Sleipnir Browser Straddles Firefox & IE Rendering

After reading an interesting writeup on it on Download Squad, I've been working with an alternative browser that you may very well have never heard of: Sleipnir. It's a very popular browser in Japan, from a company called Fenrir.

The reason it got my attention is it's an extremely customizable browser, and it allows you to choose whether you want to use Firefox's Gecko rendering engine or Internet Explorer's. If you, as I do, primarily work in Firefox but keep Internet Explorer on hand when you run into trouble such as rendering problems, this browser presents an interesting solution.

As the folks on Download Squad note, there is a Firefox extension that you can use to perform the same two-browser straddle that Sleipnir performs: IETab. IETab embeds the Internet Explorer browser in a Firefox tab. However, I do like the way Sleipnir straddles two rendering engines automatically.

Fenrir has stated that it wants to capture 5 percent of the global browsing market with Sleipnir. That's a tall order with Internet Explorer and Firefox as dominant as they are, but not necessarily undoable. Give Sleipnir a try if you want an easy way to have multiple rendering options available.