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Migrating from Firefox

Are you a Firefox user who’s looking to try Camino for the first time? Or maybe you’ve already tried Camino and are ready to make the switch? Below are some helpful tips and tricks to make the move easier.

Migrating from Firefox

Please note: any third-party utilities listed here are for informational purposes only; the Camino Project does not maintain or endorse any third-party utilities.

Migrating Your Firefox Profile

Bookmarks

Camino can import your Firefox bookmarks. If you are using Firefox 3 or newer, you will first have to export your Firefox bookmarks to HTML format. Choose Organize Bookmarks… from Firefox’s Bookmarks menu and then click the rightmost toolbar button. In the menu that appears, choose Export HTML… and save the bookmarks.html file in a convenient location. In Camino, choose Import Bookmarks… from the File menu, select Select a file… from the drop-down menu in the window that appears, and select the bookmarks.html file you exported from Firefox.

If you are using Firefox 2 or older, simply choose Import Bookmarks… from Camino’s File menu and select Mozilla Firefox 2 from the drop-down menu in the window that appears.

For more information on importing and working with bookmarks, see our documentation on bookmarks.

History

Camino and Firefox (2.0 and older) share the same history file format, so you can copy history.dat from your Firefox profile into your Camino profile. Your Firefox profile is located in ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/profilename/ (where ~ is your Home folder and profilename is the name of your Firefox profile, which is often a string of random characters), and your Camino profile is located in ~/Library/Application Support/Camino/.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to import History from Firefox 3 or newer at this time.

Cookies, Cookie Permissions and Blocked Servers

If you have a collection of cookies, cookie permissions (whether a site can set a cookie, or if the cookie should expire on quit, etc.) or other “blocked server” options, you can copy cookies.sqlite and permissions.sqlite from your Firefox (version 3 and newer) profile into your Camino profile.

Custom Styles

If you have defined a set of custom styles in userContent.css, you can copy that file from your Firefox profile’s chrome folder to your Camino profile’s chrome folder.

Preferences

While Camino and Firefox share some preferences and it is possible to copy your Firefox preferences file to your Camino profile, we strongly recommend against doing so. Most significant preferences are not shared, and some Firefox preferences may cause Camino to work improperly. We encourage you to explore Camino’s Preferences window and set the preferences to your liking.

Passwords

Camino saves passwords in the Mac OS X Keychain, while Firefox stores passwords in its own proprietary database. There is currently no way to import passwords from this database.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Because Camino is a Mac-only browser, its keyboard shortcuts tend to be more in harmony with Mac OS X than those of Firefox, which seems to favor keyboard shortcuts that make more sense to Windows users.

A full list of Camino’s keyboard shortcuts can be found on our Keyboard Shortcuts page, but some of the most significant are listed below:

  • Bookmark Current Page… - Command-K
  • Bookmark Current Tabs as Tab Group… - Command-Option-K
  • Downloads - Command-Shift-D (opens/focuses Downloads window)
  • Email Page Location - Command-Shift-L
  • Home - Command-Shift-H
  • Page Setup… - Command-Shift-P
  • Search the Web… - Command-Option-F
  • Show All Bookmarks - Command-B
  • Show History - Command-Y
  • View Source - Command-Option-V

If you would prefer to use some other keystroke for a certain menu item, you can use the standard Mac OS X method of customizing keyboard shortcuts, the “Keyboard & Mouse” pane of the System Preferences. For information on how to change keyboard shortcuts using this method, please see this entry in our FAQ.

Alternate Behaviors

Command-1 through Command-9 Keyboard Shortcuts

While Firefox uses ⌘1 through ⌘9 to switch to tabs, Camino (like Safari) uses ⌘1 through ⌘9 to open bookmarks and tab groups in your Bookmark Bar. You can install the third-party add-on FireTabs to make Camino switch tabs rather than open bookmarks when you use these shortcuts.

Context Menus

Context menus in Camino, like in other Mac applications, are activated by holding down the ctrl key while clicking, or by right-clicking with a multi-button mouse. (This is how Mac applications have behaved since 1998.) The only exception to this rule is the “session history menus” on the Back and Forward toolbar buttons; clicking and holding these buttons will bring up a menu with the pages in the forward or backward history.

Find-As-You-Type (FAYT)

Camino supports searching as you type, but you must press the forward slash ( / ) key to activate FAYT mode. FAYT search information appears in the status bar. For more information about customizing FAYT, see the Hidden Preferences page.

Form Fill

Camino is capable of filling in non-password forms on websites using information from your “Me” card in Address Book. To fill in web forms, choose Fill Form from the Edit menu (or use the corresponding keyboard shortcut, or add the optional Fill Form toolbar button to your toolbar).

Camino of course fills in login and password forms using information saved in your Keychain, including information saved by other applications that support the Keychain.

Location Bar Search

Camino’s default behavior for non-URLs entered in the location bar is to construct a URL; for example, if you type nytimes in the location bar and hit return, Camino will visit http://www.nytimes.com/.

In Firefox the default behavior in this case is to run a search using Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” search. If you are fond of this behavior, you can configure Camino to mimic Firefox by setting the appropriate Hidden Preferences: set keyword.enabled to true and set keyword.URL to http://www.google.com/search?btnI=I%27m+Feeling+Lucky&q=.

Extending Camino

Because Camino is developed using native Mac OS X technologies and toolkits, it is not as easily (or as infinitely) customizable as Firefox. However, most popular Firefox extensions have Camino analogues, and many Firefox features are already present in Camino, even if some are not enabled by default (see the Hidden Preferences page for more about the latter). In addition, Camino 2.1 supports a custom method of installing some Firefox extensions that consist solely of a JavaScript XPCOM component (such as Google Analytics Opt-Out).

Camino includes a limited official mechanism for creating add-ons, known as “third-party preference panes.” There are a number of third-party add-ons that take advantage of this mechanism. There are also a number of add-ons that do not use this official mechanism.

There are also a number of third-party themes for Camino which may change the appearance of toolbar icons and tab widgets.

Please note that none of these add-ons are supported or endorsed by the Camino Project; in addition, add-ons might not use the supported mechanism, may become outdated, and may break Camino.

PimpMyCamino (run by Jon Hicks, of PimpMySafari fame and creator of the Firefox icon, and Camino theme wizard David Feare) is your one-stop shop for Camino add-ons including preference panes, themes, and other software that interacts with Camino.

A few popular Firefox extensions and their Camino analogues are listed below, but be sure to visit PimpMyCamino to see the ever-expanding world of third-party Camino add-ons.

If you’re interested in developing Camino preference panes, visit the documentation in the Camino Wiki.