Are you forced to run two or more web browsers on your PC for compatibility reasons? Perhaps your online banking doesn’t work properly unless you access it in Internet Explorer, while for day-to-day browsing you prefer Firefox.
Switching between browsers can be a real pain, which is where Lunascape 6.8.0 comes in. This freeware browser takes the browser engines from Internet Explorer, Chrome/Safari and Firefox, and wraps them up in a single program, letting you switch effortlessly between them.
Lunascape works with the Trident engine used by Internet Explorer, Gecko engine used by Firefox and the WebKit Plugin engine utilised by Google Chrome and Safari, enabling it to cover most bases (you can even use Firefox plugins and Internet Explorer add-ons).
Users can switch manually between browser engines from the main Address bar to see how a website looks in different engines. Lunascape also makes it possible to always open specific pages in a specific engine -- to do this, click and hold on the browser engine displayed in the Address Bar and choose Associate Page with Engine.
Latest Release Notes
Version 6.8.0 has just been released, and comes with a number of improvements. The first promises significantly faster loading times of video, photos and other media when using the default Trident engine thanks to its GPU rendering features. The new Trident engine also allows an increased maximum number of connections, which can boost loading times of content-heavy sites.
Lunascape is now also compatible with Internet Explorer 10, although its HTML5/CSS3 framework support is limited. The program should also be more stable thanks to the fixing of a compatibility issue between IE9 and Active X controls. Other minor bug fixes include one that saw the browser UI being displayed incorrectly after being started from a minimised state.
Lunascape 6.8.0 is a freeware download for PCs running Windows XP SP3 or later. Both Gecko and WebKit Plugins are downloaded and installed separately as part of the install process.