Comparison of web browsers

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The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of web browsers. Please see the individual products' articles for further information.

The usage share of web browsers.
Source: Median values from summary table.      Internet Explorer (58.04%; Usage by version number)      Mozilla Firefox (28.03%; Usage by version number)      Google Chrome (6.16%)      Safari (5.03%)      Opera (2.04%)      Other (1.35%)

[edit] Web browser history

[edit] Web browsers by year

A rough estimation of usage share by percent of layout engines/web browsers as of Q2 2009, see usage share of web browsers.

This is a table of personal computer web browsers by year of release of major version, in chronological order, with the approximate number of worldwide Internet users in millions. Note that Internet user data is related to the entire market, not the versions released in that year. The increased growth of the Internet in the 1990s and 2000s means that current browsers with small market shares have more total users than the entire market early on. For example, 90% market share in 1997 would be roughly 60 million users, but by the start of 2007 9% market share would equate to over 90 million users.^[1]

[edit] Historical web browsers

This table focuses on OS and browsers of the 1990s and turn of the century. The year listed for a version is usually the year of the first official release, with an end year being end of development, project change, or relevant termination. Releases of OS and browser from the early 1990s to before 2001-2002 time frame are the current focus.

Many early browsers can be made to run on later OS (and later browsers on early OS in some cases); however, most of these situations are avoided in the table. Terms are defined below.

^[15][16]

• ^ Cell phones, Nintendo DS / Wii, Symbian, Windows Mobile; BeOS (Dropped 3.62), QNX (Dropped 6.01)

[edit] General information

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

• ^  There are five different products which all carry the name Netscape: Netscape versions 1 to 4, properly called Netscape Navigator, was a browser based on the original Netscape engine. Netscape 4 also was available as an Internet suite, properly called Netscape Communicator. Netscape 6 and 7 was a new Internet suite based on the Gecko engine and the Mozilla Application Suite user interface. Netscape 8, properly called Netscape Browser, was a distinct browser based on Firefox that could use either the Gecko (Firefox) or Trident (Internet Explorer) engine. Netscape resumed use of the Navigator name from Netscape Navigator 9.0 beta 1. See Netscape for more info.

• ^  According to the Google-published comic^[18] and other sources^[19], Google Chrome is fully open source. However, there are parts of the program that have no source code available, including RLZ.dll^[20]. However, Chromium, the development project behind Chrome, can be compiled and used as-is without non-free components ^[21] (also see SRWare Iron).

[edit] Release history

A brief overview of the release history.

• ^  As of February 2007, at least Windows XP SP2 or Windows Server 2003 SP2 is required to install the latest version (8.0) of Internet Explorer for Windows. Internet Explorer 6.0 SP1 is the last version that supports Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT 4.0 SP6a, and Windows 2000. Internet Explorer 7 is bundled with Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, Internet Explorer 8 is part of Windows 7.
• ^  Safari is included with Mac OS X and the latest version is always available only from the OS install or OS updates.

[edit] Operating system support

The operating systems the browsers have been compiled to run on without emulation; for the given browser/OS combination, there are seven possibilities:

• No indicates that it does not exist or was never released.
• Partial indicates that while the browser works, it lacks important functionality or is extremely unstable compared to versions for other OSs (that is to say it has roughly alpha or pre-alpha quality). It is still being developed however.
• Beta indicates that while a version of the browser is fully functional and has been released, it is still in development (e.g. for stability).
• Yes indicates that the browser has been officially released in a fully functional, stable version.
• Dropped indicates that the latest stable version of the browser does not work on the operating system, although an older version is available that does. The number in parentheses is the last known stable version which was officially released for that OS.
• Included indicates that the browser comes pre-packaged as part of or has been integrated into the operating system.

