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They will have SSL built in by 3.1 though, rather than as a plugin; though, not sure how advanced it will be. I think the dpi info for it is somewhere in here: http://www.dillo.org/dpi1.html. In all fairness, I can't get --enable-ssl to work on my Macbook, but that may be an OpenSSL issue. So, I've got HTTPS and HTTP working on Linux, but no HTTPS on my Mac. It's got a few bugs, but it opens instantly and works perfect for looking up information really quick. Using Ctrl+s to search Duckduckgo has issues; you gotta hit the search button on the page itself afterwards. But, they told me they have a fix for it in the next release, so fingers crossed. Wish they would fix webpage copy and pasting; only copy and pasting in the url works, though if there's something I really need that badly, I open the url with midori. I've been told about webkit bugs and exploits, but for what I need it for, who cares. I only use Firefox for heavy work or signing into things.

something leaner and meaner, focused militantly on privacy and even going so far as to deliberately not support portions of HTML5 (e.g. DRM).

Pretty close to what Chromium is.

It stripped AAC, Flash, and other patent-encumbered parts.

I had hope for the dillo minimal browser, but not supporting javascript is getting pretty tough with many websites these days. Also hopeful that IceWeasel becomes the sane alternative if the Mozilla guys go crazy like this.

Try Dillo. It doesn't support Javascript though.

There's still Dillo... ;)

A lot of website functionality is built with JavaScript - that's just a fact of life.

It wasn't a fact of life 5 years back. DHTML was dead and all developers were begining to understand that web pages should degrade gracefully for UA's that do not have scripting engines.

As to the functionality, d2 removed basic functionality like "show me all comments above $threshold". Clicking "$x more comments" multiple times is not (IMHO) an improvement -- never mind the overall flakyness of the new comment system.

You don't have to enable it, but you really can't complain when websites don't cater to the small minority of users who either disable or block all scripts.

I can complain and just did.

We're trying to get sites not to support the dying number of IE6 users, and I'd be willing to bet the % of users not using JS is even lower than IE6 users.

This is because the IE box model is incorrect and it lacks support for alpha in PNG etc. This is an issue because IE6 users expect to see sites render correctly and that effectively means using ugly hacks or creating 2 sets of CSS for layout. Nobody is suggesting that users of javascript-free browsers (NetSurf, dillo or lynx) need to switch browsers.

If all sites were simply written in HTML there would be a lot less 'web' out there.

No there would be more, simply because search engines could index it.

For me the main downside to Dillo is the lack of Unicode support.

I think you confuse Dillo with Links2 or something: http://www.dillo.org/FAQ.html#q1

If you need ultra-lightweight browsing and just can't stomach Lynx (or elinks), I've had success with Dillo. It supports basic HTML (text and images) and CSS1. If you can't get it in your distro's package manager, Dillo is easy to compile and doesn't require anything special. (simple ./configure && make && make install should do the trick)

Indeed. There are a number of alternative browser projects, but only 4 main browsers that qualify as modern and complete.

A few of my favorite smaller projects:

Lobo browser- a browser in pure java. One of the most complete engines outside of the big 4.
http://lobobrowser.org/java-browser.jsp

dillo - Small and fast.
http://www.dillo.org/

env.js - browser in javascript. No layout engine, but useful for automated testing/building scanners, etc.
http://github.com/thatcher/env-js

libxml2 and html5lib - Now firmly out of anything we can really call a browser, but theses are some very high quality html parsing libraries.

...and in this case, it's entirely legitimate.

From what I can see, it looks like the premade Linux distro for the device still exists. If it's still preinstalled on the device by default, you have even less to worry about, since that will mean that no matter how much Microsoft try and promote themselves, they will still have inertia to deal with.

Microsoft are doing what they always do; banking on the concept that most people don't want to engage in intellectual activity, personal initiative, or personal responsibility. For the most part, it's nearly always a very safe bet for them; they have human nature on their side, and they know it.

If you want to beat them at this game, what you need to do is promote the advantages inherent in doing something different. That means:-

- Hardware resource efficiency from CLI or light GUI applications that they will never be able to match. Cplay or LXMusic for music, Dillo for limited web browsing, (but enough on an embedded platform) PCManFM for file management, etc.

- Greater security. Microsoft still cannot honestly compete with the root security model, and you can laugh at them if they try. Linux simply does not get viruses.

- As long as the "big two," contemporary desktop environments and ALSA are avoided, Linux also still has infinitely greater robustness.

Microsoft's solutions are vastly technologically inferior to UNIX. Always.

Microsoft cannot hope to compete on technical merit, but where they generally do beat Linux or the BSDs is via exploitation of the most base and/or negative elements of human nature; fear, laziness, reluctance to make choices or assume responsibility for those choices.

