Recently, I got a tour of Clio from Jack Newton. I was interested in learning more about the product, since I’ve been getting a lot of questions seeking my opinion on it. But, this isn’t a post about Clio.
This is a post about a web browser I caught Jack using, called Stainless. I did some digging and Stainless is a rather unique offering in the web browser world in that it permits you to run multiple independent sessions. It’s a solution for people who are running Firefox and Safari so that they can be logged into the same site as different people.
Now, to be fair, independent sessions is not a feature unique to Stainless. Google’s Chrome browser does the same thing. But, Stainless actually lets you run parallel sessions. As I stated above, that will let you have multiple “credentialed” sessions of a website running. That’s a feature that Chrome doesn’t have (I would probably add, yet – there are a lot of folks at Google).
I tested the feature with Facebook accounts for me and my wife. It appears that Stainless is doing something funky with the cookie storage and aligning the cookie to the session that created it. Seems to fool Facebook, which remembers when you’ve logged into the site on a different browser and asks for the password again (a la Firefox & Safari – uber annoying).
In addition, it has a feature that I think is essential in a web browser. It’s there with Firefox (kinda) and not there with Safari (far as I’ve been able to see). The ability to save the open windows and quit the program. Oh my, is this useful.
Sometimes I just want to look at the open webpages again without adding them to my bookmarks. Bookmarks are a pain because I have to delete them afterwards (I don’t want to keep these sites forever, just until the next time I open the program or restart the computer). The solution used to be leaving the program running – which is annoying too. Now, I just use Stainless and select the “Save Windows and Quit Stainless” option under the File menu and I’m ready to go.
I’m also just partial to the way Stainless looks and feels. It’s a clean, if boxy, interface. It lacks the rounded edges of most Cocoa-developed programs, but when I’m surfing the web, I’m looking at the page – not at the program edges. I think that it would be a decent browser to add to your arsenal if the feature set is attractive. (Kinda like Flock for those social media mavens of the world.)
Now, I haven’t done any speed tests. That’s mostly because I wouldn’t know how to measure those things. Look, it’s fast enough for me. I’m probably limited more by my cable modem speed than by my browser speed. The pages load pretty fast, even ones with heavy graphics, like MSNBC.com.
It has many of the features currently available in web browsers. You can move and re-order tabs. You can pull out one tab and have it open its own page. I even like the unobtrusive grey bar that appears automatically at the bottom to let you know where a link will take you – but then stays hidden otherwise. This is a piece of real estate that is usually wasted on other web browsers.
Stainless is free, which is nice. But it also has a “Donate” button, so if you’re using it frequently, I urge you to support the developers. It’s also in beta format, but they’re working towards a stable 1.0 release in the near future. In my brief experience with the program, I find it stable enough for daily use.
Check out Stainless here .
The ability to reopen tabs/windows from your last session is available in Safari – though not too well advertised. When you open Safari, go to the History menu and select “Reopen all windows from last session.” You can also choose “Reopen last closed window.”
I haven’t used Stainless in a while, but I recall it being pretty snappy.