I’m a Google Chrome user, and that’s not likely to change anytime soon due. But I’m always eager to see the alternatives that are available out there, and Osaka-based Fenrir Inc. is always an interesting company to watch with its unusual Sleipnir browser.
Recently the company has been toying with a tabbed interface, and the latest iteration of its browser for Mac, Sleipnir 4, continues that experiment. The menu bar is slimmed down, with thumbnail previews of your tabs giving you a visual representation of the pages you’re on. Sleipnir 4 saves space by moving the text preview of the tab to a mouseover pop-out (see below), which allowed the designers to shrink the height of the toolbar to a mere 52 pixels.
This gives a little bit of breathing room to the address bar, which has stepped into the shadows in a subtle grey display in the top right. To input an address, you can simply click it and edit, or press ⌥⌘ L [1]. This is not new to Sleipnir 4.0, as the quasi-hidden address bar feature was present in Sleipnir 3.5 as well. But the company’s marketing materials look to be spotlighting the address bar this time around.
![Sleipnir's Browser tabs, and address bar](https://i0.wp.com/thebridge.jp/en/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/sleipnir-browser1.png?resize=600%2C151&ssl=1)
And perhaps most interestingly, the browser supports a swipe gesture to navigate between tabs. For the most part, the gesture works well, although I did trip up on occasion and stumble into the browsers tiled interface, which is an alternative view that I’m not really a fan of [2]. There are other gestures available in the preferences, but they’re a little over-complicated in my opinion.
Just below the address bar is Sleipnir’s search bar, where there are some fun features to be found as well. I was pleased to find that I can add my own favorite search engines in addition to the defaults, just by adding a typical search URL string with ‘%@’ replacing the query. So this means you can use things like DuckDuckGo, YouTube, IMDB, or any search you like. Each one can then be triggered by a keyword shortcut, which is pretty handy. There’s also integration with Fenrir’s Pass service, which is useful too.
If you’d like to try it the new Sleipnir 4 for yourself, you can get it over at SleipnirBrowser.com. Try it out and let us know what you think.