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 | 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
- ↑ 1.0 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.
- ↑ Internet Explorer continues to receive security updates,[11] which means MSHTML is still maintained.
- ↑ 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
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Open-sourcing Chrome on iOS!". 2017. https://blog.chromium.org/2017/01/open-sourcing-chrome-on-ios.html.
- ↑ "Current browser market share". StatCounter. https://gs.statcounter.com/.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ "About Ekioh". https://www.ekioh.com/company/.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 "Flow Browser". https://www.ekioh.com/flow-browser/.
- ↑ "serenity/Userland/Applications/Browser at master · SerenityOS/serenity" (in en). https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/tree/master/Userland/Applications/Browser.
- ↑ Proven, Liam. "SerenityOS: Remarkable project with its own JS-capable web browser". https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/31/serenityos/.
- ↑ "Ladybird Web Browser". https://github.com/awesomekling/ladybird.
- ↑ "Lifecycle FAQ – Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge – Microsoft Lifecycle" (in en-us). https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/faq/internet-explorer-microsoft-edge.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ "A new browser for Magic Leap". 2018-12-03. https://blog.mozvr.com/a-new-browser-for-magic-leap/.
- ↑ "Firefox Reality for HoloLens 2". 2020-05-21. https://blog.mozvr.com/firefox-reality-hololens/.
- ↑ "Development Progress". http://www.netsurf-browser.org/documentation/progress.html.
- ↑ "NetSurf | News". NetSurf. http://www.netsurf-browser.org/about/news.html.
- ↑ "NetSurf Developer page". http://www.netsurf-browser.org/developers/. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
- ↑ "NetSurf web browser homepage". http://www.netsurf-browser.org/. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
- ↑ "#1829 Restore Mac OS X code and buildability". 2022-03-31. https://repo.palemoon.org/MoonchildProductions/UXP/issues/1829.
- ↑ "Pale Moon for Android is dead". April 2019. https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=14723&start=20#p165642.
- ↑ "SerenityOS update (July 2022)". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aO0b2X7tzuk&t=63s.