Even though Camino is doing very well, I finally decided to switch to Firefox in order to use the PwdHash extension (as previously discussed).
I'm not loading up on too many plugins though, just PwdHash and Translator which tempted me before (I use Firebug and Web Developer in my development profile).
I've created a main profile and a development profile for Firefox, and I can run both at once as separate Firefox instances. This is pretty nice. The "how to" for this has been covered by others, but I'll touch on the basics here as well:
Step 1. Create an additional profile. Launch Firefox from the command line (Terminal.app or iTerm) by typing in the following:
/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox --profilemanagerThis will give you the profile manager where you can create another profile.
Step 2. Click to launch Firefox and you'll be prompted to choose a profile to use. However to launch another instance with a different profile, you'll need to use the command line again:
/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -P your-profile-nameStep 3. Optional - set up command line aliases for launching Firefox with a specific profile. You do this by editing the .profile file in your user directory. Mine is at: /Users/aking/.profile.
alias ffm="/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -P main"
alias ffd="/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -P dev"Now I just type 'ffm' or 'ffd' in iTerm and Firefox launches with the profile I want.
I'm using the GrApple (Eos) theme for my "browsing" profile. I like the tab treatment, but I miss the favicons in the bookmarks toolbar. Using different themes for the different profiles helps avoid visual confusion.
I do miss a couple of things about Camino. Camino was smart enough to know if the current tab was empty or not and either use it or create a new one when I opened a bookmark using LaunchBar.
- Create tab.
- Open bookmark via LaunchBar.
Camino would load the bookmarked URL in the tab I'd just created while Firefox opens another. This behavior isn't really wrong, just one of those little things to get used to with a different tool.
I also miss the standard "up arrow" to go to the beginning of a line in a text field and "down arrow" to go to the end of the line. It's stuff like this that keeps Firefox from really feeling like a native Mac OS X application (though it is steadily improving).
Another little thing I discovered in Firefox - by default the Backspace key acts as a back button. This is just horrible default behavior and I'd love to get my hands on whoever added this to IE in the first place. Luckily, you can turn this off in Firefox. Go to about:config, and set browser.backspace_action to 1. At least, that worked for me - I didn't actually take the time to see what the values meant for it. 
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PatrickQG adds this Comment:
Another little thing I discovered in Firefox - by default the Backspace key acts as a back button.
That’s true of all of the browsers on my machine: Safari, Camino, Firefox (both mac and windows), and IE7.
February 12th, 2007 at 11:34 am
Alex adds this Comment:
Hmm, I think I didn’t notice this in Camino or Safari because they show the field focus better than Firefox (so I didn’t hit Backspace except while in fields).
February 12th, 2007 at 11:37 am
PatrickQG adds this Comment:
The lack of the OS X input focus in firefox is yet another “Doesn’t look right” thing.
February 12th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
Brian Blood adds this Comment:
I ran Camino for a long time, then started having issues with it not wanting to draw the contents of a page or an image to the window. I would have to reload a page 3-4 times before it would come up.
So I switched to FireFox and that was ok. Definitely has some issues and I miss the Keychain integration.
I’ve since settled on a compromise:
- for general usage and browsing, I use Camino.
- for stuff I’m developing on, I use FireFox with Firebug.
Seems like a decent balance.
February 12th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
Alex adds this Comment:
That’s what I’ve used (Camino for surfing, Firefox for dev) for the last ~5 years or so. I wasn’t willing to make the switch unless I could still keep a “development” profile in Firefox.
February 12th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
Geof F. Morris adds this Comment:
I guess that, for me, having a OS X-acting browser has never matched Firefox’s extensibility for me. I know why Camino isn’t as extensible as FF [and why it never may be], but its featureset has never made it attractive to me. [Add into this the fact that I’m stuck on PCs at work and use FF there, so I like having the same general interface across platforms.]
February 12th, 2007 at 7:13 pm