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IronPen · Feb 21, 2005, 11:27 PM

Being that I like to play with applications, I downloaded the new nightly of Shiira, the OS X browser based on Safari. I've tried it before and found it promising, but severely lacking. Well, not anymore. Where to begin. I guess I'll tell you about the new feature only Shiira has: Expose' for tabs!!! You set the F-key of your choice and when pressed you get an Expose' of all of your tabbed windows. It's not a make-or-break-it feature, but a neat one. Try it out and I guarantee you'll be amazed.

SPEED. Oh, yeah. This is what Safari has lacked for a long time, and OmniWeb doesn't come close. This is on par, if not actually faster, than Camino and Firefox on my machine, and I have been a die-hard Camino user for a long time, especially with the latest nightlies.

What else does it have? Spellchecker (CTRL-click in the text box to turn it on). Favicon control. Agent spoofing. Automatic import of Safari bookmarks with the check of a box. Customizable toolbar. Themes. Print (Save) page as PDF in one click from the File menu. Search w/any number of several search engines, MacUpdate, Versiontracker, dictionary.com, thesaurus.com, and many more. In fact, you can highlight a word on a web page and CTRL-Click it to search the term in any number of these sites. Automatic image resizing (and you do NOT have to click on the image itself to enlarge or reduce its size, just click in the window...I hate having to reposition the cursor). More tab controls (for instance, you can have Shiira go back to your last-viewed tab when you close a tab, or the right-tab, like Safari).

My only complaint is with the download manager. It doesn't automatically open files. I like Camino's Download Manager most, as it will open files automatically, plus you can set the option to have it automatically close the download window when the download completes.

I used to have doubts about whether OmniWeb or Shiira could top Apple, but Shiira is showing me that you CAN have features AND speed in this beautiful cocoa browser based on Apple's own Safari code. It's my default browser after only 2 days use. I had a crash when setting up the preferences, but it's been stable since. It's fast and fun to use. You may want to give it a try.

echosphere · Feb 21, 2005, 11:44 PM

Holy shite! That's awesome! I also like the way you can change it to auto adjust tabs widths and presentation stye (I like the oval "pill" style better).

Thanks so much for this! The tabs Expose feature is worth it alone!!! I don' know how many times I've wanted to be able to quickly tab through tabs, and now this is even better.

This may be my default browser as longs as it's stable enough and renders decently.

Much thanks Again!

~Echo

Krusty · Feb 21, 2005, 11:45 PM

Wow, no kidding ... that tab-expose thing is very cool (though there was a bit of a delay when I had 8 windows open). The whole download is only 758k which means this thing is must be using the entire Safari/webcore functionality for nearly everything but with just a few twists on the interface (e.g. the expose thing and the mouse-clicable 'New tab' symbol to the right of the last tab). Still ... nice work

echosphere · Feb 21, 2005, 11:59 PM

It's 1.9MB when de-compressed, but still small and uses WebCore I believe....

Truly amazing....

The most fun is to set set your fav ten websites to "open in tabs" at the same time. Hit F8 and watch them unfurl.

LOL It's like watching ten TVs turn on with all different channels. AS EVERYTHING LOADS IN REAL TIME! If this is just a hint of where Jobs is taking us with Tiger. Thank god I'm along for the ride. This is THE best time to be Mac user!

It's geeky, but damn useful.

From the Shiira Project Website.

echosphere · Feb 22, 2005, 12:06 AM

Oh, damn, you can even re-sort the Toolbar icons any way you like by holding the Command key then dragging them. Man this rocks! Dave Hyatt needs to interview these developers!!

CharlesS · Feb 22, 2005, 01:15 AM

You forgot one of my favorite browser features - toolbar keywords, as seen previously in OmniWeb, Camino, and FireFox. You can type "g shiira" to do a Google search for Shiira. It has a whole bunch of search engines pre-defined, too!

I spent a little of my time making and submitting the patch that included this feature last summer, so you should all appreciate it, dammit!

kcmac · Feb 22, 2005, 01:23 AM

meh.

I'll stick with Safari. Some nice features no doubt but not a big fan of the toolbar icons. Not really any faster for me than Safari. Time Warner just upgraded our bandwidth for free and everything is faster now.

