Lunascape is a new web browser that handles all three major web rendering engines — Firefox’s Gecko, Internet Explorer’s Trident and WebKit (which is used by Safari and Chrome). Lunascape Corp., a Tokyo-based web software company, offers the browser as a free download. Lunascape 5 Alpha is Windows-only and the first English version of the browser (a Japanese version dates back to 2001).
Lunascape 5 is an interesting alternative for people (like me) who primarily use Firefox but keep Internet Explorer as a second browser when they encounter rendering problems (i. e. on some of the few IE-only and IE-optimized web pages out there).
This is how Lunascape works: Users can toggle between rendering engines by either right-clicking tabs or by clicking on the engine switcher button on the bottom left of the screen. If you have figured out which engine works best for a page, Lunascape lets you force the page to use that engine for future visits via a pull down menu (Lunascape CEO Hidekazu Kondo calls this “semi-automatic” engine switching).
I tested Lunascape 5 for some hours now and apart from a few bugs (under the Gecko engine, saving a picture prompted a Japanese confirmation box, for example), it’s pretty stable.
The browser is mainly appealing to geeks and web developers. It comes with an abundance of features: Native support for RSS and podcast feeds, tab crash protection, support of mouse gestures for easier navigation, a library of Lunascape-exclusive plug-ins (Japanese only at this point) and skins, a form auto saver (which saves passwords and texts written in blog posts or webmails) and a huge number of tweaks and settings in the default menus.
Lunascape claims on the company website this browser is the fastest in the world (under the SunSpider Javascript Benchmark, at least) but I didn’t recognize any discernible differences in load speed when comparing Lunascape using the Gecko engine to Firefox 3, for example.
Unfortunately, the alpha version is currently not supporting Firefox add-ons (although IE add-ons do work). At this point, the browser isn’t automatically able to recommend to you which engine works best for which page, a feature that might be integrated into future versions.
But Lunascape is still in alpha phase so it being a little rough around the edges is acceptable. Kondo promises an improved beta version to be released “very soon” and hopes for feedback from international users in particular.
The company says the Japanese version of Lunascape has been downloaded 10 million times since 2004 and wants to capture a 5% share of the global browser market. (Get in line). In order to step up efforts to promote the browser outside of Japan, Lunascape has established a subsidiary company in San Jose in June of this year.
i am good with having all three seperate.
maybe next year skipper.
I have to vehemently disagree. This browser makes things easier. I also have to try every browser on Earth.
This browser has a nice concept to be able to switch rendering engines. On the otherhand:
Crashes too much
Cannot change the search options
I fear this could very easily be a keylogger
And it crashes far too much…
Firefox 3 with IE Tab (a Firefox extension) should probably do the trick for most people. Also, I think Firefox 3 with IE Tab is a way more polished experience – you get to use the Firefox UI with IE’s renderer.
Chrome may render some sites quicker than the other two but most people can live (and are living) without it.
Yup … FF (99%) and IE (1%) covers the entire browser space. Chrome? What happened to Mac version?
Just for the record:
IE Tab doesn’t work on my Firefox 3.04 (German version): Firefox won’t even start with it.
IE Tab is great, hardly had any issues with it.
Any idea if there is an equivalent add-on to IE Tab which can do WebKit rendering in Firefox? There should be!
Tested it for a bit, and it seems to crash or hang when I try to delete some of the favorite links.
HUUUH!!! .. the alternative is Opera ? Or you simly ignore it as a browser cus its simply THE BEST browser outhere for the only reason that its not OS ? .. i hate when people are being ignorant ..
I thought that we, as a society, were done with the whole “Opera is the best browser” thing. It’s too bad that you haven’t caught up yet.
For starters, Opera used to have a speed advantage. Every other browser (except for IE, of course) is now just as fast as Opera, if not faster.
Opera also used to be the most “standards-compliant” browser, back when being “compliant” meant that many sites, designed for IE, wouldn’t render properly in it. More and more, sites are designed with standards in mind, and Gecko and WebKit are just as compliant, if not more.
So, if you believe that Opera is as good technically as it’s competition, it comes down to a matter of personal preference. I don’t use Opera because it does weird things with fonts, and I don’t like the interface. Firefox is more extensible, and has more features, which I appreciate.
Furthermore, if Opera was really that great, wouldn’t they have cracked 2% market share by now? It even trails Safari and Chrome (which was only launched as a beta just a few months ago). Opera used to be able to make the claim that they were prevented from gaining share due to Microsoft’s browser monopoly. They can’t even claim that anymore!
I use opera but I changed the user-agent header to say Firefox.
With Opera, you can change the browser id, so websies recognise it a Internet-explorer (commonly known as Internet exploder) – No problems!
