CamiTools Editor's Review

'CamiTools' is one of the best add-ons for the Camino Web browser.

This package adds a lot of functionality to the browser mentioned above. It has both PowerPC and Intel Mac versions. However, the bad news is that this software currently isn't under active development, which means that it might not be compatible with the future versions of Camino. It only works with the 1.0.x versions of this browser.

I'll start by explaining what kind of features CamiTools adds. It adds a new Preference Pane into Camino's 'Preferences' panel. This pane gives you new features, such as a toolbar for a search engine editor, an image and script blocker, a flash blocker, as well as configuration options. It also allows you to pick a different browser style, it controls the browser's user profiles, and it has custom styles for your visited pages or synchronization of your bookmarks with a FTP server.

The toolbar search editor is a huge usability improvement. You can edit the search engines by editing the ~/Library/Application Support/Camino/SearchURLList.plist file. The method provided by CamiTools is faster and implies fewer headaches. I must say that this version is safe, but any incorrect editing of that file, might provide you a Camino that won't start.

The image, the flash, and the script blockers improve your browsing and security. These are some of my favorite features. I'm a person who prefers not to see every publicity banner from a Web site. I also like to have control over a script execution. Preferably, you should have script blocking turned on, when browsing sites that are not trusted.

The interface editor gives you more flexibility over the Camino's interface. You can pick a style from this list: Aqua, Unified, or Brushed Metal. This editor also allows you to turn off the status bar.

The profile editor is an interesting tool. It controls your user's profile. You can backup, restore, or create a new profile for your browser. Here you can access hidden settings of this browser. However, the producers warn you not to modify any values, unless you really know what you are doing.

The backup/restore list continues with the bookmarks. If you're tired of losing your bookmarks, because you forget to backup your bookmarks folder or because the hard drive crashes, then you have a solution. It's called backup onto a FTP/FTPS server. This backup works in synchronized mode. Meaning that either it can replace your files with the ones on the server or you can replace the files from the server with your bookmark directory. The backup folder from the FTP server should have write permissions in order to use this functionality. The support for FTPS (a secure transfer protocol) is great.

The first tab of the CamiTools preference pane gives you some interesting and very useful features. It gives you network options that improve the performance and lower the network traffic. You can also enable the 'Single window mode', which means that a hyperlink that targets to a blank page is opened into the same tab rather than into a new window. This feature could be improved a little by opening this kind of hyperlinks in new tabs rather than in the same tab.

Another interesting feature that can be found here is the 'Agent Spoofing' feature. Unfortunately, this is useful because there are Web masters who don't think very much and they just block the access of Web browsers that aren't in their permitted list. I had to pretend that I use Firefox several times to be able to access several Web pages.

Pluses: It improves the Camino's functionality a lot.

Drawbacks / flaws: The application currently isn't under active development, so it won't have support for the future versions of Camino. However, some of the provided features could be improved.

In conclusion: This combination: Camino, CaminoSession, and CamiTools can be a real competitor for browsers like Mozilla Firefox or Opera.

version reviewed: 4.6