Comparison of layout engines - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of web browser engine

Web browser engine

A web browser engine, , is a software component that takes marked up content and formatting information and displays the formatted content on the screen. It "paints" on the content area of a window, which is displayed on a monitor or a printer...

s. Please see the individual products' articles for further information. This article is not all-inclusive or necessarily up to date. Unless otherwise specified in footnotes, comparisons are based on the stable versions without any add-ons, extensions or external programs.

General information

Basic general information about the engines.

Engine	Developer(s)	Leading application	Programming language Programming language A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....
Gecko Gecko (layout engine) Gecko is a free and open source layout engine used in many applications developed by Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation , as well as in many other open source software projects....	Netscape Netscape Netscape Communications is a US computer services company, best known for Netscape Navigator, its web browser. When it was an independent company, its headquarters were in Mountain View, California... /Mozilla Foundation Mozilla Foundation The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization that exists to support and provide leadership for the open source Mozilla project. The organization sets the policies that govern development, operates key infrastructure and controls trademarks and other intellectual property...	Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. , Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers...	C++ C++ C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
GtkHTML GtkHTML GtkHTML is a layout engine written in C using the GTK+ widget toolkit. It is primarily used by Novell Evolution and other GTK+ applications. The Balsa email client used GtkHTML as its layout engine for displaying emails until recently... This engine is not currently being developed.	GNOME GNOME GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...	Novell Evolution Novell Evolution Evolution or Novell Evolution is the official personal information manager and workgroup information management tool for GNOME. It combines e-mail, calendar, address book, and task list management functions. It has been an official part of GNOME since version 2.8 in September 2004...	C C (programming language) C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
iCab ICab iCab is a web browser for the Macintosh by Alexander Clauss, derived from Crystal Atari Browser for Atari TOS compatible computers. It is the most recently actively developed browser for 68k-based Macintoshes that features tabbed browsing and one of a very few browsers that was still updated in...	Alexander Clauss	iCab ICab iCab is a web browser for the Macintosh by Alexander Clauss, derived from Crystal Atari Browser for Atari TOS compatible computers. It is the most recently actively developed browser for 68k-based Macintoshes that features tabbed browsing and one of a very few browsers that was still updated in...
KHTML KHTML KHTML is the HTML layout engine developed by the KDE project. It is the engine used by the Konqueror web browser. A forked version of KHTML called WebKit is used by several web browsers, among them Safari and Google Chrome...	KDE KDE KDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems...	Konqueror Konqueror Not to be confused with the Conqueror web browser.Konqueror is a web browser and file manager that provides file-viewer functionality for file systems such as local files, files on a remote ftp server and files in a disk image. It is a core part of the KDE desktop environment...	C++ C++ C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
NetFront NetFront NetFront Browser is a mobile browser for embedded devices, developed by Access Co. Ltd. of Japan, and was designed to function as an embedded browser....	Access Co. ACCESS (company) , founded in April 1979 and incorporated in February 1984 in Tokyo, Japan, by Arakawa Toru and Kamada Tomihisa, is a company providing a variety of software for connected and mobile devices, such as mobile phones, PDAs, video game consoles and set top boxes....	NetFront NetFront NetFront Browser is a mobile browser for embedded devices, developed by Access Co. Ltd. of Japan, and was designed to function as an embedded browser....
Presto Presto (layout engine) Presto is the layout engine for later versions of the Opera web browser . After several public betas and technical previews, it was released on January 28, 2003 in Opera 7 for Windows, and as of Opera 11 it is still in use. Presto is dynamic: the page or parts of it can be re-rendered in response...	Opera Software Opera Software Opera Software ASA is a Norwegian software company, primarily known for its Opera family of web browsers with over 220 million users worldwide. Opera Software is also involved in promoting Web standards through participation in the W3C. The company has its headquarters in Oslo, Norway and is...	Opera Opera (web browser) Opera is a web browser and Internet suite developed by Opera Software with over 200 million users worldwide. The browser handles common Internet-related tasks such as displaying web sites, sending and receiving e-mail messages, managing contacts, chatting on IRC, downloading files via BitTorrent,...	C++ C++ C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
Prince XML Prince XML Prince is a proprietary software program that converts XML and HTML documents into PDF files by applying Cascading Style Sheets . It is developed by YesLogic, a small company based in Melbourne, Australia.-History:...	YesLogic Pty Ltd	Prince XML Prince XML Prince is a proprietary software program that converts XML and HTML documents into PDF files by applying Cascading Style Sheets . It is developed by YesLogic, a small company based in Melbourne, Australia.-History:...	Mercury
XEP XEP XEP is a commercial XSL-FO layout engine written in Java mainly used to convert XML to PDF. XEP is proprietary software by RenderX.- History :...	RenderX RenderX RenderX, Inc is a commercial software development company that provides standards-based software products, used for typeset-quality electronic and print output of business content...	XEP XEP XEP is a commercial XSL-FO layout engine written in Java mainly used to convert XML to PDF. XEP is proprietary software by RenderX.- History :...	Java Java (programming language) Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
Robin	Ritlabs	The Bat! The Bat! The Bat! is a shareware e-mail client for the Microsoft Windows operating system, developed by RITLabs, a company based in Chişinău, Moldova.-History:...	Delphi Object Pascal Object Pascal refers to a branch of object-oriented derivatives of Pascal, mostly known as the primary programming language of Embarcadero Delphi.-Early history at Apple:...
Tasman Tasman (layout engine) Tasman was a layout engine developed by Microsoft for inclusion in the Macintosh version of Internet Explorer 5. Tasman was an attempt to improve support for web standards, as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium. At the time of its release, Tasman was seen as the layout engine with the best...	Microsoft Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...	Microsoft Entourage Microsoft Entourage Microsoft Entourage was an e-mail client and personal information manager developed by Microsoft for Mac OS 8.5 and higher. Microsoft first released Entourage in October 2000 as part of the Microsoft Office 2001 office suite; Office 98, the previous version of Microsoft Office for Mac OS included...
Trident Trident (layout engine) Trident is the name of the layout engine for the Microsoft Windows version of Internet Explorer.It was first introduced with the release of Internet Explorer version 4.0 in October 1997; it has been steadily upgraded and remains in use today...	Microsoft Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...	Internet Explorer Internet Explorer Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...	C++ C++ C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
WebKit WebKit WebKit is a layout engine designed to allow web browsers to render web pages. WebKit powers Google Chrome and Apple Safari and by October 2011 held over 33% of the browser market share between them. It is also used as the basis for the experimental browser included with the Amazon Kindle ebook... WebKit was created by Apple by forking KHTML. Subsequently Apple released it as an open source project.	Apple, KDE KDE KDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems... , Nokia Nokia Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational communications corporation that is headquartered in Keilaniemi, Espoo, a city neighbouring Finland's capital Helsinki... , Google Google Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program... , RIM Research In Motion Research In Motion Limited or RIM is a Canadian multinational telecommunications company headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada that designs, manufactures and markets wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market... , Palm, others	Google Chrome Google Chrome Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine. It was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on September 2, 2008, and the public stable release was on December 11, 2008. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or...	C++ C++ C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...

