12/29/2023 0 Comments Shiira web browser gameHowever, on a larger monitor, I can see how the Drawer could come in very handy, and if used in conjunction with tabbed browsing, is an ideal situation for power users. Unfortunately, I don’t use the Drawer too much because it takes up precious real estate on my iMac’s little 1024x768 display. It’s a very handy feature, and allows you get at a lot of info with little more than a click and glance. Shiira uses the Drawer to display your bookmarks, history, and downloads. The Drawer is just what its name implies, a little drawer-like window that slides out from the side of your current document window. I’m a bit ambivalent myself, though I can certainly see the advantages. The Drawer is one of the more “controversial” additions of Mac OS X, and people seem to either love it or hate it. One thing that Shiira does quite well is its implementation of the Drawer. You can also add as many as you want, and hop between them. However, you’re not stuck with just Google by default, you can also use Webster, Thesaurus.Com, and Dictionary.Com, to name a few. Like Safari and Firefox, Shiira has implemented a Google search bar into the browser. And you can also turn off the display of favicons, those little icons that sometimes appear in your Favorites window. The default theme isn’t terribly great, so I highly recommend downloading and installing Jon Hick’s browser theme (installing new browser themes is a piece of cake). Second, you can use browser themes to modify the toolbar icons. Brushed Metal is more Panther-esque but I prefer the softer, smoother Aqua. First, you can select between the “Aqua” and “Brushed Metal” textures for browser windows. ![]() You can also change the browser’s appearance, in one of two ways. You can also set the tab width to be set by the tab’s name otherwise, all tabs are the same width (this is what I prefer). You can tell Shiira to display the previously selected tab, or the tab to the right of the just-closed tab (which is Safari’s method). For example, you can set how you want the tabs to behave when you close one. Some of Shiira’s tab controls do take a little getting used to. ![]() It sounds like a little thing, but it’s very cool and handy. And while the tab implementation looks like Safari’s, Shiira one-ups Apple’s browser by allowing you to reorganize your tabs. Like Safari (and every other browser worth it’s salt out there), Shiira employs tabbed browsing, perhaps one of the coolest developments in the browser world ever. Doing a side-by-side comparison of the two with the Activity Monitor reveals that Shiira does, in fact, use slightly fewer system resources than Safari. ![]() For starters, it feels quite a bit quicker, especially when doing simple tasks like browsing the history. However, there are certain areas in which Shiira actually improves upon Safari. And since it’s fully Aqua-ized (unlike, say, Firefox, whose form widgets have a distinctly non-Mac look to them), it’s as pretty as any fully-fledged Mac app. But that shouldn’t be too surprising, seeing as how they both use Web Kit, Apple’s suite of tools for displaying web content. Perhaps too similar, based on some of the comments I’ve seen in discussion forums. The second thing you’ll notice, once you’ve installed Shiira, is that it’s very similar to Safari in terms of look and feel. (Note: Shiira is only available for OS X 10.3 Panther or higher.) In this day and age of bloatware, that’s a very encouraging sign. The first thing you’ll notice when you download Shiira is that the DMG file is under 2MB in size. ![]() Although Shiira is still in beta and has a few interface bugs and inconsistencies, it’s incredibly well-formed and has a great deal of promise. I’ve been using the latest version (as of this writing), 0.9.3, as my primary browser at home for the past week or so, and have been very impressed. Safari - Apple’s own browser, and my personal fave.Īnd now you can add one more to the list: the Japanese browser Shiira.OmniWeb - A Mac-only browser with a pretty dedicated following.Opera - One of the first alternative browsers.Camino - A Mac-optimized browser built using Mozilla’s codebase.Firefox - The open source, Mozilla-based browser currently getting so much press, thanks to IE’s security failings.Mozilla - Netscape’s open source browser suite.Internet Explorer - Which is no longer being developed by Microsoft.games), you can’t say that Mac users don’t have enough options when it comes to web browsers.Īs of right now, there are several competent web browsers for the Mac: And while that’s still somewhat true today in certain areas (i.e. This review is here primarily for archival purposes.īack in the day, one of the common criticisms levelled at the Mac was that its software library was incredibly limited - especially when compared to the gigantic library that existed for the Windows platform.
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