Stop fighting amongst yourselves about how best to get the neurotypical population to drink Stallman's Kool-Aid, and then gnashing your teeth when they predictably don't want to. That isn't going to work. Linux can beat Microsoft exceptionally easily on technical merit, and if you confine things to X apps, that is primarily what end users care about.

All Microsoft ever do...all they ever CAN do...is appeal to fear and laziness. They don't actually offer their customers anything better; they just keep said customers in a state of terror about accepting anything better, if said something better is non-Microsoft.

Good point. I bet there's a lot of "synthetic" bloat in modern software. There would not be need for nearly as beefy hardware if things were done properly. And we would save lots of power.

I've been watching the Dillo project for a couple of years. By design a very smart and light browser, although the web is developing so fast that the guys are having hard time implementing some of the essentials...

2GHz should be the requirement for something like heavy mathematical computation, NOT web browsing.

Seamonkey kicks ass, even just as a browser. It is blindingly fast compared to the others. It makes me happy.

If you've got a low-spec PC, try installing Puppy Linux on it (Seamonkey is the default browser) to give it a new lease of life.

And if you have a really crap spec machine, give Dillo a spin. You'll be amazed.

The dillo browser is getting pretty decent these days.
But then again I mostly use lynx on OpenBSD of course....

Firefox sucks. All that money they're making from
their embedded search engines should
be going to the user of the browser not to themselves.

I'd rather be using Dillo for most things.

I'd rather use a DILDO for most things.

I'd rather use a DILLO for most things.

I'd rather use a DILDO for most things.

Did I do this right?

Compared to IE, I'd rather use a DILLO for most things.

There, fixed it for you

even today apart from Netscape which would have to be replaced with Lynx I guess.

How about dillo ?

I suppose every Web App Provider should roll out their own version of customized light weight browser for their application.

For those looking for a go-between between lynx and other heavy-duty gui browsers like firefox: give dillo a try.

Sometime back I advised Facebook and Digg to roll out their own specialized light weight browsers exclusively for their users (for e.g customized version of http://dillo.org./
I believe this trend will continue with all Web 2.0 companies.

Well, if you're willing to give up some whiz-bang features you can browse with Dillo or Links. The newer Links variants have a graphical mode for those who can't stand downloading the pictures to see them. Either browser should be much faster than full-size ones.

If you want lower memory usage than what firefox 3 can give you ... you would need to use no browser at all it would seem.
1 word:

Dillo

Sounds like its time to start donating to Dillo so the developer can get it off the ground. Anything that lets me browse the internet quickly on my 486 is a friend to me. http://www.dillo.org/

I like many of the add-on features on more powerful systems, but I pine for a browser that I can run quickly and easily on low-end machines.

Well, you've got two main options:

1. Use Firefox as it is, sans memory-hogging extensions. This is the default installation.
2. Seek out a lightweight browser like Dillo and use it for surfing on your low-end machines.

They've had this idea before for a small, fast oss browser... it's called Dillo http://www.dillo.org/.

Why not fund Dillo so it can start up production again?

And for Firefox lite compare it to Gnome's browser Epiphany--

Dillo http://www.dillo.org/download/dillo-0.8.6.tar.bz2 is less than 1 MB, Epiphany http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/epiphany/2. 18/epiphany-2.18.1.tar.bz2 is less than 5 MB, while Firefox ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/rele ases/latest-2.0/source/firefox-2.0.0.5-source.tar. bz2 is ~35 MB!!

There are many lite weight open source browsers. Why not port them to Windows instead of asking Firefox to design another browser?

They've had this idea before for a small, fast oss browser... it's called Dillo http://www.dillo.org/.

Why not fund Dillo so it can start up production again?

And for Firefox lite compare it to Gnome's browser Epiphany--

Dillo http://www.dillo.org/download/dillo-0.8.6.tar.bz2 is less than 1 MB, Epiphany http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/epiphany/2. 18/epiphany-2.18.1.tar.bz2 is less than 5 MB, while Firefox ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/rele ases/latest-2.0/source/firefox-2.0.0.5-source.tar. bz2 is ~35 MB!!

There are many lite weight open source browsers. Why not port them to Windows instead of asking Firefox to design another browser?

Some years ago I made a set of patches to the Dillo browser to support tabs and frames and other such things. I kept logs of the increase in memory use, binary size and other metrics. While the binary size and memory use went up a tiny little bit (several kilobytes) this should be offset against running several open windows or instances of a program. Compared to that using tabs actually saves memory, not to mention hassle when not using a tabbed window manager.

