Stainless Version 0.6.5 Web Browser Test Drive

6151 Stainless is a multi-process browser for OS X Leopard based on Apple's Webkit Open Source browser engine. Although Stainless started out as a technology demo to showcase the developer's own multi-processing architecture in response to Google Chrome, they've been inspired by a growing fanbase to forge ahead and craft Stainless into a full-fledged browser. In fact, Stainless now has features you won't find in Chrome or in any other browser.

A prime example is parallel sessions, which allow you to log into a site using different credentials in separate tabs at the same time. This new technology is woven throughout Stainless, from the private cookie storage system, to session-aware bookmarks that remember the session in which they were saved. We're excited to showcase what we believe is a true browser innovation.

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Stainless is pretty bare-bones. but what there is is good, and it has the basic features I really can't get along without - tabs and a Bookmarks function. I like light, nimble applications, and Stainless is sort of the polar antithesis of Firefox in that context, weighing in at just 1.1 MB vs 50.7 MB for Mozilla'a latest.

In a nod to its Chrome inspiration, Stainless's tabs appear above the Address field, but are not up in the Title Bar as was tried in the Safari 4 public preview but didn't make the cut for the Safari 4 final release.

No real Bookmarks menu, but the "Bookmark Shelf" to which you can drag Web page icons is pretty cool. Bookmarks are stored as compact icons, with text identification on mouseover, and a variety of configuration and function options in the preferences.

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Note that Stainless is still in development and doesn't yet have all the features you'd find in a production-ready browser. As work proceeds on a 1.0 release, you can check out what's new in every update by clicking the version link under the Download button.

Stainless is delightfully speedy, a quick download and worth checking out. I like it well enough that I'm going to use it for a while to see if it sticka.

For more information, visit:
http://www.stainlessapp.com/



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