Shiira 2.1 - Major Improvements In This Pleasant Alternative Browser
Shiira, the little independent Web browser from Japan based on Apple's Safari WebKit, has roped me in with the latest version 2.1 release, which is based on WebKit 3, and is a giant leap improvement from version version Shiira 2.0b2 that I reviewed back in January. Shiira is now one of the fastest OS X browsers - if not the fastest - and has a genuinely innovative user interface and feature set that are as interesting as Safari and Firefox are dull.
Shiira still isn't perfect by any means. One of the things I love about Opera is that you can have a whole raft of pages loading in the background (over my snail-slow dialup connection), and the browser handles it with aplomb. No so with Shiira, which tends to just give up and stop loading if you pile on more than a couple of page loads.
Shiira is also not the most stable browser. Over the past few years using OS X browsers, I've found that browser crashes and lockups, which used to be so commonplace with Classic Mac OS browsers, have almost faded to a distant, unpleasant memory.
Not so with Shiira. It's not horribly unstable, but it does crash a lot more than Opera, the Mozilla browsers, or Safari, at least on my Pismo PowerBook running OS X 10.4.9, although I haven't had many (if any) crashes on my 17" G4 PowerBook under either 10.4.9 or 10.4.10. I have no idea why. The Pismo has the more recent fresh system and usually a lot fewer programs running, although it does get by with 640 MB of RAM, as opposed to 1.5 GB in the big iBook.
Also, Shiira has no session preserving function to pick up where you left off without reloading all your pages from scratch. Opera's implementation of this isn't 100%, since there's been a bug in Opera since somewhere in the version 8s that makes it more often than not necessary to trash the browser preferences and saved session data in order to restore the Hide function after an unexpected quit - or in some cases even after a normal and orderly shutdown. I simply can't stand not being able to hide an application, so this is not optional for me, but at least sometimes the session restore works.
By the way, Safari doesn't have session restore either, but it can be added (along with a bunch of other features) with the third-party add-on SafariStand, and it's a very nice implementation.
Shiira's Bookmarks implementation is also lame and clunky - I would say my least-favorite of any of the current major OS X browsers. Bookmark management is one area where the Mozillas are the class of the field - especially Camino. There is also no import bookmarks function implemented yet.
Another thing that bugs me about Shiira is its handling of PDFs. When you click on a PDF link, rather than downloading the PDF to your hard drive, Shiira opens a dialog looking for an open and read application. That would be sort of okay, except that it doesn't recognize Preview or PDF View or ToyViewer; instead it wants to open up leviathan and slow-starting Adobe Reader, and I usually don't want to waste the time waiting for it. On the other hand, you can save a webpage as a PDF from the File Menu in Shiira, which is convenient.
Those gripes notwithstanding, with each successive version release of Shiira 2.x, I've been more and more impressed with what a pleasant little browser it is to use. The Shiira user interface is charming, and functional, and this latest build is the fastest Shiira yet, which is to say very fast indeed.
With version 2, Shiira is undergoing a metamorphosis and developing a whole new interface that is unlike any other browser. It incorporates elements borrowed from many other browsers and synergizes them into what is arguably the most unique browser interface available.
Aside from speed, what I love about Shiira is that it just works (most of the time), is delightfully small (the compressed file for downloading is only 6.5 MB), and has some interesting features like a "Page Dock" thumbnail icon type tab bar displaying mini-previews of open browser tabs, which is located at the bottom of the browser window rather than at the side or along the top. This takes a bit of getting used to, but I actually like it now that I am, and it's resizable and the thumbnail bar can be banished and summoned by clicking a handy button at the bottom of the window.
Another very cool Shiira feature that I've never seen on any other browser is borrowed from Apple's Exposé playbook. Just click a button at the bottom of the browser window and all open tabs will be displayed, downsized appropriately to fit the screen space available.
Shiira has all the basic features I look for any modern browser, such as full support of OS X Services (still missing in Firefox), which means that I can export selected webpage content into Tex Edit Plus or DEVONthink with a menu selection.
Shiira 2 starts up really quickly, a nice change from Opera and the Mozillas.
The
Shiira "Shelf" is no longer a Cocoa shelf, but a pane that opens up
within the main browser window in which you can access Safari and
Firefox bookmarks, monitor and manage bookmarks, downloads, history,
and search engines.
There
is no conventional page load progress bar, but the "tab" thumbnail
icons gradually fill with blue as the page loads. This is actually
pretty cool once you get used to it.
In my last Shiira report, I complained that support for forms and pulldown menus on certain sites was spotty and JavaScript didn't work very well, if at all. Shiira 2.0 also had some serious stability issues. I'm delighted to report that there has been major improvement in all of these areas.
Will Shiira woo me away from Opera and the Mozilla fraternal triplets (Firefox, Camino, and SeaMonkey)? Not yet, to be sure.
However, having said that, since downloading Shiira 2.1 a month or
so ago, I have pretty much kept it up and running, and I tend to use
it more than any other browser except for Opera. If Shiira's
developer, Mr. Makoto Kinoshita, can fix the PDF download behavior,
improve the bookmarks implementation, and add a session restore
function, Shiira would be a very strong contender. In fact, it
already is. 
New in version 2.1:
System requirements: Mac OS X 10.4
Also available: Shiira 1.2.2 for Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later
System support: PPC/Intel
Free