Hi all. I've used camino off and on, mainly because I love the gecko engine. Though I always end up switching back to Safari because of it's wonderful integration with OS X and it's ease of use. I'd like to switch however, and there are some areas that could use improvement so I thought I'd share my experiences.
1) Make the google bar tab-accessable from location bar. I'm quite sure the developers know about this, but I'm reiterating it. 2) Make the navigation buttons easier to differentiate. The toolbar buttons in camino have several issues. 1) they are too complex. Take a look at Safari, or the Firebird nightly to get a basis for comparison. 2) They are also too similar. Each button is comprized of (at first glance) a white background with blue lines. I can barely make out a back, forward arrow until I actually focus in on the button. It's nice that someone took the time to make them pretty, because they certainly are. but they are busy, and the more time i spend figuring out which button i'm clicking the less time i spend browsing. In safari and firebird, there is no such problem. The buttons "pop out" at me that it's back, forward, home, stop, etc. 3) Let users close tabs directly ala Safari or Galeon. Having a close button on each tab (or even a close button at all!) means if i'm feeling like a lazy mouse user i don't have to touch the keyboard. i'm not trying to say one's faster than the other, merely that one can sometimes be more useful at a given time than another. For that matter, I just tested and the tabs just get smaller and smaller as you open more. This is a design flaw as well. This all really boils down to implementing your own tab widget ala safari, and i know i use it as an example too often, but they're right in this case. 4) Similar to the toolbar icons, the bookmark frame's icons are also too busy. Having a plus on each button is probably not necessary. Make buttons more prominent. 5) Standardize tab traversal. This is something that's starting to drive me nuts, and it's not a camino issue but a "general" browser issue. Camino uses Cmd+shift+[, Safari uses Cmd-Shift-Arrow, Mozilla uses Cmd-PageUp, Apple Terminal uses Command-Arrow. GOOD GOD. That's enough different ways to memorize how to go back and forth in a list of tabs/windows! I'm calling for everyone to revolt on this issue and demand developers to provide a way to specify the shortcuts for go one tab forward, and go one tab backwards. because obviously no one can agree on one way, at least let me specify what i believe is the right way (cmd-arrow). 6) Customize google bar. Firebird lets me add google images, imdb, dictionary, thesaurus. It's built into mozilla apparently. Maybe it works in camino too, but most users don't know where to look (i don't..). Perhaps provide a Get More... link at the bottom of the "select search mode" menu popup. 7) Toolbar bookmark links are TINY!. I don't have magnifying glasses handy :) Most specifically i'm talking about the menu pop-downs. The text in the toolbar bookmark menu pop-downs is noticably very small compared to safari or firebird. 8) Put import/export bookmarks where you manipulate bookmarks. I went to the new bookmarks window looking for a way to import my safari bookmarks for awhile. Took me way too long to realize it was in the Camino menu. At the very least these should be under the bookmarks menu. Well that's all i can notice at the moment. despite all that i think camino is a promising browser, but all of those usability issues are very annoying to the average day user. This wasn't meant as a camino bashing session, because camino is still ahead of safari in the most important aspect: it renders faster and more accurate thanks to gecko. It's just missing the ease of use factor that apple's so known for :) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing. http://photos.yahoo.com/ _______________________________________________ Camino mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mozdev.org/mailman/listinfo/camino
