client, plus a beautiful interface, Google Group support, extras like tabs, smart folders, the power of WebKit, and Bonjour support for bookmarks in multiple web browser. Not bad for a program in 0.6 stages currently! The program is 15 €, and worth it if you use something along these lines.

*Click to enlarge