LunaScape is Japanese web browser created by Hidekazu KONDO in 2001. He
founded a company in 2004 and that company has maintained an American presence
since 2008 June.
LunaScape 4 was already available in Amglish, but it seems the company is
getting ready to promote LunaScape 5 as your browser of choice. Its unique
pitch: LunaScape 5 is a triple-engine browser.
The company likes to say that LunaScape supports three browser engines, but that is not really the case. LunaScape supports three layout engines, but only two of those are real browser engines.
LunaScape supports two browser engines, the Gecko engine used in Firefox, Seamonkey and Flock, and the WebKit engine used in Apple Safari and Google Chrome. It does not support the Presto engine used in Opera, DreamWeaver and the Adobe Creative Suite.
The third engine that LunaScape supports isn’t a real browser engine, it is Trident, the layout engine used Internet Explorer, MSN Messenger, the Windows Media Player and various third-party products such as Valve’s Steam.
The LunaScape browser supports two surfing modes: Web and Blog.
LunaScape’s list of features looks good. It is the browser to support three engines. It has script blocking, Java blocking, built-in RSS reader and it’s extensible too. It has a customisable browser search bar. The new version even supports mouse gestures like Opera does.
Alas, feature lists don’t tell the whole story.
The LunaScape claims that LunaScape is fast and has some bench mark to prove
it. That benchmark should raise suspicions already, as a three-engine browser
really needs to post three different benchmarks.
Besides, it is not even a browser speed test, but an JavaScript test. That tells
you very little about real-world performance on JavaScript sites, and nothing
about its performance on JavaScript-free web sites.
The simple fact of the matter is that LunaScape is a bit slow. The first time you open a new tab, you may get see a brief "initializing LayoutEngine engine" messagebox while you wait for this to happen.
Actual performance after initialisation does not feel particularly fast either. The integrated RSS reader and its silly ticker tape may be dragging performance down a bit, but the real issue remains that most speed claims by browser makers are pure nonsense, because the major determinant of browsing speed is the bandwidth of your connection. Unless a browser maker really fouls up, all browser are about as fast as each other.
Then there are user interface mistakes that slow you down. LunaScape is a tabbed browser, and each tag has a cross on it that you click to close that tag. Problem is, that cross only shows when you hover your mouse over the tab. Next to the last tab is a plus sign. You want to close tab and that plus sign is the one clickable thing on screen, so you click it. Problem is, the plus sign does not close a tab, it opens a new one. You may find yourself clicking it several times before painstakingly hovering over the tabs to get to see a cross and click that. By the time you’ve done so, you’ve lost several seconds. A fast renderer cannot make up for such a user interface blunder and the annoyance it causes.
Another annoyance is that the RSS reader comes preconfigured with various sites and a rather distracting ticker that you will probably want to turn off. LunaScape will automatically pop up a somewhat transparent alert windows in the lower right corner of your screen every time any of these sites updates. That can be turned off too, but the option to do so is not under "RSS", it is under "pop-up".
It is not obvious how you can remove the preconfigured feeds. You have to figure out that the toolbar they are on is the Link toolbar, but even when you know that, your menu choice is not obvious yet. You have to show the Favourites sidebar and then edit the list in the sidebar. The quickest way to edit is to click the down arrow next to the big "Favorites" button and choose "Organize Favorites..." (it is all in Amglish instead of English).
A small user interface problem is that the View | Rendering Engine menu does
not change the rendering engine used to display the page. It only changes the
default rendering engine for the next page you open. All already open tab,
including the current tab, remain unaffected.
To change the rendering for the current page, you need to click the icon the
lower left corner of the browser.
I tried with the Windows Update site. The Windows Update site isn’t a web site, but an Internet Explorer site. The Microsoft’s Trident engine is the only one that supports Internet Explorer sites. When I used the Gecko or WebKit browser engine, I got to see a message that I should be using Internet Explorer 5 and later.
The Trident engine does not support web standards and Internet Explorer may even refuse to load web pages. I tried LunaScape on my own web site, and it just rendered the pages using Trident. That rendering is suboptimal, but better than a refusal to render it.
LunaScape defaults to Trident instead of one of the two browser engines it ships with. That may seem dumb, but is the right thing to do for optimal backward compatibility. LunaScape started as a Trident-based program, and only later added support for Gecko and now WebKit.
One truly annoying little thing is that LunaScape supports three engines, but
does not show you which versions of these engines it currently supports. That
alone makes it impossible to do meaningful compatibility tests using this
browser.
I managed to find that the WebKit add-on is version 1.0.0.0, but that still does
not tell me what version of WebKit is being used. The about box does not list
the engine versions either.
LunaScape is customisable. There are many ready-made skins to choose from. While trying this feature out, I noticed not only that download from their servers in Japan was slow, but also that LunaScape will apparently handle just one download at a time. It feels like a single-thread program. That is odd, because it isn’t. Version 5 features "crash protection"; like various other browsers, it tries to sandbox each tab from other tabs. Still, when I try to switch from one tab to another after starting a download, it won’t let me do that. Windows Vista even pops up a dialog that the program is unresponsive.
The download dialog appears in the middle of the screen, making you yearn for a download manager like the Download Statusbar add-on for Firefox, but there appears to be none. There e appear to be no plug-ins in English, only Japanese. There are not many plug-ins anyway, and you don’t need to speak Japanese to see that most are about integrating with particular websites or services.
The lacks of download manager is not the only major shortcoming. Another serious shortcoming is the lack of an add blocker.
The absence of
an add blocker is a bit puzzling. Not only is this already the fifth major
release, LunaScape does include the ability to quickly block or allow
scripts, ActiveX controls and Java applets. It also allows you to associated a
particular engine with a page. That prevents you from manually having to switch
to Trident every time you visit Windows Update or some other Internet Explorer
site.
LunaScape is like having Firefox with NoScript and the IE Tab add-ons built-in,
but without the add-blocking.
Another drawback is that LunaScape does not support Firefox add-ons. LunaScape has its own add-on system, and additionally supports Internet Explorer plug-ins.
A rather silly shortcoming is that you cannot select your interface language. LunaScape has a Japanese and an Amglish interface, but you must pick the one you want when you download. The lack of an English user interface further limits the international appeal of this browser.
LunaScape seems unlikely to win over anyone using Firefox. Firefox with IE Tab already support Internet Explorer sites. Firefox features a pop-up blocker and offers many, many extensions to customise the browser just the way you like it.
LunaScape’s ability to render Internet Explorer sites may hold some appeal for Safari or Chrome users, but LunaScape’s real appeal is as an alternative to Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer users that upgrade to LunaScape get a real browser that still supports Internet Explorer sites, and get that without having to install any add-ons.
LunaScape 5 has many features, but it lacks some essential ones. LunaScape’s biggest shortcomings are the lack of an English interface, the lack of an add-blocker and some user-interface mistakes.
Copyright © Tamura Jones. All Rights reserved.