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Comparison of web browsers

From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.

The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of web browsers. Please see the individual products' articles for further information. This article is not all-inclusive or necessarily up-to-date.

Contents

General information

Basic general information about the browsers: creator/company, license/price etc.

Creator First public release date Latest public release date Latest stable version Cost (USD) Software license Current layout engine
Amaya W3C, INRIA November 14, 1996 February 24, 2005 9.1 Free W3C  ?
Camino Mozilla Foundation February, 2002 April 28, 2005 0.8.4 Free MPL, MPL/GPL/LGPL tri-license Gecko
Dillo Arellano Cid, Geerken, Rota, et al. December, 1999 June 15, 2005 0.8.4 Free GPL  ?
ELinks Baudis, Fonseca, et al. December, 2001 May 3, 2005 0.10.5 Free GPL  ?
Epiphany GNOME December, 2002 April 23, 2005 1.6.3 Free GPL Gecko
Galeon Marco Pesenti Gritti June, 2000 May 21, 2005 1.3.21 Free GPL Gecko
iCab iCab Company 1998 April 20, 2004 2.9.8 Free (preview),
$30 (pro)
Proprietary iCab
Internet Explorer Microsoft,
Spyglass
August, 1995 August 6, 2004 6.0.2900 (SP2) 1 Part of Windows 1 Proprietary Trident
Internet Explorer for Mac Microsoft March 27, 2000 June 17, 2003 5.2.3 Free Proprietary Tasman
K-Meleon Doozan, Erikson, Vallet, et al. November 26, 2000 January 18, 2005 0.9 Free GPL Gecko
Konqueror KDE October, 2000 May 31, 2005 3.4.1 Free GPL KHTML
Links Patocka, et al. November 24, 1999 December 23, 2003 0.99 Free GPL  ?
Lynx Montulli, Grobe, Rezac, et al. July, 1993 February 5, 2004 2.8.5 Free GPL  ?
Mosaic Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina, NCSA April 22, 1993 2.7b5 (Unix) / 1996 (Mac OS); 1997 (Windows); 1996 (Unix) 2.6 Free (non-commercial) Proprietary  ?
Mozilla Mozilla Foundation December 7, 1998 May 11, 2005 1.7.8 Free MPL, MPL/GPL/LGPL tri-license Gecko
Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Foundation September 23, 2002 May 11, 2005 1.0.4 Free MPL, MPL/GPL/LGPL tri-license Gecko
Netscape Netscape Communications Corporation, AOL November 14, 2000 August 17, 2004 7.2 Free Proprietary, MPL/GPL/LGPL tri-license Gecko
Netscape Browser Mercurial Communications for AOL November 30, 2004 June 17, 2005 8.0.1 Free Proprietary, MPL, GPL/LGPL tri-license Trident, Gecko
Netscape Navigator Netscape Communications October 13, 1994 August 22, 2002 4.8 Free Proprietary  ?
OmniWeb Omni Group March 17, 1995 January 5, 2005 5.1 $30 Proprietary,
LGPL
WebCore
Off By One Home Page Software 2001 January 31, 2005 3.5.a Free Proprietary  ?
Opera Opera Software September, 1996 June 16, 2005 8.01 Free (ads),
$20–39 (ad-free)
Proprietary Presto
Safari Apple Computer June 23, 2003 April 29, 2005 2.0 (412) Part of Mac OS X 1 Proprietary,
LGPL
WebCore
WorldWideWeb Tim Berners-Lee August, 1991 1994? 0.17 Free Public domain NeXTSTEP built-in
Creator First public release date Latest public release date Latest stable version Cost (USD) Software license Current layout engine

Note (1): As of August 2004, at least Windows XP or Windows 2000 is required to install the latest version of Internet Explorer for Windows, the last version of Internet Explorer that still works with Windows 98 and ME is 6.0 SP1. Mac OS X v10.4 is required to install the latest version of Safari.

Operating system support

The operating systems the browsers can run on without emulation.