Please note that the list is not exhaustive, but rather reflects the most common OSs today (e.g. Netscape Navigator was also developed for OS/2 at a time when Mac OS X did not yet exist) but does not include the growing appliance segment (for example, the Opera web browser has gained a leading role for use in mobile phones, smartphones, the Nintendo DS and Wii, and Personal Digital Assistants, and is also used in Interactive televisions). Both the web browser and OS means most recent version, example: Windows 7 w/ Internet Explorer 8.

• ^ Some version of Firefox is included in most Linux distributions utilizing GUI.
• ^ Dillo is included in some Linux distributions, i.e. Damn Small Linux and Feather Linux.
• ^ Internet Explorer for UNIX was available for Solaris and HP-UX.

[edit] Browser features

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

• ^  Spell checking can be added by installing an add-on like ieSpell.
• ^  Lynx is able to edit text with an external editor, which can provide spell checking.
• ^  Internet Explorer can handle per-site settings for cookies. Furthermore you can specify "trusted" and "untrusted" sites and assign pre-set rights to both categories.
• ^  Internet Explorer 8 supports InPrivate Browsing.
• ^  Mozilla based browsers like Firefox, SeaMonkey and Flock can handle per-site settings for cookies, pop-ups, add-on installs and images. For more settings, an add-on is needed — for example, NoScript.
• ^  OmniWeb supports per-domain settings of options including support for disabling scripting, ad-blocking, java and cookies. These settings only work on top level domains.^[24]
• ^  For the download manager kdenetwork needs to be installed.
• ^  Updates happen with the rest of KDE. On Linux, BSD, etc. this happens through the system package manager. On Windows, this happens through KDE's updater.
• ^  On Linux and Windows, Spell checking requires GNU Aspell to be installed.
• ^  Opera can auto-complete forms with your personal information and website usernames.
• ^  Automatic updates are available in Opera 10.00 RC2.
• ^  In many integrated password saving tools there are often leaks that make them unsafe.^[25]
• ^  Firefox 3.5 adds the Privacy mode. Older versions of Firefox can use the Stealther extension.

[edit] Accessibility features

Information about what common accessibility features are implemented natively (without third-party add-ons). Browsers that do not support pop-ups have no need for pop-up blocking abilities, so that field is marked as N/A.

• ^  A more complete list of Pop-Up blockers and addons / programs are in the following article List of pop-up blocking software.
• ^  Page zooming is different from text resizing, as it resizes not only characters, but also multimedia objects and web page layout
• ^  Epiphany supports AdBlock as an official extension, in the epiphany-extensions package.
• ^  Opera 9 introduced a content blocker for webpages. [48]. Earlier releases support wildcard protocol/domain/path and filetype blocking using a filter.ini [49] file. More advanced Ad filtering for Opera can also be done with external software [50].
• ^  Ad filter support can be added by installing the extension Adblock Plus.
• ^  Ad filter support can be added by installing the extension AdSweep.
• ^  Does not allow selective blocking of pop-ups. Safari can only block all pop-ups, or none.
• ^  Ad filter support can be added by installing extensions [51]
• ^  IE6 had no tabbed browsing support.
• ^  IE6 included pop-up blocking with Windows XP Service Pack 2 [52]
• ^  Page zooming supported in the iPhone version of Safari. Screen zooming is built in to Mac OS X.
• ^  For IE7, several extensions are available through the Windows Marketplace [53]^{[dead link]}, including "Inline Search for Internet Explorer"[54]^{[dead link]}. This function is included in IE8 [55].
• ^  IE8 supports incremental find.
• ^  Full-text history search is available through Spotlight, a feature of the Mac OS X operating system.
• ^  Full-text history search is available through a Windows Search iFilter ^[26]

[edit] Accessibility features (cont.)

