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Author Topic: Lunascape - Web Browser with all major rendering engines  (Read 10160 times)

icekin

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Lunascape - Web Browser with all major rendering engines
« on: August 20, 2009, 01:47 AM »
Straight from Japan: Lunascape

Claims to be the world's only triple engine browser. Don't know about that, I know FF with IE View extension was quite popular among web developers before. Anyone tried this?

marcdw

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Re: Lunascape - Web Browser with all major rendering engines
« Reply #1 on: August 21, 2009, 04:46 PM »
I'm giving it the once-over right now. I must say, so far I'm impressed. Relatively speaking it's a rather
snappy program. Having an older computer (ThinkPad T21, 800MHz PIII) I get a good feel for how well
programs run. Firefox for instance is just too heavy feeling. Very slow to startup, seems to suck up RAM,
and just doesn't feel very responsive. Almost the same for Thunderbird, too (my default email app though
I'm still searching for something with its features but less resource usage).
My default browser for years has been SlimBrowser so that's the one I compare all others too.

Upon installation and initial startup Lunascape walks you through various setups such as selecting default
rendering engine and design/skin. When I selected the Firefox (Simple) look it was too bright for me so I kept
it at the IE6 look which better fits my rather dull OPENSTEP Windows look (I'm not much for eye candy).

Settings:  There are lots of them which is a good thing. You can tweak this thing to your hearts desire
although I can't uncheck the option to use skins with the tabs. Thus my tabs have a white/blue gradient
look that clashes with the gray of everything else.

Haven't yet done any testing with changing rendering engines on the fly. As you may know each tab
can hold a page with its own renderer. One can also set, somewhere, for certain sites to always use
a certain rendering engine.

Whether or not I adopt Lunascape depends on whether or not it can use the RoboForm toolbar.
The RoboForm toolbar is listed in the list of bars to toggle but when went to the DonationCoder
logon page RoboForm didn't recognize it. Nor was I able to fill in the form.
Even though the toolbar will attach just fine I guess RoboForm itself doesn't support this browser.
Or maybe it has to do with the renderer, not sure. I'm using Gecko as the default.

Anyhind, so far so good.
Marc

sajman99

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Re: Lunascape - Web Browser with all major rendering engines
« Reply #2 on: August 22, 2009, 02:18 PM »
The Lunascape website indicates "Browsers are not made equal...but you can have it ALL with Lunascape". From a security standpoint, I'm thinking I might not want it all. I mean, wouldn't this triple-engine browser be exposed to every Trident/Gecko/Webkit vulnerability? :tellme:


dantheman

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Re: Lunascape - Web Browser with all major rendering engines
« Reply #3 on: August 25, 2009, 07:20 PM »
Firefox 3.5 may be slow at clean start up but usually starts up much faster after initial system boot. Otherwise, it is faster than IE6,7,8 and whatever plugin browser that goes with it. Google Chrome 3 is probably fastest at present but you don't have adblock nor plugins (addons or widgets) to enhance your browsing experience. Shucks, it doesn't even have mouse gestures!  :o

Vulnerabilities for Lunascape? Probably not much of an issue anymore as all major browsers keep making security updates. Just like AV programs. If you get hacked it's because they don't have the means to resolve the issues yet or... you haven't kept your AV updated?

Nutty

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Re: Lunascape - Web Browser with all major rendering engines
« Reply #4 on: August 30, 2009, 03:11 PM »
Re: Chrome
There are addons for Chrome.  See e.g., mychromeaddons.com and chromeplugins.org.

You'll need to change to the beta or developer channel for Chrome, however.

Here is a mouse gestures plugin.
Here is an ad blocker.

If you don't want to change to an early-release version, you can always find a general purpose gestures app that will work for any application that doesn't have built-in support, e.g., gMote.

Re:Lunascape
Obviously, it's great for web designers who want to test how their website displays in each of the engines.

I quite like the ability to change engines and even set certain pages to automatically change to the engine desired.  However, there are some odd interface quirks, and for some reason it wouldn't set itself to default browser, despite clicking on the button to do so.  I had to use the Default Programs app for Windows to do it.