Windows Mac OS X Mac OS 9 Linux BSD Unix
Amaya Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes
Camino No Yes No No No No
Dillo Dropped Yes No Yes Yes Yes
ELinks No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Epiphany No Yes No Yes Yes Yes
Galeon No Yes No Yes Yes Yes
iCab No Yes Yes No No No
Internet Explorer Yes No No No No Dropped
Internet Explorer for Mac No Yes Yes No No No
Links No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Lynx Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
K-Meleon Yes No No No No No
Konqueror No Yes No Yes Yes Yes
Mosaic Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Mozilla Yes Yes Dropped Yes Yes Yes
Mozilla Firefox Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes
Netscape Yes Yes Dropped Yes Yes Yes
Netscape Browser Yes No No No No No
Netscape Navigator Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Off By One Yes No No No No No
OmniWeb No Yes No No No No
Opera Yes Yes Dropped Yes Yes Yes
Safari No Yes No No No No
WorldWideWeb
(NeXTSTEP only)
No No No No No No
Windows Mac OS X Mac OS 9 Linux BSD Unix

Browser features

Information about what common browser features are implemented natively (without third-party add-ons).

Bookmark managing Download managing Password managing Form managing Spell checking Search engine toolbar
Amaya Yes No No No Yes No
Camino Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes
Dillo  ? No  ?  ? No Partial
ELinks Yes Yes  ?  ? No No
Epiphany  ? Yes  ?  ? No Yes
Galeon Yes Yes Yes No No Yes
iCab  ? Yes  ?  ? No Yes
Internet Explorer 2 Yes Yes Yes Yes No 3 No 4
Internet Explorer for Mac</sup> Yes Yes Yes Yes No No
K-Meleon Yes No  ?  ? No Yes
Konqueror Yes No  ?  ? Yes Yes
Links Yes Yes No No No No
Lynx Yes No  ?  ? No No
Mosaic Yes No No No No No
Mozilla Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Mozilla Firefox Yes Yes Yes Yes No 5 Yes
Netscape Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No
Netscape Browser Yes Yes Yes Yes  ? Yes
Netscape Navigator Yes  ?  ?  ?  ? No
Off By One No No No No No No
OmniWeb Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Opera Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Safari Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
WorldWideWeb Yes No No No Yes No
Bookmark managing Download managing Password managing Form managing Spell checking Search engine toolbar

Note (2): Internet Explorer is the only browser to support the Component Object Model (popularly known as ActiveX) natively. The embedding of ActiveX into Internet Explorer can add functionality to the browser, however this can also lead to infection with computer viruses, trojans and spyware.

Note (3): Spell checking can be added by installing an add-on like ieSpell (http://www.iespell.com).

Note (4): Internet Explorer does not come with any search engine toolbar, but a variety third-party toolbar add-ons are available.

Note (5): Spell checking can be added by installing an extension like the open source Spellbound (http://spellbound.sourceforge.net).

Accessibility features

Information about what common accessibility features are implemented natively (without third-party add-ons).

Tabbed browsing Pop-up blocking Incremental finding Ad filtering Page zooming 6
Amaya Yes N/A  ?  ? Yes
Camino Yes Yes Yes No No
Dillo No N/A No No No
ELinks Yes No Yes N/A N/A
Epiphany Yes Yes Yes No Yes
Galeon Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
iCab Yes Yes No Yes Yes
Internet Explorer No Yes No No No
Internet Explorer for Mac No No No No No
K-Meleon Yes Yes Yes  ? Partial
Konqueror Yes Yes Yes No No
Links No No  ? N/A N/A
Lynx No N/A  ? N/A N/A
Mosaic No N/A  ? No  ?
Mozilla Yes Yes Yes Partial 7 No [1] (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4821)
Mozilla Firefox Yes Yes Yes Partial 7 No [2] (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4821)
Netscape Yes Yes Yes Partial 7 No
Netscape Browser Yes Yes Yes Partial 7 No
Netscape Navigator No No No No No
Off By One Yes N/A  ?  ? No
OmniWeb Yes Yes  ? Yes No
Opera Yes Yes Yes Partial 8 Yes
Safari Yes Yes No No Partial 9
WorldWideWeb No No No No No
Tabbed browsing Pop-up blocking Incremental finding Ad filtering Page zooming

Note (6): Page zooming is different from text resizing, as it resizes not only characters, but also multimedia objects and viewport.

Note (7): Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, and Netscape support simple domain name-based blocking for images. More advanced regular expression-based Ad filtering for Mozilla and Mozilla Firefox can be added with external software such as the AdBlock extension [3] (http://adblock.mozdev.org).

