More Monday Apps Silliness

Frustrated with Safari and Firefox? Camino doesn’t do it for you? No money to buy Omniweb?

Try Shiira.

The Shiira Project is a free browser based on Safari Web Kit, written in Cocoa (I’m superficial, but I don’t use Firefox too much because I love Cocoa goodness, not Carbon).

“The goal of the Shiira Project is to create a browser that is better and more useful than Safari.”

I’ve used it for a few days now, and have come away very impressed with it. For starters, you geeks can use cURL for your downloads, if you so desire. The bookmarks bar can be easily switched between Shiira’s, or to Safari’s or Firefox – so I was easily able to view my existing Safari bookmarks tab, del.icio.us bookmarklets, bookmarklets for ping-ing, and more. The bookmarks menu can also be set to Safari’s or Firefox’s but checking boxes in the preferences.

Shiira’s sidebar has three tabs: bookmarks, history, downloads, and a subtab of Download History. While I am no fan of sidebar implementation (especially in Opera) – this one is done very well – the sidebar pops out on the left or right (as you have defined); in that way you are used to in many native Mac apps.

I transitioned to this browser seamlessly because it doesn’t require me to change the way I use a browser – since I used Safari mainly. (Your mileage may vary, if you’re Firefox-first.) My shortcuts remained the same. The plugin I use, SafariStand, continued to function, such that I would do what I normally do in Safari – type “g search term” in the location bar for a Google search, hit comma to go to the previous tab, and period for the next tab. CocoaGestures, which I can’t live without, works too (duh, since Shiira is Cocoa).

There is a feature called Tab Expos which does for the browser what Expos does for the desktop – have all your available tabs split open. While this is a neat idea, it was rather laggy, or perhaps we just can’t stop comparing it to the speed of Expos.

This browser is speedy, not ugly, and a joy to use. Try it today!