Triple-Engine Browser Released As Alpha 181
jcasman passes along a heads-up on Lunascape, a Japanese browser company that is releasing its first English version of its Lunascape 5 triple-engine browser. It's for XP and Vista only. There are reviews up at CNET, OStatic (quoted below), and Lifehacker. Both the reviews and comments point out that, in its current alpha state, the browser is buggy and not very fast; but it might be one to watch. "How many web browsers do you run? If you're like me, you regularly use Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome and Safari. Each of those browsers, of course, has its own underlying rendering engine: Gecko (in Firefox), Trident (in Internet Explorer), and Webkit (in Chrome and Safari). Today, a Japanese startup called Lunascape has released an alpha version of its Lunascape browser ... that allows you to switch between all three of these prominent rendering engines. The company says that the Japanese version of Lunascape has been downloaded 10 million times and touts it as the fastest browser available."
Re:Web development (Score:4, Insightful)
I would think a Linux version would be unlikely due to the trident component.
Sheldon
Nope. (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't really useful as a diagnostic browser.
There are significant rendering differences between the various KHTML/Webkit implementations (eg Apple uses its own font renderer, which gives seriously different results than most host OS renderers, and Google has provided its own viewport code which gets several things incorrect, such as the placement of background coloration on absolutely positioned bodies, which aren't as silly as they might initially sound once you look into scalable viewports.) It also misses Opera, which still has more market share than Safari on Windows, as well as a variety of small browsers.
On top of that, there's the significant likelihood that this browser injects new differences into the rendering process.
Short version? Switch if you find the browser compelling (does an, but this doesn't substitute for actual browser case testing (it neither correctly nor completely covers the playing field.)
I won't be adding it to my standard six, that's for sure. The last thing I need is another also-ran browser to check.
Re:Lunatic Japan (Score:1, Insightful)
Because if a community isn't thriving, it's clearly my fault for not devoting my time to it.
Yeah, that'll win converts.
Business model & source code? (Score:1, Insightful)
What exactly would the business model for this startup be?
Firefox is free software that gets most of its funding from Google.
Safari is Apple's way of ensuring their users have some level of web access that is not dependant upon a third party and to push web standards.
IE is MS's way of ensuring that users are able to access the web through Windows and to have some kind of vendor lock-in (although arguably that's going away).
Chrome is Google's attempt to push web standards & Javascript performance because their applications rely heavily on this.
In addition, they've got a user-base issue. They're targeting the wrong user-base as is. The only people who would use this are web developers. Yet they are saying that "most" users use multiple browsers to overcome incompatibility. Considering that the only incompatibility people complain about is IE-centric sites, I fail to see how most users would use more than 2 (also considering how a lot of sites tend to work well enough on other browsers these days).
Also, how exactly does it "automatically" select the best performing engine for each site? Either it keeps a list of site-engine mappings (which doesn't seem scalable or feasible) or it somehow analyses the content (an analysis which must be fast enough that when included with the optimal rendering time is still faster than just picking the fastest engine on average).
They also don't seem to be providing the source code for their modified Gecko engine that is supposedly faster than Chrome. They probably chose the MPL, rather than GPL or LGPL, but even it still, AFAIK, forces you to release the source code if you make modifications to the MPL licensed files.
Madness (Score:3, Insightful)
A browser that has the second (or third) engine as from another browser is no substitute for proper testing in a different browser. Browsers are much more than just engines. However, this sort if chimera IS a great way to get more bugs and vulnerabilities than a single engine would provide.
End of story (Score:5, Insightful)
How many web browsers do you run?
Like 99% of the rest of internet users, I use one browser (firefox).
I'm rather surprised this has been downloaded 10M times, unless there is some sort of patriotism based motivation going on. For the life of me I just can't picture the average internet user saying "Hey, let's see how this website looks when rendered by the Webkit engine!" while their buddy, looking on over their shoulder responds "Yeah, do it! This is going to be a blast!"
Re:Fastest browser? (Score:4, Insightful)
It is actually pretty easy to claim that.
It is a bit harder to do it. But claiming it is no problem.
Re:Lunatic Japan (Score:4, Insightful)
So much peanut butter all over my chocolate (Score:3, Insightful)
So is there some feature that allows it to automatically switch between engines, or is this just another ill-thought out mashup? I mean if I have to choose which engine each time, then I might as well just open another program, RAM isn't the tight commodity it once was.
Re:Web development (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nope. (Score:3, Insightful)
Thus the ideal solution is not to make the user switch engines willy nilly.
Yes.
The ideal solution is for the browser to pull the ideal rendering engine from a database that matches sites against the ideal engine.
No, then you've just got the browser switching rendering engines willy-nilly.
I shouldn't even have to switch user-agents to make things work. That's why we have these things called standards -- the only rendering engine you should need is your favorite one that supports the standards.
Re:not anime friendly (Score:2, Insightful)