14 DAY TRIAL // For this week I had a Web browser already scheduled, but I was struck by another one, that I will review right now. Don't worry, next week we'll have the one I had in mind for this week (I won't tell you the name, it's a surprise!), before I got hit by a ninja.
Ninjas in the office? It seems that when we talk about computers, everything is possible, so why not? No, I am not playing tricks on you, I am talking about today's browser. Its name is K-Ninja Samurai and reached version 1.0.5.
What do we have here? The installation kit has 5.3MB and the setup process is fast and silent like a ninja...let's see what more can we find!
It seems this is a tabbed browser that claims its identity, so it won't use tabs just like the others. No way! Even though we are talking about the same thing, K-Ninja uses layers instead of tabs.
If you want to see the available options for a certain action, just right click an area on the interface. Try one of the layer titles, as an example. Right clicking inside a web page will bring forward a long contextual menu that can help translating web pages, view current page info or bookmark it.
Inside the Preferences button (first one in the upper left corner) you will find everything that should be in the menu bar of a "normal" browser, such as the File, Edit, View, Tools or Help menus. In order to access the menus, you have to perform a right click on the button, if you use the left mouse button on it, then you will open the Preferences window.
What goodies do we have here? What do you say about an MP3 player that comes as a default plugin? Need a RSS Reader, anybody? Mouse gestures, keyboard shortcuts, integrated links to a lot of search engines or, above everything, powerful configuration scripts? K-Ninja has all these and even more!
The integrated popup blocker does its job perfectly and the settings that can be changed are soooo many, that you have to check this for yourselves!
At first sight, this looks like a browser for experts and power users, but after a bit of study and a fair accommodation time (around an hour, maybe two), everybody should find a good Web browsing companion in K-Ninja, safe and fast as every good browser should be.
There is much more to this program, as I was saying, but ninja warriors have their secrets that are revealed only to those who join their ranks, and it's the same thing in our case. Click the download button and prepare for a special browsing experience!
The Good
K-Ninja is a fast and reliable browser for (almost...) everybody. It can run perfectly on older systems as it uses a decent amount of your computer's resources and it can use interface themes (usually known as "skins") and additional plugins. Need I say that it's free? :)
The Bad
When I saw it for the first time I thought that this is an unfinished project or one of those professional tools for professional users that can't be touched by the rest of us. No help file, no menu bar...even the bookmarks need a bit of work before having them included in the interface! It's not really that bad, but this program has its mysteries waiting to be revealed...after all, we're talking about a shadow warrior here!
The Truth
I don't know much about the K-Meleon project, but it seems I'll have to find out more about it and its other fruits. K-Ninja Samurai 1.0.5 was a pleasant surprise, although not perfect, but worthy of all my attention. No matter if you're using Maxthon, IE, FireFox or Opera, my target in this review is worthy of your time, so go ahead and try it, it won't hit you or disappear in smoke!
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
