Mac OpenSource & Freeware

According to Wikipedia: "Shiira: シイラ, Japanese for the common dolphin-fish." A number of reviewers are critiquing Shirra and giving it a positive review. From their web site:

Shiira is a web browser based on Web Kit and written in Cocoa. The goal of the Shiira Project is to create a browser that is better and more useful than Safari. All source code used in this software is publicly available.

I have limited experience with it so far but have found Shiira is extremely fast and stable. One of the very interesting features of Shiira is it's private browsing feature, which makes it good for public computers. You are not leaving any traces of your browsing session: it clears both cache and cookies. This can make it a good browser for public computers. Safari has private browsing but I have to turn it on every time reopen it. Shiira stays on from one session to the next.

Shiira has tabbed browsing options like Firefox or Safari, but also has a page dock which can be located at the bottom, left or right of your window. The dock takes a chunk of your screen real estate but it doesn't seem obtrusive on my 20" iMac. I did find it taking up too much space on my MacBook screen.

Shiira can be set up to locate and use your bookmarks from Firefox and Safari without importing them. I could not easily figure out how to import them to the bookmark menu or bar. I kept trying to drag and drop bookmarks and folders and they seemed to disappear.

Shiira is unique with Tab Exposé. If you have multiple tabs open you can use Tab Exposé to show all at once and easily switch between tabs.

Shiira is a great quick browser. Try it out and you may adopt it for day to day use.