Good to see things like this however. Keep Apple on it's toes.

CharlesS · Feb 22, 2005, 01:35 AM

Originally posted by kcmac:
I'll stick with Safari. Some nice features no doubt but not a big fan of the toolbar icons.

It's skinnable.

I use this icon set:

http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/downloa...iira_Theme.zip

MaxPower2k3 · 02:23 AM

Nice little browser. I'll leave it in my dock for a while and see if it can take over for safari

2 things i've noticed: middle-click on a bookmark in the bookmarks bar should open it in a new tab. cmd+click does it, but middle-click is easier. also, it'd be nice to have an option to match the maximize behavior of Safari (800px wide or however wide is necessary to match the page width) rather than just filling the screen.

IronPen · Feb 22, 2005, 09:55 AM

Originally posted by echosphere:
Oh, damn, you can even re-sort the Toolbar icons any way you like by holding the Command key then dragging them. Man this rocks! Dave Hyatt needs to interview these developers!!

Oh, cool!! I hadn't even tried that. See, that's what's so cool about this browser. I'm finding new and useful features and eye-candy all the time, or in this case, you did. And I do like the "Image-frame style tabs"...nice!!! And yes, it runs on Webcore, which makes me wonder how it can be so much faster than Safari?

Millennium · Feb 22, 2005, 11:05 AM

I don't use Shiira or Expose, but it's neat to see this kind of innovation. I hope it continues in the future.

TETENAL · Feb 22, 2005, 11:13 AM

I'm not impressed.

a) I can't figure out how to do the tabs Expos�
b) I'm not going to use an application with such an ugly icon.
c) The toolbar icons are even uglier. Man this Shiira must be some really ugly kind of fish.
d) The German localization uses Windows terminology in the menus. Why? This isn't a Windows port is it? The only other apps that use Windows terminology are Adobe (because they are too cheap to make different localizations for Mac and Windows) and Microsoft (probably to spite Mac users, they don't even have cross platform apps)
e) Address bar and Google field are too small.

Overall this looks like a geek-browser to me.

Ilja · Feb 22, 2005, 12:13 PM

that's my main gripe with Shiira as well, it sure is a nice browser, but ugly as hell

CharlesS · Feb 22, 2005, 01:53 PM

Originally posted by TETENAL:
I'm not impressed.

a) I can't figure out how to do the tabs Expos�

You need to hit the F8 key. I realize this can be a complicated procedure, so I've written a handy little step-by-step for you:

1. Place your finger on the F8 key, so that it touches.

2. Gently apply pressure until the F8 key moves downward, into the keyboard.

3. Release the pressure, so the key pops back up.

4. Lift your finger off the keyboard.

b) I'm not going to use an application with such an ugly icon.
c) The toolbar icons are even uglier. Man this Shiira must be some really ugly kind of fish.

Like I said before, it's skinnable. You can get other icon sets for it.

d) The German localization uses Windows terminology in the menus. Why? This isn't a Windows port is it? The only other apps that use Windows terminology are Adobe (because they are too cheap to make different localizations for Mac and Windows) and Microsoft (probably to spite Mac users, they don't even have cross platform apps)

The author is from Japan, and isn't a native German speaker. Fortunately, Shiira is open source, so you can just download the source, make whatever changes you'd like to make, and submit them to the developer. If you just want to fix some wording in the localization files, you don't need to be a programmer to do this.

e) Address bar and Google field are too small.

How so? They're about the same size as Safari's fields.

Chuckit · Feb 22, 2005, 02:27 PM

Originally posted by IronPen:
Oh, cool!! I hadn't even tried that. See, that's what's so cool about this browser. I'm finding new and useful features and eye-candy all the time, or in this case, you did.

That's actually not a new feature. It's the standard behavior of Cocoa toolbars.

TETENAL · Feb 22, 2005, 03:13 PM

Originally posted by CharlesS:
You need to hit the F8 key. I realize this can be a complicated procedure, so I've written a handy little step-by-step for you:

Don't be a moron. Hitting the F8 key is not difficult. Knowing that you have to hit the F8 key is, when there is no menu command that tells you and no help files and the website doesn't document it either.
And by the way, it doesn't work. Hitting F8 does nothing.