Note (8): Opera supports wildcard protocol/domain/path and filetype blocking using a filter.ini [4] (http://www.schrode.net/opera/url_filtering/) file. More advanced Ad filtering for Opera can also be done with external software [5] (http://nontroppo.org/wiki/OperaAdblock).

Note (9): All Mac OS X applications have page-zooming if you have installed Developer Tools on you computer.

Accessibility features (cont.)

Information about what common accessibility features are implemented natively (without third-party add-ons).

HTML access key Tabbing navigation Spatial navigation Caret navigation Mouse gesture Text-to-speech Voice control
Amaya  ?  ?  ? Yes  ? No No
Camino Yes Yes No No No No No
Dillo  ?  ?  ?  ?  ? No No
ELinks  ?  ?  ?  ?  ? No No
Epiphany  ? Yes  ? Disabled  ? No No
Galeon  ? Yes  ? Disabled Yes No No
iCab  ?  ?  ?  ?  ? No No
Internet Explorer Yes Yes No No No 9 No No
Internet Explorer for Mac Yes Yes No No No No No
K-Meleon Yes Yes No Disabled Yes No No
Konqueror  ?  ?  ?  ?  ? No No
Links  ?  ?  ?  ?  ? No No
Lynx  ?  ?  ?  ?  ? No No
Mosaic  ?  ?  ?  ?  ? No No
Mozilla Yes Yes No Yes No 11 No No
Mozilla Firefox Yes Yes No 10 Yes No 11 No 12 No
Netscape Yes Yes No Yes No 11 No No
Netscape Browser Yes Yes No  ? No No No
Netscape Navigator  ? Yes No No No No No
Off By One No Yes No No No No No
OmniWeb  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?
Opera Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes
Safari Yes Yes No No No No No
WorldWideWeb  ?  ?  ?  ?  ? No No
HTML access key Tabbing navigation Spatial navigation Caret navigation Mouse gesture Text-to-speech Voice control

Note (9): Mouse gesture support can be added by installing Easy Go Back add-on [6] (http://www.unhsolutions.net/EGB/).

Note (10): Doug Turner, the Minimo lead developer, has introduced spatial navigation to some special Firefox builds [7] (http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/007992.html). It may build as a default part of Firefox [8] (http://www.mozilla.org/access/keyboard/snav/).

Note (11): Mouse gesture support can be added by installing extensions like All-in-One Gestures (Firefox-only) [9] (http://perso.wanadoo.fr/marc.boullet/ext/extensions-en.html) and Mouse Gestures [10] (http://optimoz.mozdev.org/gestures/index.html).

Note (12): Firefox works with a number of screen readers such as JAWS [11] (http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/s2s/latest/jaws1/home/index.shtml) and Microsoft SAPI 5 TTS [12] (https://webspace.utexas.edu/chencl1/clc-4-tts/) through extensions.

Web technology support

Information about what web standards, and technologies the browsers support. External links lead to information about support in future versions of the browsers or extensions that provide such functionality.

CSS2 13 Frames Java JavaScript XSLT XHTML 14 MathML XForms RSS Atom
Amaya Yes No No No No Yes Yes No No No
Camino Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No
Dillo No Partial 15 No No No No No No No No
ELinks Partial Yes No Partial  ? No No No No No
Epiphany Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No
Galeon Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No
iCab Partial Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No
Internet Explorer Partial 16 Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No
Internet Explorer for Mac Partial Yes Yes Yes  ? No No No No No
K-Meleon Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No Yes  ?
Konqueror Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes No No  ?  ?
Links No Yes No Partial  ? No No No No No
Lynx No No No No No No No No No No
Mosaic No No No No No No No No No No
Mozilla Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No 17 No No
Mozilla Firefox Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No 17 Yes Yes
Netscape Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No
Netscape Browser Depends Yes Yes Yes Yes Depends Depends No Yes Yes
Netscape Navigator No Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No
Off By One No Yes No No No No No No No No
OmniWeb Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes No No Yes Yes
Opera Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes No No Yes Yes
Safari Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No Yes Yes
WorldWideWeb No No No No No No No No No No
CSS2 Frames Java JavaScript XSLT XHTML MathML XForms RSS Atom

Note (13): CSS2 Revision 1, a W3C candidate recommendation, is the current version of CSS. CSS2 aural media is almost universally unsupported and as such is not considered here. CSS3 is only in draft status at present. For more detailed information please see comparison of layout engines (CSS).