As far as vulnerabilities, it's not like you're using all three engines at once.  Because of its smaller market share, malware creators don't target Webkit (and Gecko for the most part) like they do with IE.  I would argue this is much better, because you have the option of using IE where a poorly-designed website requires it, but otherwise you can stick with another engine in large part.
« Last Edit: August 31, 2009, 12:42 PM by Nutty »

dantheman

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Re: Lunascape - Web Browser with all major rendering engines
« Reply #5 on: August 30, 2009, 07:35 PM »
Nutty,

With regards to Chrome, that's pretty good to know about. Have you tried them? Did you notice any change in speed at start up or page rendering?  Any CPU usage increase?

rgdot

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Re: Lunascape - Web Browser with all major rendering engines
« Reply #6 on: August 30, 2009, 09:43 PM »
Looks promising, just downloaded.
One "pre even using it impression" is that I downloaded the 9MB from the site, as part of the install it proceeded to download webkit and gecko .exes adding ~19MB to it. For testing purposes alone (not its other features) one could do alt-tab and load sites in the 'original' browsers.

Nutty

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Re: Lunascape - Web Browser with all major rendering engines
« Reply #7 on: August 31, 2009, 12:21 PM »
With regards to Chrome, that's pretty good to know about. Have you tried them? Did you notice any change in speed at start up or page rendering?  Any CPU usage increase?
I've tried other addons, but I haven't tried those two (I'm not a gestures enthusiast).  I've had mixed results, but I was playing with it when the installation process of an addon was not very intuitive, and highly dependent on the version of Chrome installed.  It's apparently gotten easier as Google has introduced more support for such efforts.  There didn't seem to be much of an impact on performance, but nor was I overladen (like I tend to get with Firefox).

However, I had problems with a couple of sites that worked fine before the upgrade to the development version, but ceased to operate correctly afterwards, so I've since downgraded.  I haven't tried again in some months, so those issues may have been ironed out.  So I've been going back and forth between Chrome, which is quick and great for most purposes, and Lunascape for the odd site that refuses to work in Chrome (I'm looking at you, Netflix Instant Play and Microsoft OfficeLive).
EDIT: I retract the disparaging remark about Netflix.  I just tried it, and the Movie Viewer works in Chrome once again, and now I don't even have to change the useragent to IE to make it work.  (Yay!)

(Re: Lunascape)
One "pre even using it impression" is that I downloaded the 9MB from the site, as part of the install it proceeded to download webkit and gecko .exes adding ~19MB to it. For testing purposes alone (not its other features) one could do alt-tab and load sites in the 'original' browsers.
Sure, but that takes a bit more than 2 quick clicks on the engine icon in the lower left corner.  The other way you've got involves copying the address from the address bar, launch the other browser, paste the address, hit Enter (except in Chrome you can right-click to "Paste and Go") and then after any change you make to the site, you have to Alt+Tab around, remembering to do a manual refreshes as you go back and forth between each browser.  It's surely not rocket science, but if you need to make a series of small changes, it's unwieldy and can get confusing.

On the other hand, the various small interface issues still make me loathe to use Lunascape as my main browser.
« Last Edit: August 31, 2009, 12:39 PM by Nutty »

cmpm

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Re: Lunascape - Web Browser with all major rendering engines
« Reply #8 on: December 30, 2009, 11:14 AM »
From mouser's post on shellcity, they have Lunascape listed.
Claims to be able to use most Firefox plugins.

I think I'll give it a run.

http://shellcity.net/

http://www.lunascape.tv/

f0dder

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Re: Lunascape - Web Browser with all major rendering engines
« Reply #9 on: December 30, 2009, 03:55 PM »
I personally prefer "the real deal" rather than any multi-engine browser... one reason is a security standpoint - you (potentially) get all security vulnerabilites in one shiny package, and if session state is shared between engines this could be pretty bad. If session state isn't shared, the only thing that multi-engine browser has going for it ("switch rendering with a single click") falls flat to the ground.

The other reason is that you don't get exactly the same user experience as if you load up the dedicated browser - and if you're doing web design, you'll want that.
- carpe noctem

cmpm

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Re: Lunascape - Web Browser with all major rendering engines
« Reply #10 on: December 30, 2009, 04:05 PM »
hm, yeah, the security is a problem

1st impression of it, after I loaded it, not streamlined.
Didn't see any speed increase or decrease, it's just a browser.
A bit clumsy to work with add ons and other functions.
It wanted to keep going back to the trident engine.
The firefox addons worked, but slower.
It's not as pretty as the website :)

Backup your computer before installing it.