Mozilla Readies Mac Browser's Second BetaMozilla Readies Mac Browser's Second Beta

Mozilla Corp. released the second beta version of Camino, the native Mac OS X browser, Monday to fix several bugs and add changes to bookmarks, tabs, and downloading.

Camino beta 2, which runs on Mac OS X 10.2 or later, shares a code base with Firefox 1.5, Mozilla's better-known browser, and uses the same Gecko HTML rendering engine as Firefox.

"This version of Camino 1.0 Beta 2 is close to its final shipping state," said Mozilla on the Camino site. "It is usable on a day-to-day basis, but you may still experience bugs or features that are not complete. That said, this beta is replacing 0.8.4 as the stable release on all systems 10.2+."

Mac owners using OS X 10.1 should stick with the older Camino 0.8.4, Mozilla advised.

Among Camino's improvements, Mozilla highlighted enhancements to the browser's rendering accuracy and speed, history management, and support for plug-ins.

With Microsoft recently urging users of its long-defunct Internet Explorer for the Mac to switch, Camino and other Mac-specific browsers have an opportunity to gain market share. Microsoft ended all support for the Mac version of IE on Saturday, and will pull the download from its site Jan. 31.