The main reason why Opera is so unpopular (at least in the USA) is that so called web experts speak of “all three major web rendering engines” when there’s actually four.
LOL! Putting the cart before the horse, aren’t you?
Now there, you just started a holy war, and I’m your unholy enemy.
Opera is wicked cool. It does tons of things “out of the box” in one place – without extensions addons, bars, tools, and schtuff…
I write measly HTML code – not always “validated” XHTML – but as a user, I find Opera’s speed and caching much better.
Internet Exploder is crap. Sorry… crap is defined as MS Internet Explorer (TM).
Firefox – well, I use it more than Opera because it comes with the best set of extensions and hey, it’s opensource and comes from a team of great devs.
But if you ask me to download *one* thing that helps me surf well, check email, read, news, chat on IRC, security, configurability, tweaking, it’s Opera.
Again, I use, love and admire Firefox, but for a one-piece solution, Opera beats it hands down. I haven’t used Opera Mini.
May the holy war rage on! Hah!
“(like me) who primarily use Firefox but keep Internet Explorer as a second browser”
because it is so hard to click on the IE icon and open webpages that only render in IE… It’s not like you have to reboot your computer to change browsers.
@Avi what is Opera?
Wait until the fat lady finishes singing! Opera is a browser… Google time!
Does it store cookies separately? When I’m on multiple ebay IDs at once, it can be nice to switch between accounts without logging in/out. Also, it would be nice to have a cookie-free browser so that I can test marketing on ebay without their search customization bias-ing it up.
IETab in Firefox is the way to solve the problem of pages not working in Firefox. Click the icon, and the page renders in Internet Explorer, but stays a tab in Firefox. It’s fabulous.
@Diego Melgar Opera is web browser that runs on mac,linux,windows your mobile phone , your nintendo wii , your brand new 32 inch tv , and soon on your microwave .. and is THE fastest web browser out there with built in mail client and the lowest memory usage .. also has a function that allows you to sync your bookmarks,notes, typed adresses . just try it for a week and you will love it ! and if you tweak it you will love it even more .. ( just for the record .. this browser has never crashd on me and i use ~ 150 opened tabs daily full with flash and ajax apps .. )
I thought this might be a good browser for layout compatibility testing (I downloaded but haven’t installed it yet) – until I saw this:
http://en.lunap...le=Release_note
“June 20, 2008 Lunascape 4.7.3 New Release!
Lunascape 4.7.3 has been released.
The Gecko engine for Lunascape has been updated to the version equivalent with Firefox 2.0.0.14. Many security and performance improvements are included. ”
Sorry, but 2.0.0.14 is so last June. Fx 2 hung and crashed more than Fx 3 does, as well. No mention of what version of Trident or Webkit they’re using, either. Apparently the code has not been updated for this browser at all in almost six months. So as far as testing layouts goes, this probably isn’t up-to-the-moment for that sort of thing.
By the way, I was going to reply to you first, then write the above comment, then I changed my mind, refreshed the page, but refreshing the page didn’t help…I wound up posting my comment to you instead of as a thread-starter in spite of that.
What I was going to tell you was Opera would be fine in my eyes (I actually like it a lot) if it handled certain commerce and email sites better. A lot of websites, I’m beginning to learn, just don’t work in Opera. As someone else in these comments mentioned, the font handling is also a bit weird – maybe changing the user-agent cures that, as someone else said…but I haven’t tried it.
Eh
@avi looks great! do you know Opera’s market share?
Didn’t Netscape 9 try this whole ‘pick your rendering engine’ thing? Did it help them? NO. Know why? Users don’t give a flying F.
Developers might get a kick out of this. Might make testing a little easier (especially for the lazy).
This one sounds doomed to obscurity.
CG
PS don’t you think it’s funny that a product that’s supposed to end the browser wars attracts these browser-jihad commentators?
Maybe if it tracked your usage and allowed you to configure IE-only sites to always open in IE engine, javascript-heavy use Opera, your bank, etc…
That might actually be useful: use the best rendering engine for a given site. Never hit a wall. Think they have the foresight to collect his info?
Still pretty niche (understatement).
CG
Yes. Switching the browser rendering engine was one of the main features of Netscape 8.
@Diego here are some stats to see for yourself
http://www.w3sc...wsers_stats.asp even tho Opera`s market share is 2.2% that doesnt make it less powerfull 
I really don’t care what browsers are available, in fact it is a good thing that different browsers specialise in different things (think Flock). Lets just hope the rendering engines get uniform. Web developers need to be able to work without testing for every browser in the universe…
I downloaded and tried using it; the browser is just to f**king hard to use it took me 10 minutes to figure out how to change the damn homepage you cant even do that in the tools or settings menu.
I can imagine what will happen if an average person tries to use this they will be complete dumb founded; the software is just like Japanese phones to many menus and submenus it just to damn complicated to what it should be.
