Lunascape is another web browser (by a Japanese company of the same name) available for XP/Vista machines. It's a bit of a neat browser that has been around for a while that has some merit to it.
The most useful feature is that it uses the Gecko, Trident, and WebKit rendering engines used by Firefox, IE, and Safari/Chrome respectively. Tabs can be independently rendered in different engines on the fly. It can be rather useful if you're a web developer trying to get cross browser compatibility on a site or if you come across someone else's site that isn't done properly.
Some other useful features are:
- You can choose to not install the WebKit or Gecko engines if you don't want to. (Trident seems to be mandatory though. :/ )
- like Chrome, a tab crash doesn't equal a full browser crash (although I've yet to verify this feature).
- Skinnable, although the default skin isn't all too great (it apparently has several defaults, but none of them worked for me
) and the downloadable ones are mostly absolutely ridiculous. Still, a customizable interface is a customizable interface.
- Pretty much every tool/menu/link bar is customizable and can be moved or hidden.
- Doesn't take up much resources. Lunascape uses less resources than bloaty Fatfox and IE7 (albeit it's a much smaller gap with IE)
However, there are some downsides:
- The tri-engine feature seems less like a single browser using multiple engines and more like multiple browsers brought up under one GUI. It's a bit of an "iframe-ish" feel.
- Although the website declares it to be the fastest browser in existence (which might be true for earlier versions), the 5.0 alpha version is not noticeably faster than Firefox. It is a bit hard to believe it's faster than other browsers when it uses THEIR rendering engines. Correct me if I'm wrong.
- You apparently have to have Internet Explorer (6 or later) installed to install Lunascape.
In my opinion, Lunascape is fairly decent for a browser. I find it a useful alternative for testing cross browser compatibility that doesn't require me installing individual browsers. Also, since I've always seemed to have had issues with certain browsers not liking certain sites (such as Firefox dying on flash game sites) and my laptop doesn't really have any resources to spare, this is quite a useful browser since I don't have to have as many processes running simultaneously.
Lunascape site: http://www.lunascape.tv
The most useful feature is that it uses the Gecko, Trident, and WebKit rendering engines used by Firefox, IE, and Safari/Chrome respectively. Tabs can be independently rendered in different engines on the fly. It can be rather useful if you're a web developer trying to get cross browser compatibility on a site or if you come across someone else's site that isn't done properly.
Some other useful features are:
- You can choose to not install the WebKit or Gecko engines if you don't want to. (Trident seems to be mandatory though. :/ )
- like Chrome, a tab crash doesn't equal a full browser crash (although I've yet to verify this feature).
- Skinnable, although the default skin isn't all too great (it apparently has several defaults, but none of them worked for me

- Pretty much every tool/menu/link bar is customizable and can be moved or hidden.
- Doesn't take up much resources. Lunascape uses less resources than bloaty Fatfox and IE7 (albeit it's a much smaller gap with IE)
However, there are some downsides:
- The tri-engine feature seems less like a single browser using multiple engines and more like multiple browsers brought up under one GUI. It's a bit of an "iframe-ish" feel.
- Although the website declares it to be the fastest browser in existence (which might be true for earlier versions), the 5.0 alpha version is not noticeably faster than Firefox. It is a bit hard to believe it's faster than other browsers when it uses THEIR rendering engines. Correct me if I'm wrong.
- You apparently have to have Internet Explorer (6 or later) installed to install Lunascape.
In my opinion, Lunascape is fairly decent for a browser. I find it a useful alternative for testing cross browser compatibility that doesn't require me installing individual browsers. Also, since I've always seemed to have had issues with certain browsers not liking certain sites (such as Firefox dying on flash game sites) and my laptop doesn't really have any resources to spare, this is quite a useful browser since I don't have to have as many processes running simultaneously.
Lunascape site: http://www.lunascape.tv