Ryouko

Your main gateway to the information superhighway is the web browser. Some have managed to build quite the reputation over the years, but as they did, system resource usage skyrocketed. This means you might be looking for alternatives like Ryouko, which are only equipped with the features you need for fast navigation, bookmark management, and a few more.

On the bright side of things, the application skips you both the time and effort needed to go through a setup process, which means you can carry it around on a USB flash drive to use on other computers, while keeping your personal settings with you. Another advantage of portability is the lack of dependency for registries, thus keeping the target PC clean.

The application’s visual design is decent, letting you accommodate in a jiffy. The status bar is fitted with a zoom slider for close page inspection, while navigation controls, URL field, and other functions are all on the upper toolbar. There’s also a search field to quickly locate stuff of interest on Google, YouTube, DuckDuckGo, Wikipedia, and deviantART.

You can navigate on more pages at a time, thanks to tab implementation, which also lets you move them around in a custom order. As mentioned above, you can save favorite pages as bookmarks, with a dedicated toolbar for one-button access. You can set a home page from the settings menu, and even connect through a proxy server for more security.

With the help of the history tracker, the URL field expands as you type, suggesting visited pages to skip you some time and effort. What’s more, you can go stealth by opening up a private browsing tab, which doesn’t keep track of any of your activities. Speed is decent, and you’re able to land on your favorite pages in the blink of an eye.

To be fair, Ryouko manages to live up to expectations, and is a worthy alternative to anything you might be using right now, especially because of the balanced resource consumption. A great deal of comfort is provided by tab implementation, bookmark support for your favorite pages, as well several search engines for diversified results.