I always check out the latest versions of the various browsers, to see if any of them can pull me away from Safari.

While I've enjoyed the bells and whistles other browsers boast -- and Safari lacks -- I always come back to Safari primarily because of its superior speed in loading pages, but also in startup and displaying my long lists of bookmarks (in bookmarks folders in the bookmarks bar). I have a 5,000K cable connection (vs the standard 1,500K), so I can really see the difference in browser speed.

Importing my bookmarks to another browser from Safari just for testing was always a hassle. But more importantly, the prospect of moving them all back to Safari after a period of testing seemed daunting. And if I didn't, any changes to my bookmarks would get lost.

Camino is now the only browser I know of that addressed this issue head on. Through a menu choice, you can import from Safari AND export to Safari. So now, as I test out Camino, I don’t have to worry about loosing changes to my bookmarks if I decide to go back to Safari.

Besides being faster, Camino has far better cookie management than Safari. Camino also has built-in the send URL to email function. Currently, I need to use an external apple script for Safari to do this. Other than that, they appear remarkablely similar.

The only fly in the ointment is Camino still takes too long to load my big list of bookmarks. Safari used to have this problem, but it was remedied a few versions ago. What is particularly frustrating is that Camino appears to be done loading, but when I click on one of the bookmark folders in the Bookmark bar, I get the beach ball for what seems like an eternity.

Also, Camino doesn’t seem to do a constant job with obtaining and maintaining the mini site icons that appear next to the bookmark name.

These issues will likely be reason enough for me to go back to Safari. So, PLEASE, Camino Programmers, do what you can to better optimize the startup process for those of us with large bookmark lists, and fix how it handles those mini-icons.