Steel (web browser)

Steel was a free web browser developed by Michael Kolb and his company kolbysoft. The Steel web browser was an Android-based browser that supported auto-rotation, full-screen browsing, a virtual keyboard, and advanced touch controls for zooming and flipping through multiple windows. The Steel web browser was based on the same open-source WebKit components that the default Android web browser was based on. It was designed to be a minimalist version of the standard Android web browser and ran on Android 1.5 and above.

Steel was released on the Android market in December 2008. Steel web browser became one of the top 100 most popular applications on the Android market. Koblysoft and its Steel web browser were acquired by Skyfire in 2010. Skyfire was subsequently acquired by Opera Software in 2013 and is now the network solutions division of that company.

Demo of the Steel Browser for Android

Koblysoft and its Steel web browser were acquired by Skyfire in February 2010 for an undisclosed amount. After the acquisition, kolbysoft's founder, Michael Kolb, became chief client architect for all of Skyfire.

Skyfire stated that the primary reason for the purchase was “talent” and kolbysoft’s skill “at building on top of WebKit." WebKit is the open-source web browser rendering engine and was used in a huge number of popular smartphone web browsers, including Safari and the default web browsers on both webOS and Android. Skyfire used a rendering engine called Gecko, which was considered slower and more complicated, so the acquisition allowed them to move in a Webkit direction.