Have it all: Lunascape, the browser with three engines

You know what I'm sick of? Running three browsers on my Windows system. Not because I want to, but because I have to. I need Internet Explorer (which uses the Trident engine) for some CNET corporate pages and to run Outlook Web Access. I have to use Firefox (Gecko engine) for our blog publishing system and to run all the plug-ins I like. When I want to just browse quickly I turn to Chrome (Webkit). This is no way to live.

But a new browser, Lunascape, handles all three of the rendering engines at once. When you open a new tab or click on a link in Lunascape, you can tell the browser which engine you want to use. You can also set up certain sites to open using a particular engine. If you're trying to figure out which engine is best for a given page (or if you're a Web developer and need to test your site in the three engines), you can reload any page with another engine.

Pick your poison.

The developers claim the browser is faster than all others, thanks to its optimized implementation of Gecko. That may be, if you're running benchmarks, but I found the alpha version of Lunascape 5 (the version coming out today) to be very slow to start up and with some user interface quirks that slowed me down.

It is, no doubt, a browser for geeks. It is incredibly full-featured. It has native support for RSS feeds, inlcuding podcasts. It saves data--not just passwords--that you enter into forms, so you can get info back if your page closes or crashes before you submit. The browser supports mouse gestures for navigation, and it has more menu access to engine tweaks than any browser I've seen. It's the antithesis of the super-simple Chrome interface, but if you want to do things like quickly extract all the images on a page to a directory on your system, it might be the tool for you.

Lunascape supports its own plug-ins and themes, as well as the add-ons for IE. It does not, however, support Firefox add-ons, which is a real drag. The browser's address bar is also bare-bones, lacking the useful intelligence of the Firefox "awesome bar" or Chrome's even-better psychic search and URL entry field.

It does it all. Some might say it does too much.

I wouldn't recommend Lunascape 5 alpha to anyone in the real world. I'm going to continue to run the three browsers I do instead of moving over to this product. I may change my mind as the product matures, though. Developers and Web geeks might get a kick out of it right now.

See also: The IE Tab plug-in for Firefox.

[dragonbite]

But how well would this work for web developers to view their pages/site in different browsers?

[Web-JIVE]

This will be great for website devs! No need to fire up multiple browsers for testing. That's the biggest pain right now.

[STEELBAS]

It sounds interesting, but it's been over five months since its last update.. Will it update to maturity? I have to admit not being able to read the Japanese of the development site, though.

the website isn't workin...

[Dalkorian]

It looks handy and useful for designing "cross-browser" sites, but I'd be wary of depending in it to much at this point. For starters, it's an alpha. 'Nuff said. Secondly, although it includes the 3 main rendering engines, it will likely have it's own idiosyncrasies. Just because a site renders fine using the Trident engine, that doesn't necessarily mean that M$ will handle the site identically in IE. IE will likely have bugs that Lunascape doesn't have, just like IE 6 has bugs that IE 7 doesn't have and Safari has bugs that Firefox doesn't.

In short, Lunascape will be useful to see the tendencies of the three main rendering engines to handle a website, but serious web developers will still have to ultimately test with the popular browsers out there. That will continue until the likes of IE and the monkeys that write websites requiring IE are taken behind the woodshed, shot to death, buried under 12 feet of consecrated ground and then encased in 25 feet of lead and and additional 25 feet of concrete. That might scare everyone else into true standards compliance. If not, at least it will get rid of IE once and for all. I hope.

[ChrisLang]

Very true, I agree. Anymore I hand code everything and use a custom version of Wordpress to develop sites. Currently the latest versions of WordPress are rendering pretty well in all browsers and the for SEO version of Wordpress I use ranks incredibly well in Google.

I just develop a theme over the version I have and I can produce stunning sties that Google loves in a few days.

Chris Lang

[ChrisLang]

Looks pretty cool and darn useful for web developers like me.

But sorry guys, XP and above only? My next machine will be Linux and the OS will be browser based. I still cling to my Win2K OS and Windows can take a flying leap as far as I am concerned.

Chris Lang
Key Web Data

[ecslipe]

I cant download the firefox engine

[venket105]

wonderful

[patounet--2008]

With Safari, under Preferences, you can activate the Development menu, and then select a User agent to navigate as IE, Firefox, Opera, in various versions on both platforms when applicable.

However, I was beta tester of a recent website and noticed thar Safari behaved more as Safari than IE or Firefox for a hidden floating menu bar!!

The website isn't working for me either.