Like I said before, it's skinnable. You can get other icon sets for it.

The author is from Japan, and isn't a native German speaker. Fortunately, Shiira is open source, so you can just download the source, make whatever changes you'd like to make, and submit them to the developer. If you just want to fix some wording in the localization files, you don't need to be a programmer to do this.

Or I could use an application that I like right out of the box. I'm not interested in skinning and customizing applications. And I lack artistic talent to make a better application icon.

How so? They're about the same size as Safari's fields.

Safari's is about 13 or 14 pixels text. Shiira's about 11 or 12 pixels. Makes a difference on 100 dpi displays if you don't have perfect vision.

paully dub · Feb 22, 2005, 03:27 PM

Originally posted by TETENAL:
Don't be a moron. Hitting the F8 key is not difficult. Knowing that you have to hit the F8 key is, when there is no menu command that tells you and no help files and the website doesn't document it either.
And by the way, it doesn't work. Hitting F8 does nothing.

ditto here. I'm on a powerbook, and F8 + fn doesn't do anything either.

And no, this feature doesn't seem to be documented anywhere. booo!!!

paully dub · Feb 22, 2005, 04:41 PM

Originally posted by TETENAL:
Don't be a moron. Hitting the F8 key is not difficult. Knowing that you have to hit the F8 key is, when there is no menu command that tells you and no help files and the website doesn't document it either.
And by the way, it doesn't work. Hitting F8 does nothing.

ditto here. I'm on a powerbook, and F8 + fn doesn't do anything either.

And no, this feature doesn't seem to be documented anywhere. booo!!!

Chuckit · Feb 22, 2005, 04:47 PM

Originally posted by TETENAL:
Don't be a moron. Hitting the F8 key is not difficult. Knowing that you have to hit the F8 key is, when there is no menu command that tells you and no help files and the website doesn't document it either.
And by the way, it doesn't work. Hitting F8 does nothing.

It's listed in the Window menu as "Show all tabs," and F8 is listed and does work � if you use the latest nightly, like the original poster said.

Originally posted by TETENAL:
Safari's is about 13 or 14 pixels text. Shiira's about 11 or 12 pixels. Makes a difference on 100 dpi displays if you don't have perfect vision.

You can adjust it in both...

CharlesS · Feb 22, 2005, 04:54 PM

Originally posted by TETENAL:
Don't be a moron.

Oh, the irony...

Originally posted by Chuckit:
It's listed in the Window menu as "Show all tabs," and F8 is listed and does work � if you use the latest nightly, like the original poster said.

There's also a setting in the preferences that lets you set what key to map it to if you want something other than F8. You know, just like Apple's Exposé preference pane...

Most of the complaints people have come up with in here have been just...

TETENAL · Feb 22, 2005, 05:00 PM

Originally posted by Chuckit:
It's listed in the Window menu as "Show all tabs," and F8 is listed and does work � if you use the latest nightly, like the original poster said.

There's no such command in 0.9.3 which is the version that supposedly includes this feature according to the Shiira website.

You can adjust it in both...

You can adjust the address field's text size in Safari and Shiira? Really?

You know, should you or CharlesS ever decide to give reasonably helpful replies instead of arrogant remarks, I won't even notice any more, since you're both on ignore for me now.

himself · 05:09 PM

I've been using Shiira off-and-on since I first heard about it a few months ago, and it was cool, just not really compelling. But this nightly build is really something nice. The tab-exposé is great (though a little rough at the moment), and I like how the little spinning sunflower on the loading tabs also indicate how much of the page has been loaded... clever! I really like how it handles downloads by placing them in folders named with the date... my downloads folder is a lot less cuttered. This will turn out to be one very nice browser once it is finalized. I do agree that the icon needs to change (but I can live with that).

edit: I hope they implement a snap-back feature like in Safari -- that's the only thing I miss right now.

Chuckit · Feb 22, 2005, 05:05 PM

Originally posted by TETENAL:
There's no such command in 0.9.3 which is the version that supposedly includes this feature according to the Shiira website.

