Software:Comparison of browser engines

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This article provides general information for browser engines, especially actively-developed ones.[lower-alpha 1]

Some of these engines have shared origins. For example, the WebKit engine was created by forking the KHTML engine in 2001.[1] Then, in 2013, a modified version of WebKit was officially forked as the Blink engine.[2]

General information

Engine Status[lower-alpha 1] Steward License Embedded in
WebKit Active Apple GNU LGPL, BSD-style Safari browser, plus all browsers for iOS[3]
Blink Active Google GNU LGPL, BSD-style Google Chrome and all other Chromium-based browsers, notably Microsoft Edge, Vivaldi, Samsung Internet and Opera[4]
Gecko Active Mozilla Mozilla Public Firefox browser and Thunderbird email client
Goanna Active M. C. Straver[5] Mozilla Public Pale Moon, Basilisk, and K-Meleon browsers
Flow Active Ekioh[6] Proprietary Flow browser[7]
Serenity LibWeb Active Andreas Kling et. al.[8] 2-clause BSD license Ladybird Web Browser[9][10]
MSHTML[lower-alpha 2] Maintained Microsoft Proprietary Internet Explorer browser
EdgeHTML Maintained Microsoft Proprietary UWP apps; formerly in the Edge browser[12]
KHTML Maintained KDE GNU LGPL Konqueror browser
Servo Maintained Linux Foundation Mozilla Public experimental browsers[13][14]
NetSurf[lower-alpha 3] Maintained hobbyists[17] GNU GPLv2 NetSurf browser[18]
Presto Discontinued Opera Proprietary formerly in the Opera browser
eww Maintained GNU GPL-3.0-or-later Emacs browser
libwww Discontinued Henrik Frystyk Nielsen GPL-2.0-only Lynx browser
Links Maintained Mikuláš Patočka GPL-2.0-or-later Links browser

Operating system support

The operating systems that actively-developed engines can run on without emulation.

Engine Windows macOS iOS[3] Android Linux BSD Haiku
WebKit Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Blink Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Gecko Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes No
Goanna Yes Yes[19] No No[20] Yes Yes No
Flow[7] Yes Yes No Yes Yes No No
LibWeb[21] Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes

Rendering support

Engine <canvas> WebGL WebGPU MathML SVG XHTML
WebKit Yes Yes No No Yes Yes
Blink Yes Yes No No Yes Yes
Gecko Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes
Goanna Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes
LibWeb Yes ? No ? Partial ?

Media support

Engine VP9 AV1 HEVC H264+AAC Opus FLAC
WebKit Yes Yes Depends Yes Depends Yes
Blink Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes
Gecko Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes
Goanna Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes
LibWeb No No No No No No

Image format support

Engine JPEG PNG GIF APNG BMP WebP AVIF JPEG XL
WebKit Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No
Blink Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Nightly build
Gecko Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Nightly build
Goanna Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No
LibWeb Yes Yes No No No No No No

Typography support

Engine TTF OTF WOFF WOFF2 @font-face Ligatures
WebKit Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Blink Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Gecko Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Goanna Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
LibWeb ? ? ? ? ? ?

See also

Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 Active status means that new Web standards continue to be added to the engine. However, Maintained status can be as minimal as ensuring the engine code still compiles. Discontinued is when the engine code is abandoned.
  2. Internet Explorer continues to receive security updates,[11] which means MSHTML is still maintained.
  3. NetSurf does not fully support HTML5 or other recent Web standards,[15][16] which means it cannot work properly on YouTube, Gmail, and many other popular websites. Thus it does not merit Active status per this article's criteria.

References

  1. Paul Festa (2003-01-14). "Apple snub stings Mozilla". CNET Networks. Archived from the original on 2012-10-25. https://web.archive.org/web/20121025015655/http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-980492.html. Retrieved 2017-02-16. 
  2. Bright, Peter (April 3, 2013). "Google going its own way, forking WebKit rendering engine". Conde Nast. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/04/google-going-its-own-way-forking-webkit-rendering-engine/. Retrieved March 9, 2017. 
  3. 3.0 3.1 "Open-sourcing Chrome on iOS!". 2017. https://blog.chromium.org/2017/01/open-sourcing-chrome-on-ios.html. 
  4. "Current browser market share". StatCounter. https://gs.statcounter.com/. 
  5. M. C. Straver. "About Moonchild Productions". Archived from the original on 2017-03-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20170313050503/http://www.moonchildproductions.info/about.shtml. Retrieved 2018-04-19. 
  6. "About Ekioh". https://www.ekioh.com/company/. 
  7. 7.0 7.1 "Flow Browser". https://www.ekioh.com/flow-browser/. 
  8. "serenity/Userland/Applications/Browser at master · SerenityOS/serenity" (in en). https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/tree/master/Userland/Applications/Browser. 
  9. Proven, Liam. "SerenityOS: Remarkable project with its own JS-capable web browser". https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/31/serenityos/. 
  10. "Ladybird Web Browser". https://github.com/awesomekling/ladybird. 
  11. "Lifecycle FAQ – Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge – Microsoft Lifecycle" (in en-us). https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/faq/internet-explorer-microsoft-edge. 
  12. Mackie, Kurt (10 December 2018). "Microsoft Edge Browser To Get New Rendering Engine but EdgeHTML Continues". https://redmondmag.com/articles/2018/12/10/edgehtml-continues.aspx. Retrieved 21 December 2019. 
  13. "A new browser for Magic Leap". 2018-12-03. https://blog.mozvr.com/a-new-browser-for-magic-leap/. 
  14. "Firefox Reality for HoloLens 2". 2020-05-21. https://blog.mozvr.com/firefox-reality-hololens/. 
  15. "Development Progress". http://www.netsurf-browser.org/documentation/progress.html. 
  16. "NetSurf | News". NetSurf. http://www.netsurf-browser.org/about/news.html. 
  17. "NetSurf Developer page". http://www.netsurf-browser.org/developers/. Retrieved 7 February 2019. 
  18. "NetSurf web browser homepage". http://www.netsurf-browser.org/. Retrieved 7 February 2019. 
  19. "#1829 Restore Mac OS X code and buildability". 2022-03-31. https://repo.palemoon.org/MoonchildProductions/UXP/issues/1829. 
  20. "Pale Moon for Android is dead". April 2019. https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=14723&start=20#p165642. 
  21. "SerenityOS update (July 2022)". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aO0b2X7tzuk&t=63s.