The tweet says it all: I’m back using Camino after switching to Safari when version 5 was released back in July.
Although I appreciate Safari’s speed while browsing, and the variety of extensions on offer was wonderful to see, there was one problem that drove me back to Camino: crashes and beachballs.
Safari 5 just wasn’t as stable for me as Camino had been before it. It could be the extensions causing problems, of course. I only had about six or seven in use, but I have seen reports elsewhere of people finding things working more smoothly if they disable extensions. But since it was the extensions that enticed me to Safari in the first place, the answer is simple: I might as well go back to Camino.
Now I’m back using Camino and despite not having so many extensions to hand, I think it’s a more comfortable browsing experience.
One of the great things about Camino is the way you can assign text shortcuts to bookmarks and bookmarklets. In some cases, if you can find the right bookmarklet in the first place, this does just as good a job as some of the Safari extensions I was using.
Another great thing about Camino is stability. It happily handles many tabs in many windows, and in my experience typically demands about half the memory that Safari needs.
If you’ve been having problems with Safari and want to try an alternative, I recommend Camino, and will probably keep doing so for the foreseeable future.
