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Comparison of browser engines

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This article compares browser engines, especially actively-developed ones.[a]

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

[edit]
Engine Creators License Used in
WebKit Apple GNU LGPL, BSD-style Safari browser, GNOME Web, Konqueror, Orion and all browsers for iOS[3]
Blink Google, initially forked from WebKit GNU LGPL, BSD-style All Chromium-based browsers
Gecko Mozilla Mozilla Public Firefox browser and its forks; SeaMonkey browser, Thunderbird email client
Goanna M. C. Straver[4] Mozilla Public Pale Moon, Basilisk, K-Meleon browsers
NetSurf NetSurf developers[5] GNU GPLv2 NetSurf browser
Servo Linux Foundation Mozilla Public Experimental browsers[6][7]
LibWeb Ladybird Browser Initiative[8] 2-clause BSD Ladybird browser[9]
KHTML[10] KDE GNU LGPL Discontinued; formerly in the Konqueror browser[11]
Trident Microsoft Proprietary Internet Explorer browser
EdgeHTML Microsoft Proprietary Some UWP apps;[12] formerly Microsoft Edge browser[13]
Presto Opera Proprietary Opera Mini browser in Extreme/Mini mode, where contents arrive pre-rendered using this engine server-side[14]
Flow[15] Ekioh[16] Proprietary Flow browser[17]

Support

[edit]

These tables summarize what actively-developed[a] engines support.

Operating systems

[edit]

The operating systems that engines can run on without emulation.

Engine Windows macOS iOS[3] Android Linux BSD Haiku
WebKit Yes[i] Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Blink Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes[ii]
Gecko Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Goanna Yes Yes[18] No No[19] Yes Yes No

Notes

  1. ^ Must be built from source code.
  2. ^ Only available through QtWebEngine.

Image formats

[edit]
Engine JPEG JPEG 2000 JPEG XL JPEG XL HDR JPEG ISO HDR JPEG Adobe HDR GIF BMP PNG APNG SVG WebP AVIF AVIF HDR HEIC HEIC HDR
WebKit Yes Yes Yes No [20][21] No [20][21] No [20][21] Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No [20]
Blink Yes No No[22][23] Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No
Gecko Yes No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No
Goanna Yes No Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No

Media formats

[edit]
Engine VP9 AV1 HEVC H264+AAC Opus FLAC
WebKit Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes
Blink Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Gecko Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes
Goanna Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes

Typography

[edit]
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

Other items

[edit]
Engine Web Components WebGL WebGPU[24] XHTML
WebKit Yes Yes No Yes
Blink Yes Yes Yes[25] Yes
Gecko Yes Yes No Yes
Goanna Yes[26] Yes No Yes

See also

[edit]

Notes

[edit]
  1. ^ a b Active status means that new Web standards continue to be added to the engine, which properly renders the vast majority of websites, including multimedia. However, Maintained status can be as minimal as ensuring the engine code still compiles; this includes relatively new engines that are not yet robust enough to be Active here. Discontinued is when the engine code is abandoned.

References

[edit]
  1. ^ Paul Festa (14 January 2003). "Apple snub stings Mozilla". CNET Networks. Archived from the original on 25 October 2012. Retrieved 16 February 2017.
  2. ^ Bright, Peter (3 April 2013). "Google going its own way, forking WebKit rendering engine". Ars Technica. Conde Nast. Retrieved 9 March 2017.
  3. ^ a b "Open-sourcing Chrome on iOS!". 2017. Retrieved 26 April 2021. Due to constraints of the iOS platform, all browsers must be built on top of the WebKit rendering engine.
  4. ^ M. C. Straver. "About Moonchild Productions". Archived from the original on 13 March 2017. Retrieved 19 April 2018.
  5. ^ "NetSurf Developer page". Netsurf-browser.org. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
  6. ^ "A new browser for Magic Leap". 3 December 2018. Retrieved 20 May 2019.
  7. ^ "Firefox Reality for HoloLens 2". 21 May 2020. Retrieved 17 July 2020.
  8. ^ Kling, Andreas (1 July 2024). "Announcing the Ladybird Browser Initiative". ladybird.org.
  9. ^ Andreas Kling (September 2022). "Ladybird: A new cross-platform browser project". Please note that we're still early in development, and many web platform features are missing or broken. It's going to take a long time before Ladybird is ready for day-to-day browsing.
  10. ^ "KHTML repository". GitHub. Retrieved 5 May 2023. Removed for KF6, the 'kf5' branch contains the last maintained state.
  11. ^ "Port Konqueror away from KHTML". phabricator.kde.org. Retrieved 5 May 2023.
  12. ^ Mendelevich, Alan (14 May 2021). "You Think You Can Forget About the "Legacy" Microsoft Edge? Not So Fast!".
  13. ^ Mackie, Kurt (10 December 2018). "Microsoft Edge Browser To Get New Rendering Engine but EdgeHTML Continues". Redmond Mag. Retrieved 21 December 2019.
  14. ^ "Opera Browsers, Modes & Engines". dev.opera.com. 2 June 2015. Archived from the original on 14 June 2015.
  15. ^ "Flow Preview Builds". Ekioh. Retrieved 5 November 2023. Flow's goal is to render every website correctly... but there is currently a long way left to go.
  16. ^ "About Ekioh". Ekioh.
  17. ^ "Flow Browser". Ekioh.
  18. ^ "#1829 Restore Mac OS X code and buildability". 31 March 2022. Archived from the original on 6 May 2022.
  19. ^ "Pale Moon for Android is dead". forum.palemoon.org. April 2019. Retrieved 4 May 2021.
  20. ^ a b c d "Bug 288705: [HDR] Enable SupportHDRDisplay feature by default". Webkit Team. 28 February 2025. Retrieved 21 March 2025.
  21. ^ a b c "Bug 290940: Gain mapped images do not show HDR contents". Webkit Team. 2 April 2025. Retrieved 10 April 2025.
  22. ^ "Google kills forthcoming JPEG XL image format in Chromium". The Register. 31 October 2022. Retrieved 7 August 2023.
  23. ^ Purdy, Kevin (17 April 2023). "FSF: Chrome's JPEG XL killing shows how the web works under browser hegemony". Ars Technica. Retrieved 16 February 2024.
  24. ^ "WebGPU Implementation Status". GitHub. Retrieved 14 March 2024.
  25. ^ "Chrome ships WebGPU". developer.chrome.com. Google. Retrieved 23 February 2024.
  26. ^ "Pale Moon - Release Notes". 21 March 2023.
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