Note (14): XHTML is based on HTML but is an application of XML, which means that XHTML must be stricter than equivalent HTML code. XHTML is meant to be read by an XML parser but for backward compatibility reasons can also be parsed as HTML; this table only notes the browsers that are able to parse XHTML as XML. For more detailed information please see comparison of layout engines (XHTML).

Note (15): Dillo displays frames as links that the user can click on.

Note (16): Internet Explorer 6 supports a number of selectors and properties of CSS2 but is known to have a significantly higher number of bugs than other browsers. The most notable of these is the box model bug, which affects all versions of Internet Explorer for Windows prior to IE6 and remains the default box model in IE6.

Note (17): XForms is supported experimentally in nightly builds dated after January 28 2005 [13] (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xforms/). Requires installation of an extension.

Protocol support

Information about what internet protocols the browsers support. External links lead to information about support in future versions of the browsers or extensions that provide such functionality.

Email 18 FTP NNTP (Usenet18 SSL IRC Gopher IDN data: URL
Amaya No No No No No  ?  ?  ?
Camino No Yes No Yes No Yes Yes Yes
Dillo No Yes No Partial No No No No
ELinks No Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes
Epiphany No No No Yes No Yes Yes Yes
Galeon No Yes No Yes No Yes Yes Yes
iCab No Yes No Yes No  ?  ?  ?
Internet Explorer No Yes No Yes No Disabled No 21 No
Internet Explorer for Mac No Yes No Yes No  ?  ?  ?
K-Meleon No Yes No Yes No Yes Yes Yes
Konqueror No Yes No Yes No  ? Yes Yes
Links No Yes No Yes No  ?  ?  ?
Lynx No Yes No Yes No  ?  ?  ?
Mosaic No  ? No  ? No Yes No No
Mozilla Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes 22 Yes
Mozilla Firefox No Yes No Yes No 19 Yes Yes 22 Yes
Netscape Yes Yes Yes Yes No 19 Yes Yes Yes
Netscape Browser No Yes No Yes No Depends Depends Depends
Netscape Navigator Yes  ? Yes Yes No  ? No No
Off By One No No No Yes 23 No  ?  ?  ?
OmniWeb No Yes No Yes No  ? Yes  ?
Opera Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Partial 20 Yes Yes
Safari No Partial No Yes No No Yes Yes
WorldWideWeb No Yes Yes No No No No No
Email FTP NNTP (Usenet) SSL IRC Gopher IDN data: URL

Note (18): Many browsers have purposely avoided support for email and newsgroups, as these are reserved for their mail-client counterparts. For a comparison of such counterparts see comparison of email clients.

Note (19): IRC support can added by installing ChatZilla.

Note (20): Gopher is supported through proxy servers.

Note (21): IDN support can be added by installing VeriSign i-Nav Plug-In (http://idn.verisign-grs.com).

Note (22): IDN domains are displayed as punycode by default for security reasons

Note (23): Only with the SSL dll version.

Image format support

Information about what image formats the browsers support. External links lead to information about support in future versions of the browsers or extensions that provide such functionality.

JPEG GIF PNG MNG SVG 27 PDF 30
Amaya Yes Yes Yes No Partial No
Camino Yes Yes Yes No No No
Dillo Yes Yes Yes No No No
ELinks No No No No No No
Epiphany Yes Yes Yes No No No
Galeon Yes Yes Yes No No No
iCab Yes Yes Yes No No Yes
Internet Explorer Yes 24 Yes Partial 25 No No No
Internet Explorer for Mac Yes Yes Yes No No No
K-Meleon Yes Yes Yes No No No
Konqueror Yes Yes Yes Yes No 28  ?
Links Yes Yes Yes No No No
Lynx No No No No No No
Mosaic Yes Yes No No No No
Mozilla Yes Yes Yes Dropped 26 No 29 No
Mozilla Firefox Yes Yes Yes No No 29 No
Netscape Yes Yes Yes No No No
Netscape Browser Yes Yes Depends No No No
Netscape Navigator Yes Yes Partial No No No
Off By One Yes Yes Yes No No No
OmniWeb Yes Yes Yes No No No
Opera Yes Yes Yes No Yes (SVGT) No
Safari Yes Yes Yes No No Yes
WorldWideWeb Yes Yes No No No No
JPEG GIF PNG MNG SVG PDF

Note (24): Internet Explorer does not support progressive display of progressive JPEG.