I don't see that stated anywhere. At any rate, it's in the nightlies, not 0.9.3, which is about half a year old.

Originally posted by TETENAL:
You can adjust the address field's text size in Safari and Shiira? Really?

Misread. My bad.

Originally posted by TETENAL:
You know, should you or CharlesS ever decide to give reasonably helpful replies instead of arrogant remarks, I won't even notice any more, since you're both on ignore for me now.

That's fine. You clearly have issues anyway if you think my trying to answer issues you've brought up (with, to the best of my knowledge, completely accurate information and no personal attacks) qualifies as "arrogant remarks."

paully dub · Feb 22, 2005, 05:19 PM

Originally posted by Chuckit:
It's listed in the Window menu as "Show all tabs," and F8 is listed and does work � if you use the latest nightly, like the original poster said.

Oops, pwned!

Actaully kinda neat! I'll have to play with this a bit.

TETENAL · Feb 22, 2005, 05:24 PM

Originally posted by Chuckit:
I don't see that stated anywhere. At any rate, it's in the nightlies, not 0.9.3, which is about half a year old.

Well, the web-site has a heading "Shiira 0.9.3 released!" and under that a large image that says "TABS EXPOS�" so I figured that version 0.9.3 featured tabs expos�.

That's fine. You clearly have issues anyway if you think my trying to answer issues you've brought up (with, to the best of my knowledge, completely accurate information and no personal attacks) qualifies as "arrogant remarks."

A simple "It's F8 and only available in the nightly builds." would have sufficed. The "how to hit a key" tutorial was uncalled for.

Chuckit · Feb 22, 2005, 05:35 PM

Originally posted by TETENAL:
Well, the web-site has a heading "Shiira 0.9.3 released!" and under that a large image that says "TABS EXPOS�" so I figured that version 0.9.3 featured tabs expos�.

Ah, I see. I think he just hastily threw the screencap up under the app description rather than meaning for it to be taken as part of the feature list.

Originally posted by TETENAL:
A simple "It's F8 and only available in the nightly builds." would have sufficed. The "how to hit a key" tutorial was uncalled for.

That was the other Charles. My response basically amounted to "It does work, it's F8 and it's only available in the nightly builds."

TETENAL · Feb 22, 2005, 05:45 PM

Originally posted by Chuckit:
That was the other Charles. My response basically amounted to "It does work, it's F8 and it's only available in the nightly builds."

I thought you were tuning in with your "It's easy to change in both" instead of telling people how to do it. Sometimes it's hard to find a command even if for others it's clearly at the correct place. That doesn't make one an idiot.

It was all a misunderstanding and I shouldn't have said arrogant. Sorry for that.

CharlesS · Feb 22, 2005, 06:17 PM

Originally posted by TETENAL:
A simple "It's F8 and only available in the nightly builds." would have sufficed. The "how to hit a key" tutorial was uncalled for.

It was a joke. A sense of humor can come in handy sometimes...

I didn't realize you hadn't downloaded the nightly (like the original poster said to do). I thought you had simply decided that the shortcut wasn't shown anywhere, without bothering to spend 10 seconds looking around first.

lavar78 · Feb 22, 2005, 07:40 PM

Originally posted by CharlesS:
You forgot one of my favorite browser features - toolbar keywords, as seen previously in OmniWeb, Camino, and FireFox. You can type "g shiira" to do a Google search for Shiira. It has a whole bunch of search engines pre-defined, too!

I prefer using Quicksilver to handle searches like that.

- - e r i k - - · Feb 22, 2005, 08:01 PM

Nice, I really like it. With the small-sized Hicks-icons installed and set to brushed metal it looks nice (although I wish I had true safari-style icons). The only thing I would change is the bookmark bar. No need for folder icons there. Wish it was more like safari really, it got the UI-look down.

However, for actual features I love Shiira. The tab-handling is perfect here! And it does seem a bit faster when it starts rendering earlier than Safari (but then again, you can turn that delay off with 3rd party utilities there and it's faster still in Tiger).