Release history

A brief overview of the release history.

Engine	First public release		First stable release		Latest stable release
Engine	Date	Version	Date	Version	Date	Version
Gecko Gecko (layout engine) Gecko is a free and open source layout engine used in many applications developed by Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation , as well as in many other open source software projects....	7 December 1998	"Preview"	19 March 1999	M3	8 November 2011	8.0
GtkHTML GtkHTML GtkHTML is a layout engine written in C using the GTK+ widget toolkit. It is primarily used by Novell Evolution and other GTK+ applications. The Balsa email client used GtkHTML as its layout engine for displaying emails until recently...	2000	?	2000	?	14 December 2009	3.28.2
iCab ICab iCab is a web browser for the Macintosh by Alexander Clauss, derived from Crystal Atari Browser for Atari TOS compatible computers. It is the most recently actively developed browser for 68k-based Macintoshes that features tabbed browsing and one of a very few browsers that was still updated in...	1998	?	1998	?	1 January 2008	3.0.5
KHTML KHTML KHTML is the HTML layout engine developed by the KDE project. It is the engine used by the Konqueror web browser. A forked version of KHTML called WebKit is used by several web browsers, among them Safari and Google Chrome...	October 2000	?	October 2000	?	4 August 2009	4.3
NetFront NetFront NetFront Browser is a mobile browser for embedded devices, developed by Access Co. Ltd. of Japan, and was designed to function as an embedded browser....	1995	?	1995	?	13 January 2010	4.0
Presto Presto (layout engine) Presto is the layout engine for later versions of the Opera web browser . After several public betas and technical previews, it was released on January 28, 2003 in Opera 7 for Windows, and as of Opera 11 it is still in use. Presto is dynamic: the page or parts of it can be re-rendered in response...	13 November 2002	1.0	28 January 2003	1.0	12 April 2011	2.8.131
Prince XML Prince XML Prince is a proprietary software program that converts XML and HTML documents into PDF files by applying Cascading Style Sheets . It is developed by YesLogic, a small company based in Melbourne, Australia.-History:...	April 2003	1.0	April 2003	1.0	May 2010	7.1
XEP XEP XEP is a commercial XSL-FO layout engine written in Java mainly used to convert XML to PDF. XEP is proprietary software by RenderX.- History :...	1999	fo2pdf	?	?	March 2010	4.18
Robin	27 April 2000	1.32	27 April 2000	1.32	24 August 2009	4.2.10
Tasman Tasman (layout engine) Tasman was a layout engine developed by Microsoft for inclusion in the Macintosh version of Internet Explorer 5. Tasman was an attempt to improve support for web standards, as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium. At the time of its release, Tasman was seen as the layout engine with the best...	27 March 2000	0	27 March 2000	0	11 May 2004	1.0
Trident Trident (layout engine) Trident is the name of the layout engine for the Microsoft Windows version of Internet Explorer.It was first introduced with the release of Internet Explorer version 4.0 in October 1997; it has been steadily upgraded and remains in use today...	April 1997	No number	October 1997	No number	14 March 2011	5.0
WebKit WebKit WebKit is a layout engine designed to allow web browsers to render web pages. WebKit powers Google Chrome and Apple Safari and by October 2011 held over 33% of the browser market share between them. It is also used as the basis for the experimental browser included with the Amazon Kindle ebook...	7 January 2003	48	23 June 2003	85		SVN version only

