Raven Takes Flight: The Web Browser for the Rest of Us.

I never thought I would abandon Google Chrome as my primary web browser. It’s rock solid. It’s fast. It’s everything I expected out of a web browser. But Raven, by the fine folks at RavenCo Software, has seriously caused me to rethink my expectations.

At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, Raven is a web browser unlike any I have used before. I’ll do my best to describe what it is that makes it a compelling choice, regardless of what browser you are currently using. First off – Raven is Mac only, it’s free and it’s currently released to the wild in beta form. It weighs in at a paltry 6.4 MB, compared to Google Chrome, which clocks in at a whopping 204 MB.

So what makes Raven so darn special?

In a nutshell, it uses a technique called “site specific browsing” that creates a browser instance for certain websites and their features. You start off installing Raven web apps (free) for the major sites you use (Amazon, Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, etc.).

Once you install your apps, you will see them on the sidebar. When selected, an app expands the sidebar to show the key features for that app.
For example, when the Tumblr app is selected, the expanded view displays icons that correspond to the most commonly accessed tasks within Tumblr (i.e. viewing the Tumblr Dashboard, posting a photo to Tumblr, writing a blog post, or sharing a link.)

Similarly, when the Flick App is selected, you’ll see the most common tasks associated with Flickr expand underneath the Flickr icon in the sidebar. It’s difficult to describe, but the net result of setting up these web apps within Raven is that I have convenient access to all the key tasks for the social network websites I regularly visit.

Raven reminds me of the stand-alone Twitter app in its implementation. I am trying to resist making the obligatory “It’s Twitter for web browsers” statement, but that’s how I suppose one could describe it.

Raven’s Web App Shop supports other Web Apps, including the ever popular Angry Birds app as well as Wunderlist, which I’ve written about before. By using Raven, I have eliminated the need for several stand-alone applications; I no longer need to use the Flickr Uploadr app, the Wunderlist app, and the Twitter app. The net result is an overall lower RAM footprint, and less ping-ponging back and forth between a multitude of apps.

As I stated earlier, Raven is in beta. It does not currently support 1Password, and many of the features I have come to expect from other browsers are still unfinished or disabled, like the sync Favorites option that will presumably let you share bookmarks between multiple Macs running Raven. Still, it’s pretty solid for a beta release.

For browsing speed, Raven’s pretty fast – it uses Webkit to render its pages. Reviewing your web history in Raven is a lot like reviewing older tweets in the standalone Twitter app. Pretty slick.

Raven earns its merits for its clever implementation. It’s a beautiful looking browser, too. Raven provides a unique feature-set that stands apart from the other browsers I have used. It’s free to download, so your best bet is to try it and see for yourself what Raven’s all about. Give it a whirl and let me know what you think.

-Krishna