Shiira
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| Shiira | |
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 Shiira showing the browser wars Wikipedia page |
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| Maintainer: | Happy Macintosh Developing Time |
| Stable release: | 1.2.2 (March 14, 2006) [+/-] |
| Preview release: | 2.0b2 (December 6, 2006) [+/-] |
| OS: | Mac OS X |
| Use: | Web browser |
| License: | BSD license |
| Website: | shiira.jp |
Shiira is a web browser for the Mac OS X operating system. According to its website, the goal of Shiira is "to create a browser that is better and more useful than Safari". Its Japanese designers crafted Shiira to use WebKit for rendering and scripting.
Shiira is open source, and its source code is released under the BSD license. The current version requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later. However, Shiira 2, which is currently in beta, will require 10.4. The project is led by mkino.
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[edit] Features and Performance
Since the browser is being developed with Safari in mind, the main characteristics of the two browsers are similar. For example, Shiira employs private browsing options to automatically delete history and cookies when selected. However, Shiira has enhanced many features of Safari to give Shiira its own feel. The search engines search field on the toolbar includes many search engines and is fully customizable, and tabbed browsing is very flexible, enabling users to, for example, reorder tabs by dragging, or select an option to refresh tabs when they are clicked. Shiira also takes advantage of Cocoa programming to provide users with a customizable drawer extending from the left or right of the window. The drawer contains bookmarks (which launch based on a user-programmed preference of one or two clicks), history, downloads (to avoid cluttering the screen with additional download windows), a unique page holder to access myriad links while surfing other sites, and an RSS reader. In the upcoming 2.x versions, the sidebar will be replaced by a series of palletes opened and closed from the main window toolbar. Shiira natively supports in-browser PDF viewing. The browser is of comparable stability and speed to Safari, making it among the fastest and most functional browsers for users of Mac OS X.
[edit] Style
Among the appealing features of Shiira are abundant appearance options. Users may opt to switch between Aqua or Metal styles. Tabs are customizable both in appearance and in the choice of which tab comes to the fore of the screen after closing a tab. Add-on icon sets come packaged with the initial download. Another visually attractive option is "Tab Exposé", which acts much like the Exposé feature of Mac OS X; each tab is visible in its totality, enabling users to select the tab to which they wish to navigate with ease. Shiira also has a page transition effect, which creates a page-turning look for navigation between any two webpages. The new interface in Shiira 2.0 (currently in beta) can be set to display tabs as thumbnails along the bottom of the screen.
[edit] See also