I agree. I still don’t know how to set a homepage in it, and I am far from an average user (engineer in a software developing company).
Another flaw: search in the web page is not working.
I think Firefox + IE Tab Plugin is very enough!
Interesting stuff the japs have been upto. I am liking the Asian name in the foray
“Luna” is Latin. Not sure about -scape though.
FYI, I tested SunSpider benchmark under Mac OSX Safari using the latest WebKit (which also 100% passes the acid3 test as recently reported) and got scores 1300-1400. Thats less than half of what Lunascape’s score!
3-in-1… like a “shampoo” that cleans, conditions, and grows your hair.
Could be great. Could suck.
Giving it a first shot now. The CNN Slideshow I just tried to watch fails in all 3 engines.
Not surprisingly there are also a bucket of UX issues, as this is in alpha.
I can see this being good. Certainly already better than Chrome.
And IE just sucks.
And FF crashes too much.
And Opera just doesn’t get along with enough sites.
i think there is still room for optimized web experience for specific age and cultural targets – ideally firefox or chrome team to come up with localization solutions not limited to the mere translation of the interface – but involve the UI and experience as well to match local needs and expectations better. It should be only a matter of time and of better communication between developer’s communities.
My experience with Lunascape was pretty bad – I have been uninstalling the previous Lunascape browser versions from 3-4 Windows machines of my japanese friends and teacher since 2007. Very unstable and messy but, it may depend on the fact that almost any illiterate Pc user just get crunched by any spyware you could ever imagine.
But as i can tell it looks quite popular – it seems like young japanese really like it and also the fact that comes with some customization skins available with Lunascape (essentially customizing the whole browser interface and icons with ‘cute’ designs really appealing to students and japanese girls).
i still prefer internet explorer or firefox, both has a large market share and i used it with hibernater to save and resume my work easily.
I like my Firefox…thank you
Plus, I have Linux so it wouldn’t work for me anyway…
Haven’t seen a browser yet that can beat FF. The last disappointment was Chrome … don’t have the patience to download yet another one.
Lunascape rendering pages very fastly,very useful for users waat to experience multiple web browsing .Scrolling of web pages is not working properly like in IE8 beta.Overall quite ok for alpha version .
I made the mistake of upgrading to IE 8 and am paying for it – too slow, unfriendly and crashes all the time. I installed Lunascape and believe it improves upon IE in several ways. I love FF, but there seem to be too many websites that do not load properly on it. Chrome is good, but it suffers from lack of support and crashes quite a bit.
I’ll keep using Lunascape for a while before I decide. It’s not bad…really..
FF is the best browser, but maybe someone build new engine not only mix it
yeah, agreed with ken. i use hibernater too, thus ff and ie for me.
Great tool for debugging…
I think I should build my own browser.
and you can switch from one to another? great !
This is very useful as a developer tool to test behaviour and Javascript/css of web application under different browser easily.
Can I suggest that Lunascape provides mode of 3 vertical split windows side by side with each window using different browser. In this mode, if user enter a URL, all browsers will change to the location.
This will be great way to test web application. Lunascape may not only useful in consumer market but only serve as a niche useful developer tool.
All I have to say is: ” Schweeet!”
Adrian Eden
Well, to be fair, the idea and concept are good (for some), and it could possibly be worth it once out of beta…
However, I won’t be using it. Firefox had been my primary until I decided to try out Chrome Beta. I just prefer the simplistic look of Chrome (but I keep FF as my secondary).
SeaMonkey2 (when out of beta) will have plugins for Opera, Gecko, Webkit, and IE switchable in much the same manner as Lunascape5, and will use the EXISTING UP-TO-DATE (patched) rendering engines and UI dlls installed by those native programs. The fact that LunaScape5 uses older render engines (for the switching) is very insecure and just asking for trouble. On the other hand, no need for the “Key logger” paranoia mentioned by an earlier replier, as a decent copy of ZoneAlarm Free or Pro or MalwareBytes or AdAware will find key loggers and key-logging attempts at their core; i.e., LunaScape5 is NOT a key logger (although, regarding Master Password protection of website logins, one might want to check to see if the encryption is at least as good as Firefox (locally) or FoxMarks (as for the online matching component offered in LunaScape5)
I experienced so many crashes. And it looks so complicated.
I can not use anymore.
Since I encountered tremendous lags with Internet Explorer 8.0.6001.18702 and Firefox 3.5 (1.9.1.3462) I tried others browsers.
Lunascape 5.0.3. is the fastest browser I have ever try.
Piece of advice: try the (three) 3 different rendering engines before deciding to trash it.
You can easily change the rendering engine via the menu : [Tools - Lunascape Settings - General - General Settings - Rendering Engine - Default Engine]