Note (25): Internet Explorer supports PNG images but is unable to correctly display images with alpha channel (for transparency), gamma correction and color correction. Alpha channel will be supported in version 7 [14] (http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/04/26/412263.aspx).

Note (26): Support of MNG/JNG was dropped since June 6 2003 [15] (http://www.mozilla.org/status/2003-06-06.html) [16] (http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=12633). There are unofficial builds with MNG/JNG called Mngzilla [17] (http://mngzilla.sourceforge.net).

Note (27): SVG here refers to SVG 1.1 "Full". These are two simpified profiles known as SVG 1.1 Tiny and SVG 1.1 Basic, which are intended for user agents with limited capabilities.

Note (28): KDE has developed its own SVG plugin for Konqueror, known as KSVG [18] (http://svg.kde.org).

Note (29): The current Firefox 1.1 nightlies are built with SVG (and enabled by default) [19] (http://annevankesteren.nl/archives/2005/04/svg-nightlies). Modules that are supported, in progress, or not supported [20] (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/svg/status.html).

Note (30): Most browsers support PDF by installing an Adobe plugin which takes over the browser window. Listed here are browsers which also support inline PDFs within other hypertext documents (such as within HTML's <img/> tag). Note that PDF (in strictly speaking) is not an image format, but a scriptable rich text document format that can contain different types of multimedia content, including vector and bitmap graphics, audio, video, forms, intra- and inter-document hypertext links and a hierarchical contents listing. The format is also the native display format under Mac OS X.

Security

This comparison of unpatched known vulnerabilities in latest public version browsers is based on vulnerabilities reports by SecurityFocus (http://www.securityfocus.com/). See computer security for more details about the importance of unpatched known flaws.

ranking browser number of known vulnerabilities oldest known vulnerability
1-3 Konqueror 0 (http://securityfocus.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?c=12&vendor=KDE&version=3.4.1&title=Konqueror) -
1-3 Opera 0 (http://securityfocus.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?c=12&vendor=Opera%20Software&version=8.0%201&title=Opera%20Web%20Browser) -
1-3 Safari 0 (http://securityfocus.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?c=12&vendor=Apple&version=2.0&title=Safari) -
4 Netscape Browser 1 (http://www.securityfocus.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?c=12&vendor=Netscape&version=8.0.1&title=Netscape) June 21, 2005 (http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/14008)
5 Camino 1 (http://securityfocus.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?c=12&vendor=Mozilla&version=0.8.4&title=Camino) June 6, 2005
6 OmniWeb 1 (http://securityfocus.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?c=12&vendor=Omni%20Group&version=5.1&title=Omniweb) April 16, 2005
7-8 Mozilla 2 (http://www.securityfocus.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?c=12&vendor=Mozilla&version=1.7.8&title=Browser) June 6, 2005 (http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/10877)
7-8 Mozilla Firefox 2 (http://www.securityfocus.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?c=12&vendor=Mozilla&version=1.0.4&title=Firefox) June 6, 2005 (http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/10877)
9-10 Internet Explorer for Mac 2 (http://securityfocus.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?c=12&vendor=Microsoft&version=5.2.3&title=Internet%20Explorer%20Macintosh%20Edition) December 10, 2004
9-10 iCab 2 (http://securityfocus.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?c=12&vendor=iCab&version=2.9.8&title=iCab) December 10, 2004
11 Internet Explorer (Windows XP SP2) 27 (http://securityfocus.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?c=12&vendor=Microsoft&version=6.0%20SP2&title=Internet%20Explorer) September 16, 2004 (http://securityfocus.com/bid/11200)
12 Internet Explorer 92 (http://securityfocus.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?c=12&vendor=Microsoft&version=6.0%20SP1&title=Internet%20Explorer) April 18, 2001 (http://securityfocus.com/bid/2612)
ranking browser number of known vulnerabilities oldest known vulnerability

References

See also