Lunascape5 Genesis is a feature rich browser that brings the best of everything in the browser world. It is the world's first triple engine browser that gives users the freedom to choose between Trident (IE engine), Gecko or Webkit. The beta version of the browser was released today and it is available for download from their official website. In addition to offering three different rendering engines, the company blog announced that Lunascape5 has emerged as a winner in the SunSpider Javascript benchmark outperforming IE8 (alpha), FF3.1 (beta), Google Chrome and Opera 10 (alpha). We also have a short interview with the CEO of Lunascape Inc, Mr. Hidekazu Kondo.
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I don't know the specifics behind it, but on jaunty at least the kpart is in the repository and seems functional from the couple test runs I gave it. It was a little slow, but that's not too surprising at this point. It did really drive home that konq really needs some love as a web browser. In particular, it's heading to be the only browser that doesn't have some kind of JIT compilation for javascript.
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There's been hints floating around the web that they may make a KPart out of WebKit such that you could switch between KHTML and WebKit, but I have no idea if that is actually happening.
Actually there is a webkit kpart, which can be used in konqueror: http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/playground/libs/webkitkde/
I tried it with KDE trunk and it seams to work reasonably well.
There are also several projects to build a stand-alone browser for KDE, just like dolphin: Foxkit (http://code.google.com/p/foxkit/), Arora (http://code.google.com/p/arora/) and rekonq (http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php/rekonq+Web+Browser?content...).
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I would assume it has the same security vulnerabilities as IE does. However, assuming this is the same version of Trident that ships with IE7, is security in IE7 really that big of an issue anymore, at least as compared to everyone else?
I mean, I know it was a nightmare with IE6, but I thought IE7 was pretty well 'sandboxed', and blocking ActiveX controls by default, etc.
Edited 2009-02-12 19:01 UTC
Member since:2006-12-05
I believe you're right. However, on post-XP systems (Vista and Windows 7), you'd actually be *more* secure with IE most likely, since it's been designed to run in "protected mode" on those platforms. Unless they've made it in such a way that anything using IE's Trident engine is automatically run in protected mode, but I haven't heard anything about that. I guess that's where the ability to disable ActiveX in this new browser comes in handy, that alone will seriously defend against a lot of bad stuff out there.
Still, nothing beats common sense; just don't visit sites you don't trust and click every random link you see, and you'll be much safer.
Edited 2009-02-13 04:48 UTC
Member since:2007-09-08
Protected mode is basically a hack to allow IE to run with reduced privileges. Microsoft didn't take the time to write a proper solution to allow any application to run inside a low-rights sandbox - it was designed to allow a single application to run inside a single low-rights sandbox, and it has lots of hacks to allow older IE addons to still work, such as file and registry virtualization.
Basically, unless you're IE, protected mode is kind of useless, and Microsoft don't support using it in any way. The sole component of protected mode that's usable by third-party applications is the integrity levels feature, which prevents a low integrity application from screwing around with a higher integrity application. It does absolutely nothing to protect files or the registry.
Chrome takes an interesting approach - they build their own sandbox. It's not the same as IE's protected mode, and doesn't rely on the integrity levels feature introduced in Vista, or UAC, so it works on Windows XP as well.
Basically, each rendering task (one per tab, I think) is run inside it's own process. The security token for each process is modified so that the process is denied access to everything. Each process is run inside a virtual desktop to isolate it from the user's desktop. This gives the same effect as protected mode - the vulnerable parts of the application are isolated from the rest of the system, so any successful attack can only damage the contents of the sandbox. Which is empty, so there's nothing to damage.
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garyd is correct. Netscape 8 could switch between IE's Trident and Mozilla's Gecko engine. It was actually not a bad browser as I recall. Netscape 9 did away with the dual support and went back to Gecko exclusively. Not sure why, but it was a pretty good performing browser.
Jeff
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2005-07-09
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2007-06-12
How big is this beast and how much of a pain is it to get updated? I don't run into websites that need activex/IE anymore so why would anyone want to use IE? People will choose a Webkit variant or a Gecko variant and stick with it.
I also don't see how they can be faster at JS than anyone else, if anything they will be the exact same as the other other browsers since there is no actual code being added/modified other than their shell/glue code.
Edited 2009-02-12 21:09 UTC
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Not only that, but it is also the fastest browser in the world. To accomplish that, it renders each page with all the three engines at once and uses the fastest result.
(Sorry, couldn't resist - there are too much superlatives in this news and trying to ex post facto make fast something which was designed not to be - HTML/CSS/Javascript - makes me cry as an engineer.)
Member since:2006-01-19
That would at least finally give someone a reason to buy this "interesting" AMD 3 core processor which has been floating around for some time now.
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2007-03-04
Strange similarity with the Dreamhost logo 
http://www.dreamhost.com/
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2007-02-05
This reminds me of the late 90s and early 2000s when there was a lot of various trident-based (and some that was hybrid Trident/Gecko) browser with branding. (Yahoo-browser, MSN-browser, AOL-browser, etc...)
Seems like this is a new trend, in Mac there is an explosion of various WebKit browsers and in windows you have things such as Sleipnir, which also is Japanese.
http://www.fenrir-inc.com/
I don't really see the point of all these though, they rarely add more value than the browsers that "own" the rendering engines they are using.
"Back in August 2001 the big problem with browsers was keeping multiple windows open at once. Screens were small, having 20 windows open at once was annoying. So I built the initial Lunascape browser with tabs, the world's first"
Opera 5 had tabs in 2000.
(Can't remember whether Mozilla had it before 2001 or not.)
"Something close to 5 billion people still are not using the Internet at all. Using a browser will be, more than likely, the first and best way for new users of the Internet to take advantage of cyberspace."
Chances are that they'll access that with a mobile browser(not necesseraliy on a smartphone) and not a computer. This is why Opera Mobile is actually more used than Safari Mobile despite iPhones huge success.
(I realize that I come off as a Opera-fanboy here, for the record: I'm a Firefox user at desktop, and Safari user with my phone.)
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2005-10-19
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Apple are funny.
After Leopard they're very strict about user interface styles(exept "pro" programs), but completely dump it on Windows.
I can understand why though. Their interface is a brand, and they're using their Windows programs to advertise for OS X. I don't think it's working out that well though. All their interfaces on Windows is usually not very stable and behaves weird.
I guess part reason they get away with it is that nobody(including Microsft themselves) seem to care all that much about GUI consistency on Windows. Just look at Office 2007. Except Firefox maybe.
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2006-01-08
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