Shiira (Japanese for the common dolphin-fish) is a web browser created for the Mac OS X operating system, and led by Makoto Kinoshita. The web browser is based on Web Kit and written in Cocoa, which is currently open source and released under the BSD license. (FYI, the current version mentioned in this post requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later.)

According to their website, the purpose of the Shiira Project is “to create a browser that is better and more useful than Safari“. Creating a browser that is better and more efficient than Apple’s Safari web browser would definitely be a huge undertaking on their part. Simply by taking into consideration that Apple has a full-fledged staff working on Safari compared to Shiira’s team, makes the concept of surpassing Safari seem a bit difficult to me. Although, I must say that the list of features Shiira offers is quite impressive.

“Since the browser is being developed with Safari in mind, the main characteristics of the two browsers are similar. For example, Shiira employs private browsing options so that history and cookies are not recorded when activated. However, Shiira has enhanced many features of Safari to give Shiira its own feel. The search engines search field on the toolbar includes many search engines and is fully customizable, and tabbed browsing is very flexible, enabling users to, for example, reorder tabs by dragging, or select an option to refresh tabs when they are clicked. Shiira also takes advantage of Cocoa programming to provide users with a customizable drawer extending from the left or right of the window. The drawer contains bookmarks (which launch based on a user-programmed preference of one or two clicks), history, downloads (to avoid cluttering the screen with additional download windows), a unique page holder to access myriad links while surfing other sites, and an RSS reader. In version 2.0 , the sidebar was replaced by a series of palletes opened and closed from the main window toolbar. Shiira natively supports in-browser PDF viewing. The browser is of comparable stability and speed to Safari, making it among the fastest and most functional browsers for users of Mac OS X.

Among the appealing features of Shiira are an abundant appearance of options. Users may opt to switch between Aqua or Metal styles in addition to changing the button’s appearances. However, in the current 2.0 release, changes in themes are, as yet, not available. Tabs are customizable both in appearance and in the choice of which tab comes to the fore of the screen after closing a tab. Add-on icon sets come packaged with the initial download. Another visually attractive option is “Tab Exposé”, which acts much like the Exposé feature of Mac OS X; each tab is visible in its totality, enabling users to select the tab to which they wish to navigate with ease. The 1.x releases of Shiira also have a page-turning effect for transitions between any two webpages, however this was dropped from 2.x releases. The new interface in Shiira 2.0 can be set to display tabs as thumbnails along the bottom or sides of the window.”

For development information or to check out this impressive desktop application, visit Shiira’s Homepage.

You can watch the Page Transition Effect in action @ Page Transition Effect Demo.

You can watch the Tab Exposé in action @ Tab Exposé Demo (Large) or Tab Exposé Demo (Small).