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.
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 (Usenet) 18 | 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 |
| 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 |
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
- Amaya release history (http://www.w3.org/Amaya/User/New.html)
- Camino 0.8.4 release notes (http://www.caminobrowser.org/releases/084.html)
- Epiphany News (http://www.gnome.org/projects/epiphany/news.html)
- Firefox 1.0.4 release notes (http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/releases/1.0.4.html)
- iCab Information (http://icab.de/info.html)
- Konqueror news (http://www.konqueror.org/news.php)
- Mozilla 1.7.8 release notes (http://www.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla1.7.8/)
- Netscape Browser release notes (http://browser.netscape.com/ns8/support/relnotes.jsp)
- Opera changelogs (http://www.opera.com/docs/changelogs/)
- Information on WorldWideWeb (http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb.html)