Operating system support

The operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

s the engines can run on without emulation.

Engine	Windows Microsoft Windows Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...	Mac OS X Mac OS X Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...	Unix Unix Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
Gecko Gecko (layout engine) Gecko is a free and open source layout engine used in many applications developed by Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation , as well as in many other open source software projects....		Although dropped in current version, older versions of the Gecko web browser engine for Mac OS 8.6 Mac OS 8 Mac OS 8 is an operating system that was released by Apple Computer on July 26, 1997. It represented the largest overhaul of the Mac OS since the release of System 7, some six years previously. It puts more emphasis on color than previous operating systems... and Mac OS 9 Mac OS 9 Mac OS 9 is the final major release of Apple's Mac OS before the launch of Mac OS X. Introduced on October 23, 1999, Apple positioned it as "The Best Internet Operating System Ever," highlighting Sherlock 2's Internet search capabilities, integration with Apple's free online services known as... are still available for download from Netscape's Archived Products site. An updated port of the Mozilla Application Suite Mozilla Application Suite The Mozilla Application Suite is a cross-platform integrated Internet suite. Its development was initiated by Netscape Communications Corporation, before their acquisition by AOL. It is based on the source code of Netscape Communicator... for classic Mac OS systems is maintained as Classilla Classilla Classilla is a Gecko-based web browser for PowerPC-based classic Macintosh systems, essentially an updated descendant of the now-defunct Mozilla Application Suite by way of the Mac OS port maintained in the now-aborted project... .
GtkHTML GtkHTML GtkHTML is a layout engine written in C using the GTK+ widget toolkit. It is primarily used by Novell Evolution and other GTK+ applications. The Balsa email client used GtkHTML as its layout engine for displaying emails until recently...
iCab ICab iCab is a web browser for the Macintosh by Alexander Clauss, derived from Crystal Atari Browser for Atari TOS compatible computers. It is the most recently actively developed browser for 68k-based Macintoshes that features tabbed browsing and one of a very few browsers that was still updated in...
KHTML KHTML KHTML is the HTML layout engine developed by the KDE project. It is the engine used by the Konqueror web browser. A forked version of KHTML called WebKit is used by several web browsers, among them Safari and Google Chrome...
NetFront NetFront NetFront Browser is a mobile browser for embedded devices, developed by Access Co. Ltd. of Japan, and was designed to function as an embedded browser....	NetFront supports only Windows CE Windows CE Microsoft Windows CE is an operating system developed by Microsoft for embedded systems. Windows CE is a distinct operating system and kernel, rather than a trimmed-down version of desktop Windows... family.
Presto Presto (layout engine) Presto is the layout engine for later versions of the Opera web browser . After several public betas and technical previews, it was released on January 28, 2003 in Opera 7 for Windows, and as of Opera 11 it is still in use. Presto is dynamic: the page or parts of it can be re-rendered in response...
Prince XML Prince XML Prince is a proprietary software program that converts XML and HTML documents into PDF files by applying Cascading Style Sheets . It is developed by YesLogic, a small company based in Melbourne, Australia.-History:...
XEP XEP XEP is a commercial XSL-FO layout engine written in Java mainly used to convert XML to PDF. XEP is proprietary software by RenderX.- History :...
Robin
Tasman Tasman (layout engine) Tasman was a layout engine developed by Microsoft for inclusion in the Macintosh version of Internet Explorer 5. Tasman was an attempt to improve support for web standards, as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium. At the time of its release, Tasman was seen as the layout engine with the best...
Trident Trident (layout engine) Trident is the name of the layout engine for the Microsoft Windows version of Internet Explorer.It was first introduced with the release of Internet Explorer version 4.0 in October 1997; it has been steadily upgraded and remains in use today...		(4.0)	(5.0)
WebKit WebKit WebKit is a layout engine designed to allow web browsers to render web pages. WebKit powers Google Chrome and Apple Safari and by October 2011 held over 33% of the browser market share between them. It is also used as the basis for the experimental browser included with the Amazon Kindle ebook...

General information

Release history

Operating system support

See also