If you like Safari, you'll like Shiira

Since we're talking about browsers today, I thought you might be interested in checking out a happy little "accident" called the Shiira Project. Shiira is a web browser based on Web Kit and written in Cocoa. The goal of the Shiira Project, says the author, is to create a browser that is better and more useful than Safari. Since Shiira uses the same rendering engine used by Safari pages look the same in both browsers. Even better, right now Shiira shares your bookmark environment with Safari so you can switch back and forth between both browsers while you try it out without having to worry about syncing bookmarks between the two.

So basically, what we have in Shiira is a web browser that looks and acts pretty much like Safari. So why bother? Well there are a few neat tricks Shiira can do that Safari can't. You should check out some of the feature list screenshots when you have a minute. The coolest one is "Tab Expose." Tab Expose is exactly what it sounds like... it uses Expose (preset to F8 by default) to tile all open browser tabs instead of just browser windows. It's a surprisingly handy feature that I implore Apple to add to Safari itself. Are you listening, Dave Hyatt?

Some background on the Shiira Project from the developer: "At first I was just trying to create a simple test application using Web Kit. I only intended to use Web Kit as the reference platform for a small and simple program. But I couldn't stop working on it and the application continued to grow bigger and bigger, far beyond my initial expectations. I've now changed my mind and decided to initiate a project to develop a full-featured web browser."

Shiira 1.0 is out now for Tiger/Safari 2.0 and Shiira 0.9.4 and 0.9.5 are for use with Panther/Safari 1.2/1.3. It's free and released under a revised BSD license.

If you're interested in checking out other alternative browsers - or reminiscing about browsers long gone, keep an eye on Darrel Knutson's Mac Web Browsers Past & Present page which keeps a pretty thorough list.

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