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

• ^  On Mac systems, gestures are available systemwide via multitouch sensing on trackpads and mice.
• ^  On Mac OS X, text-to speech and speech recognition are available systemwide and is available from menu in native Cocoa browsers.
• ^  ELinks 0.12 supports spatial navigation.
• ^  Epiphany supports mouse gestures as an official extension, in the epiphany-extensions package.
• ^  Mouse gesture support is available system-wide in KDE
• ^  Text-to speech support depends on the kttsd application in the kdeaccessibility package
• ^  Mouse gesture support can be added by installing Easy Go Back add-on [78] or similar applications.
• ^  Doug Turner, the Minimo lead developer, has introduced spatial navigation to some special Firefox builds [79]. It may build as a default part of Firefox [80].
• ^  Mouse gesture support can be added by installing extensions like All-in-One Gestures (Firefox-only) [81] and Mouse Gestures [82].
• ^  Firefox works with a number of screen readers such as JAWS [83]^{[dead link]} and Microsoft SAPI 5 TTS [84]^{[dead link]} through extensions.
• ^  Internet Explorer 8 supports caret browsing.
• ^  Internet Explorer does not have built-in Text to speech/read aloud functions, however it can work with third-party screen readers.
• ^  Internet Explorer can be controlled by applications which use the operating system Speech API. A built-in application called Windows Speech Recognition ships with Windows Vista and later client versions.
• ^  opera : a sort of caret navigation can be enabled by a button or a shortcut [85]

[edit] Acid Scores

The Acid tests are standard tests to rate the performance of a browser. Upon each test's release, they are designed so that no existing browser can pass without further development. In order for a browser to pass any Acid test, the latest public release of the browser (not an alpha, beta, release candidate, or other version under development or testing procedures) must meet the requirements shown below. In addition, the browser should be tested upon completion of installation, with no add-ons installed (some browsers make this easy by providing a "safe mode" option) and all the factory settings (no options have been changed from their defaults).

Acid1:

• Final rendering looks exactly like the rendering provided by the Acid tests website.
• Text can be highlighted and radio buttons can be selected.

Acid2:

• Final rendering looks exactly like the rendering provided by the Acid tests website.
• Smiley's nose turns blue when hovered over.

Acid3:

• Final score of 100/100.
• No error messages on final rendering.
• Render-in-progress loads smoothly (no pausing).
• Final rendering looks exactly like the rendering provided by the Acid tests website.

[edit] Browsers under development

• ^  Midori passes Acid3 because it uses WebKit snapshots which pass Acid3.

[edit] Web technology support

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

• ^  CSS 2, a W3C recommendation since 1998, is the current stable version of CSS, nevertheless, CSS 2.1 corrects a few errors in CSS2 (the most important being a new definition of the height/width of absolutely positioned elements, more influence for HTML's "style" attribute and a new calculation of the 'clip' property), and adds a few highly requested features which have already been widely implemented. CSS 2.1 is derived from and is intended to replace CSS 2. Conformance criteria are detailed at at the W3C website. (CSS 3 is only in draft status at present.) For more detailed information please see comparison of layout engines (CSS).
• ^  LINK as a navigational aid, as distinct from non-navigational uses of LINK.
• ^  Not in standard install, but provided by extension.[116][117]
• ^  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).
• ^  Dillo displays frames as links that the user can click on.
• ^  Available with the MathPlayer plugin.
• ^  Available with the FormsPlayer plugin and several other plugins.
• ^  XForms is supported experimentally in nightly builds dated after January 28, 2005 [118]. Requires installation of an extension.
• ^  Web Forms 2.0 can be emulated in IE using DHTML behaviours, available from SourceForge.
• ^  Web Forms 2.0 functionality is currently being added to Gecko, there should be at least partial support for Gecko 1.9 (Firefox 3.0). See bug #344614.
• ^  XHTML1.1 includes Ruby markup (see [119]) which is not supported. There exists add-on for adding RUBY support. [120]
• ^  Presentation mode is the ability to read styles targeted to the CSS projection media type.
• ^  S5 is a CSS/Javascript alternative for browsers that don't support a presentation mode.
• ^  Opera switches to presentation mode on full screen. [121]
• ^  Microsoft claims Internet Explorer 8 has full CSS2.1 support^[31], however independent testing revealed several bugs^[32].

[edit] Mobile Web technology support

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