Now they only need PithHelmet-style ad-blocking as well

monkeybrain · Feb 22, 2005, 08:14 PM

It seems pretty good. But it needs more to stop me using Camino. It doesn't seem to have forms autofill to start - that would make me switch. Also having that draw as a sidebar would be much better and far less annoying.

Scrolling is really really slow, slower than Safari even; compared to Camino it's like it's a zombie or something.

And for it to be considered my most Mac people, they need to overhall that default icon set (personally I hate the Safari style buttons and always prefer the old Omniweb or Camino style). And using the small size URL and Google search seems like an odd choice - ok for when you choose to use small toolbar, but otherwise it just makes things look a bit odd.

CharlesS · Feb 22, 2005, 08:26 PM

Originally posted by - - e r i k - -:
(although I wish I had true safari-style icons)

They've got a Safari icon set here:

http://hmdt-web.net/shiira/icon-e.html

I like the Hicks icons better, though.

echosphere · Feb 22, 2005, 08:37 PM

Right, the scroll is not that good, and while some pages render lightning fast, others crawl.

But then, is it just me, or does Safari seem like it's slowing down with every point release? Maybe it's just me.....

CharlesS: I got your humor, and I thought it was damn funny. Keep them rollin'.

philcozz · Feb 22, 2005, 08:37 PM

Don't forget draggable tabs... Just click on one and move it around the tab bar.

Here's the icon set I'm using:

Shiira

IronPen · Feb 22, 2005, 08:39 PM

Originally posted by TETENAL:
I'm not impressed.

a) I can't figure out how to do the tabs Expos�
b) I'm not going to use an application with such an ugly icon.
c) The toolbar icons are even uglier. Man this Shiira must be some really ugly kind of fish.
d) The German localization uses Windows terminology in the menus. Why? This isn't a Windows port is it? The only other apps that use Windows terminology are Adobe (because they are too cheap to make different localizations for Mac and Windows) and Microsoft (probably to spite Mac users, they don't even have cross platform apps)
e) Address bar and Google field are too small.

Overall this looks like a geek-browser to me.

You obviously didn't look at this browser very thoroughly.

a) It's in the Tab preferences.
b) Go to any number of OS X icon sites, such as xicons.com and download a different one, I did!
c) Duh! It supports themes, and there are several good ones, including Safari-style buttons in blue, graphite, clear, and green. Again, you spent no time looking for any of these features. In the preferences go to the Icons option and there is a button that takes you to Shiira's Icon archive.
d) Can't help you there, but this is NOT a Windows port. It's using Webcore.
e) I guess they are smaller than some other browsers, but no smaller than the text on many Web pages.

Wiskedjak · Feb 22, 2005, 09:01 PM

Wow, this is a zippy little browser! Makes Safari and even Firefox appear sluggish on my iBook 600. And it even imported my forum passwords from Safari! Won't take long for this browser to take Safari's place on my dock.

- - e r i k - - · Feb 23, 2005, 02:11 AM

Hmm, typing in a dialog box while the page is loading is majorly annoying though. It defocuses the box all the time. Especially since it seems to register an unmodified w to be command-w thus closing the window. Makes it impossible to use in the forums

- - e r i k - - · Feb 23, 2005, 02:14 AM

Originally posted by Wiskedjak:
Wow, this is a zippy little browser! Makes Safari and even Firefox appear sluggish on my iBook 600. And it even imported my forum passwords from Safari! Won't take long for this browser to take Safari's place on my dock.

The browser is NOT faster though. It just displays it's rendering sooner than Safari does (it has a built in delay to show a page after a second or two when it's more "presentable"). Since it's WebKit it's actually just as fast as Safari in total rendering speed, but will seem faster because it displays pages sooner. This may or may not be an advantage depending on your connection, but most will perceive it as being faster.

IronPen · Feb 23, 2005, 01:48 PM

Originally posted by - - e r i k - -:
The browser is NOT faster though. It just displays it's rendering sooner than Safari does (it has a built in delay to show a page after a second or two when it's more "presentable"). Since it's WebKit it's actually just as fast as Safari in total rendering speed, but will seem faster because it displays pages sooner. This may or may not be an advantage depending on your connection, but most will perceive it as being faster.

