Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Shiira is superior?

jamdr

jamdr

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 20, 2003
659
0
Bay Area
OS X users have it pretty good as far as browser selection goes--there are tons of browsers available, such as FireFox, Camino, Safari, Netscape, Opera, OmniWeb and Shiira, etc. But still, it's hard to find one that's just right, in my opinion.

Safari just doesn't do it for me. It has some weird issues with "stalling" for several seconds under certain circumstances, and it happens fairly often. I know I'm not the only one with this problem (I'm running off a new iBook with a fresh install of OS X). Sometimes you'll click over to a new tab or something and nothing happens. You try clicking on a menu--nothing. You make a bunch of clicks all over and still nothing, but finally in flurry of catching up you see a bunch of tabs switch around and menus open and close, while Safari has finally unfrozen and is busy executing all those clicks you made.

Anyway, as far as the other browsers go, Camino has no spell check or other cocoa services, OmniWeb isn't free, FireFox is decidedly un-Maclike (still), Netscape is slow and bloated, Opera is ugly, etc. Anyway I finally came upon Shiira. It's a WebKit browser so it renders as well and as fast as Safari, but it has numerous improvements and offers a lot of customization. The project has come a long way in recent months so if you only tried it a long time ago and didn't like it, you should give it another go. Download the latest nightlies--they are good. The icon is awesome, too:

shiira120dg.png
 
Wow, I remember testing Shiira when it first came out for beta testing a loooong time ago, it reminded me of IE. :/
But now, wow, it's totally different. Very nice, thank you! :)
 
Never used it before - Safari and Firefox have done everything I've ever need a browser to with no complaints. But, after reading this and looking into it some more, perhaps I'll give it a try one of these days. Thanks for the info. :cool:
 
wow I remember Shiira from a couple years ago. looked very unpolished at the time, but it was very fast. i'll have to give it another go!
 
I'm trying it out right now...seems to have pretty much the same overall 'feel' as Safari, but I like the additional customizability. I don't like being locked into one setup. :p
 
i like that I can unify the toolbar to make it fit better with Mail. the page transition option is neat too. seems pretty speedy
 
Wow I'm impressed, this browser is getting added to my dock for sure. Has alot of really nice features, it reminds me alot of a Safari/Firefox/Camino/Omniweb mixture of sorts.

I like the idea of the page transition (book style) like the Zinio Reader app has, though it seems a bit slow and clunky. Does anyone else notice this, that its a bit laggy? I'm wondering if its just me on my older G4 iMac.
 
tag said:
Wow I'm impressed, this browser is getting added to my dock for sure. Has alot of really nice features, it reminds me alot of a Safari/Firefox/Camino/Omniweb mixture of sorts.

I like the idea of the page transition (book style) like the Zinio Reader app has, though it seems a bit slow and clunky. Does anyone else notice this, that its a bit laggy? I'm wondering if its just me on my older G4 iMac.
Click to expand...

I'll try it tomorrow on a DP G5, but as of tonight on my iBook G4 it is pretty much useless...it does like a 2 or 3 frame animation, which locks up the computer in the process. :rolleyes:
 
I've been using Shiira as my default browser for so long that my previous default browser was iCab.

Shiira rocks.
 
ahunter3 said:
I've been using Shiira as my default browser for so long that my previous default browser was iCab.

Shiira rocks.
Click to expand...

Hmm I had to look up what iCab was, never heard of it. It's actually still in development(sort of), though hasn't been updated in a few months and the site mentions nothing past 10.2 ;) . It looks like it has some potential but I guess it wont see very much development in the future. There is something about the look of it I like but can't put my finger on, though it could probably be recreated with a firefox theme.


Oh I just found out what I like best about Shiira; you can remove the google search bar! Ok don't get me wrong I like the google search bar, it does come in handy now and then, but it annoyed me to no end that it can't at all be removed in Safari, its intertwined with the URL bar.
 
iCab was blisteringly fast before it just fell too far behind in the standards it could support. You could open this forum, click "New Posts", and open thread after thread after thread after thread in the background, then click the number-link to go to the next page's worth of post-titles, and read the threads you'd opened while it loaded.

It still does that blisteringly fast, but unfortunately 2 out of every 3 threads will come up misrendered or entirely blank because it mishandled latter-day vBulletin. :(

Meanwhile, for life-on-web outside of vBulletin-powered message boards, iCab totally sucks at most CSS. I mean, it's competitive with Netscape Navigator 4.0 but not much else.

Shiira doesn't load pages in the background and return useful focus anywhere near as fast (can shut you down with spinning beachball while background page loads) but the pages are always correct, and it's faster than OmniPage, as fast as FireFox, and as fast as Safari but without all the Safari-crap you don't want. And more friendly for PowerBooks with singlebutton trackpads.

iCab is dead in the water unless they can bring it up to modern-day CSS spec and render at least 90% of webURLS properly. I'd estimate them at 65% nowadays.
 
I use Shiira when I have a website that Firefox can't handle, which is very few now. However, if it's as fast as Safari, then Safari is really slow. They both use the same WebKit, etc. but Shiira looks better. It seems though you pay for the looks by waiting a lot more.

Thank goodness for Firefox.
 
Yeah, I think that ultimately Safari and Firefox will be my browsers of choice, but it's always good to have and be aware of other great options. :cool:
 
Just downloaded Shiira and loving every minute of it. Especially l like the 'Tabbed Exposé' feature- Neat!
 
This is great. I no longer have to decide between Safari and Camino; this takes the cake. The Browse option in the toolbar is great. I really like the fact that I can just choose to use my Safari bookmark bar, rather than having a separate one for Shiira. The sidebar seems like a good feature as well
 
I like little Shiira...it may not be well known, but it has the potential to become just as much a viable Safari alternative as Firefox is, especially if the current plugin system gets as sophisticated as the one Firefox has.
 
I found this browser a few months ago by pure luck. Nice to see that there are a few other fans out there. For me its still Safari, Firefox, Camino, then Shiira... whenever I check for browser support of my websites (but that's only because it is so similar to Safari in its rendering). I like it alot, and would love to see it continue to grow, but Safari still wins out for me (at least for the time being).
 
Does Shiira have any sort of autofill? I can't find it in preferences, and sites that normally find my stored passwords in Keychain aren't doing so in Shiira.
 
well, i had a go with it yesterday, and if i'm honest, it's doing nothing that firefox doesnt do. i couldnt use the tab exposé because my F-keys are bound to controlling keyboard brightness and volume, and it doesnt look as nice as you can make FF look (grapple brushed skins...mmmmmm) so yeah, it's a good browser and i'll keep it installed, but it's not inspiring enough for another switch (since i went mac, i've gone FF, Safari, Camino, Safari, FF!)
 
Hi all,
Does anybody know how to control the page transition on Shiira ?
When it loads a new page the transition goes from left to right, which is in reverse of turning a new page on a book (i.e. right to left)

I looked in Shiira forum but couldn't find anything.

Thanks in advance.
 
I am starting to think so. This is my first day on Shiira and it hasnt given me any of the problems that safari has.

What does the little number mean on the icon in the dock?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back