Being a very satisfied Firefox user I would normally not pay too much attention to other players on the browser market, but an article from Computerworld about a Japanese browser maker, caught my interest.

I might as well be honest; Words like Fenrir(name of the company) and Sleipnir(name of the browser) taken from the Norse Mythology did probably have something to do with it. I am the barablu viking, after all… But reading on I found that, apart from the excellent name choosing, this browser also had a few interesting features.

• First of all, it offers a very high level of customization. Pretty much everything is customizable. Tabs, menu bars, explorer bars etc. You can even control what should happen when you right/middle/left click with your mouse buttons.  
• The ability to choose between the two layout engines: Gecko(used in Firefox) and Trident(used in Internet Explorer) is very useful to make sure certain pages are displayed to your satisfaction. 
• One of my favorite features is that you can lock a tab simply by double clicking on it – This way you avoid to accidentally close the tab. In fairness to Firefox I have later found out that the “Tab Mix Plus” add-on also offers this, but Sleipnir’s double clicking method is still more effortless.
• Also, I found it to be pretty fast, and I have yet to experience any crashes – believe me, I did try –  so it seems to be quite stable, too.

According to Fenrir inc.Global, the browser has a market share of 9% in Japan, and is especially popular with the “advanced” users, towards whom the product is also directed.

Having experienced a higher demand from international users, Fenrir have now decided to boost the promotion, and are hoping to conquer 5% of the English-speaking browser market, within the next couple of years.

It is a tough market to break into – Browser version market share statistics for June 2008 from Net Applications reports that Firefox is far behind Internet Explorer – Even though Firefox has been given a lot of attention, Microsoft’s seven year old IE6 still holds more market share than both Firefox 2.0 and 3.0 put together.

Sleipnir will remain installed on my PC, and I will continue to use it for a while. Whether it will triumph over my Firefox browser remains to be seen, but to me it certainly looks a worthy contender and definitely deserves a chance.

But it is going to take a whole lot of Viking Power to achieve 5% of the browser market share.

Written by
michael thomsen