That's what I thought too. It certainly makes sense, but I do think Shiira is faster. It's the same deal with OmniWeb. It uses Webcore/WebKit (whatever...yes, I know there is a difference) and OmniWeb is slower for most people than Safari. I've been to Mac OS X Hints and I've tweaked Safari for greater speed and it still doesn't compare well to Shiira. Also, the way Safari loads the page is often annoying as it shifts text and images around as it loads, moreso than other browsers I've used and...it seems the page is almost loaded...but wait...hold on...just...one...more...thing...to load...ahhhh...done. Shiira doesn't do this. And Shiira is noticeably faster on encrypted sites.

- - e r i k - - · Feb 23, 2005, 08:40 PM

Originally posted by IronPen:
That's what I thought too. It certainly makes sense, but I do think Shiira is faster. It's the same deal with OmniWeb. It uses Webcore/WebKit (whatever...yes, I know there is a difference) and OmniWeb is slower for most people than Safari. I've been to Mac OS X Hints and I've tweaked Safari for greater speed and it still doesn't compare well to Shiira. Also, the way Safari loads the page is often annoying as it shifts text and images around as it loads, moreso than other browsers I've used and...it seems the page is almost loaded...but wait...hold on...just...one...more...thing...to load...ahhhh...done. Shiira doesn't do this. And Shiira is noticeably faster on encrypted sites.

Yes, a browser itself would contribute it's own overhead to the rendering. I didn't think it would be that noticable though. I still think it boils down to what connection you have.

There are browser benchmarks for this sort of thing. Anyone thought to run them?

echosphere · Feb 23, 2005, 11:32 PM

You can Erik. Let us know.

- - e r i k - - · Feb 24, 2005, 02:10 AM

Some totally unscientific* results:

CSS-tests

Safari:
1st: 5969ms
Reload: 26220ms (????)

Shiira:
1st: 5003ms
Reload: 17525ms

Hmmm, it seems a reload from cache is actually a lot slower than the initial load.

* only run once per test, with iTunes and BitTorrent running. Oh yeah, and it wasn't run locally either.

IronPen · Feb 24, 2005, 10:05 AM

So, help me read these results. What does this mean exactly? My understanding is that Shiira is faster. Thanks.

- - e r i k - - · Feb 24, 2005, 10:41 AM

Originally posted by IronPen:
So, help me read these results. What does this mean exactly? My understanding is that Shiira is faster. Thanks.

Yes. Sort of.

Opera 8.0 is without a doubt the fastest browser for Mac OS X, if that is the only thing that means anything for you. I'm just hoping that Shiira will fix the unfocus text-box while loading bug, and then I'm sticking to that. Other than that I’m using Safari 2.0.

JellyBeen · Feb 27, 2005, 01:23 AM

Originally posted by himself:
edit: I hope they implement a snap-back feature like in Safari -- that's the only thing I miss right now. [/B]

I can't believe this fine browser does'nt support SnapBack. Is it that difficult to impliment or is it a propriatary Apple technology?

MaxPower2k3 · Feb 27, 2005, 01:26 AM

I'm back on Safari until Shiira gets form auto-fill and snapback. It'd also be nice if they fixed the text box unfocus thing, like erik said. Other than that, I like Shiira a lot.

Chuckit · Feb 27, 2005, 02:23 AM

Originally posted by JellyBeen:
I can't believe this fine browser does'nt support SnapBack. Is it that difficult to impliment or is it a propriatary Apple technology?

Does any browser besides Safari have SnapBack? I wasn't even aware that anybody used it there.

- - e r i k - - · Feb 27, 2005, 03:00 AM

I'd be fine with it when it supports PithHelmet (or implements similar technology). Even just turning off gif-animation (WebKit has a bug that makes it slow down the UI with lots of animations like the smilies-list down here) would help. And the text-box unfocus is a real killer as well.

Hi I'm Ben · Feb 28, 2005, 07:33 PM

Anyone have a working link to the Shiira nightly builds? Or a recent nightly?
pm or post or something

IronPen · Feb 28, 2005, 07:46 PM

Here's the link to their site, http://hmdt-web.net/shiira/index-e.html It's down the right-hand side of the page. You want the nightly build to see all of the new features.