Let’s have a small poll. How many web browsers do you use ?
Those of you thinking that this is a rhetorical question, it’s not. If you guys are anything like me, I’m sure you have multiple browsers installed on your system. I’ve always had multiple browsers on my all my systems. If I’m using Windows, I use Internet Explorer, Firefox and now Chrome and if I’m on Linux, I use Firefox and depending on the environment that I’m using, konqueror or epiphany.
My reason for using multiple browsers is that as a web designer, I need to make sure the scripts that I code, the pages that I design work well in all the browsers and so I need to test on them. As a user, you guys might have different reasons. Let’s face it, some sites really do work better with Internet Explorer.
Whatever the reason, if you have multiple browsers installed on your computer, Lunascape is sure to give you some relief.
Lunascape is the world’s first (and only – according to their website) web broweser which works with three different rendering engines – Gecko (Firefox), Trident (IE) and Webkit (Safari/Chrome).
Download and launch the installer and you’ll be presented with a choice to install Lunascape in a directory on your computer or as a Portable application on a thumb drive. This is interesting and is probably the first application that I’ve seen which actually gives an option to the user to set it up as a portable app. The installer also downloads and sets up the Gecko and Webkit engines.
The first time that you launch Lunascape, you’ll be asked to select the default rendering engine that you want to use. Make your selection.
Lunascape comes across as a regular browser with tabbed browsing support. One interesting feature is the way the designers have decided to use the free space in the tabs bar. By default, Lunascape uses that space to display news headlines from around the world, but you can add any RSS feed to that list and Lunascape will then display headlines from that feed.
So, how do I use Lunascape for my specific use case ?
Like I said in the beginning, I use Lunascape to test how a particular web page looks in different web browsers. To change the rendering engine, go to the Tools menu and select the Lunascape Settings option. Select the engine that you want and click the Ok button.
Lunascape is a very interesting browser that I can see the utility for. It’s still a little rough around the edges but everything works and that’s what matters.
Do you guys use multiple browsers ? Which is your favorite web browser ?
Programmer, blogger and a geek making a living shifting bits around the Internet. Sharninder is the owner of Geeky Ninja
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Looks cool ? We can have the rendering engines of different browsers all in one place. Does Lunascape also supports versions ? I mean will it support how IE 6 handles css and all ?
No, it doesn’, as far as I can tell. For IE it uses the engine that is already present on the system. So, I’m guessing for me that’d be IE8. And for Gecko and Webkit, it downloads a version of the engine so even that is just one version.
Hi Sharninder, thank you for reviewing Lunascape. Glad to know that you find it useful.
I’d like to comment on 2 things. One is that we just released our next major upgrade version, Lunascape 6.0 ORION, in beta. With that, not only you can use triple rendering engine, you can use triple add-ons. (IE, Firefox, and Lunascape) You might find it even more useful as you can use lots of Firefox add-ons for developers. Additionally, you can view a website in 3 rendering engine side-by-side with split tab display.
Secondly, there are quick ways to switch engines. You can right-click on a tab and select “switch engine” or click on “engine icon” on the left bottom corner.
Let me know if you have any question, suggestions etc. And once again, thanks for introducing Lunascape here!
@Yuki: Thanks for dropping by. I did see the download link for the 6.0 beta also but didn’t download it because of the beta tag. But, now that you’ve told me that it has support for extensions also, I might just give it a try.
What about Opera? You can’t neglect those users. With the recent attacks on IE6, Opera has seen significant growth.
I agree. Opera is a very nice and important browser although since it is not open source and, as far as I know, doesn’t come with a library which users can link to, so it would be a little difficult to implement support for it. Don’t quote me on that, though :-)