What do internet browsers use for rendering?

Question

very quick one, I was always wondering, do internet browsers use for rendering OS API functions to create buttons, render mages and so, or do they render it all on their own?

I first thoght that it uses system api, but there are some effects like when screen fades into grey and you see only small window in the middle, you know, thet effect used on many picture albums online, which I dont really how to achive using for example only Win32 calls.

EDIT: To be more exact, I know that final drawing on screen will always use system API, but you can send prerendered image as you want to it. Thanks.

Answer 1

Web browsers use their own rendering engines rather than OS API. Using OS API to render buttons totally depends on the design decision of a particular rendering engine. However, to run on various operating systems these engines prefer their own rendering to offer same look-n-feel across platforms.

• Gecko, for Firefox
• Trident, for Internet Explorer
• Presto, for Opera
• KHTML, for Konqueror
• WebKit, for Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome web browsers.

Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_browser_engine