But I do not have to use it if I knew of some other browser engines that were more compatible with Visual Basic that I could use instead.. (free or open source)
Well the thing is, there is a webbrowser control that ships with VB.. and I'm still not sure why you don't want to use that one. Unless you are really serious about changing fundamental stuff (which as a newbie I'd suggest is probably beyond what you can realistically achieve at this point) you can use the webbrowser control provided and provide a totally customised environment around it.