With every other browser release being trumpeted, I thought I’d take the opportunity to help plug what is still my default browser, Camino.

They’ve released 0.8 beta, and it could use some pounding on to hammer out the last bugs for a final release. It uses the Mozilla 1.7 rendering engine, and it has a Google toolbar to keep up with Safari’s feature set. It still feels like it renders faster, though such measures are inherently subjective. Mainly I like it because the fast open source release cycle means that an annoying bug will usually be gone in a few nightly releases if it really irks me.

There are still some sites that give Safari problems, but most sites are Mozilla-compatible. I don’t see all the browser-widget funsies of Firefox, but it is an order of magnitude faster on the Mac.

I keep all these browsers (and many more) around on my computer, but for daily use I use Camino, switching occasionally to Safari. So thanks to Pinkerton for keeping Camino alive after its original author went to work for a fruit company.

There are so many good browsers on the Mac, it’s hard to choose sometimes, but I keep coming back to Camino. If you’re on a Mac, give it a try. If you’re not, don’t you wish you were?