A web browser is too complex a task to develop on a part time basis, and it also is a fast-moving target. I dedicated seven years full-time to it, and I'm willing to dedicate more. This doesn't depend on me anymore as I had to take a job to pay the bills. We made great achievments with Dillo and it would be easy to quickly push FLTK2-Dillo if we could have both core developers working full time on it. This is a tiny deal for some sponsors (e. Cell phone maker), and we wish it could happen soon. Through this time we've been supported by individual's donations, and we thank them indeed for believing in our project and to help make it grow to what it is.

If you as a reader, or user, or interested party have a good idea, sponsorship or development time to devote, please don't hesitate to contact me to try to arrange for the future of Dillo.

Use dillo if you got linux. only 400k.

http://www.dillo.org/

http://sourceforge.net/projects/dillo/

Phoenix was literally just gecko + some ui and it was really really light and fast.

great! You might as well sue Dillotoo ya bastards!

I'd much rather choose a lighter weight browser than a bloated piece of software that supposidly works with "Everything" no matter how much of a screwup the web designer was.

Dillo certainly would meet that standard.

Why not just use a lightweight browser? there's a few about, like dillo for linux or k-meleon for windows (plenty of others too, these are just the ones i know off hand). If you want lightweight, you should give up on firefox right now and move on. I happen to like all the crazy crap it can do though.

I still haven't seen any modules I'd really want to remove (e.g. e-mail or a wysiwyg html designer, like Mozilla had), but since you asked:

Epiphany -- a lightweight spinoff for GNOME. Whenever I use it, I enjoy the speed, but I also catch myself fumbling around for little Firefox-only features all the time.

Dillo -- not a Mozilla spinoff, just a super-lightweight browser with minimal functionality. Built on Gtk+, so I suppose it could work on Windows, too.

I know it's basic and maybe that's not the exact browser they should use, but it seems like there should be a simpler solution given the system's limited resourses. I'm starting to get the impression that a lot of companies are just jumping on the OLPC bandwagon. I understand why the OLPC would accept any help it gets, but wonder how much these companies are really helping.

If you'd like to see the UI video at full resolution, head over to http://www.90percentofeverything.com/. There were a couple of inaccuracies in the video I should point out. The web browser is not firefox, it is (apparently) "Dillo" - http://www.dillo.org/. Also, the title bar area doubles up as the address bar.

Sure enough Firefox 2.0 does *NOT* handle memory allocation failures.

[...]

Upon restarting the same session one will find that Firefox only needs 900MB. That is a memory leak and/or heap fragmentation problem.

First off, almost nothing gracefully handles memory allocation failure. Particularly anything in C/C++. You need memory to complete an operation, and if you don't get it, you're screwed. There's no way to reliably unwind the stack and reverse the state of the program to continue without performing that operation.

Second, I believe you are suggesting they implement a defragmenting memory manager. If you'd care write one, particularly one that drops in place of their current one, I'm sure they'd be happy to accept. Good luck.

The real complaint here is "Firefox uses a lot of memory". That may be so, but then it has a pretty high compatibility for rendering all the silly XML and Javascript and crap the web requires these days. If you want a slim (but not so compatible) browser, you should check out dillo or something.

Or hv3. It's got CSS compliance that passes Acid2, 90% frame support, and no Javascript or Flash support. The only negatives are it's a little alpha-y (background tabs block the whole UI, etc.) and there's no HTTPS support. It's rather lightweight, however, and actively developed. I use it on my Thinkpad 233MHz no trouble.

I'll use elinks for GMail and my bank website because it handles HTTPS. Using plain links for regular web browsing pales in comparison. Even w3m or dillo do better than that. And, if I'm not mistaken, Lynx is only used at libraries without funding, at universities with a documentation/knowledge base system build around it, and for users with disabilities. Well, I guess you can script with it...

Why can't a god damned browser do what it is supposed to? JUST FUCKING BROWSE???

Allow me to direct you to the Off By One Browser. It's a fast, bare-bones, no-frills, no-nonsense browser.

Or, if you're on Linux, take a look at Dillo.

You'll find both browsers quite capable by the standards you requested.

Personally I still like Dillo – might not have CSS or JavaScript, but it's one hell of a fast browser (and not to mention it never stores any information on your disk) – and yes, it runs Linux.

You know, I have to disagree with you. Granted, YouOS looks to be a proof-of-concept. Yes, I played with it, and yes it was a fun toy, but, given some time, I can actually see this going somewhere. There are a lot of hurdles to cross, but I think it's only a matter of time before things like hardware accelerated graphics come to the browser... which brings me to my point:

Isn't the word "browser" really a misnomer now? I think the days of the traditional web-browser are quickly coming to an end. Browsers have turned into application frameworks, and I think it would be good for browser developers (those who build the browser) to step back and redifne their products into such.

Now, image something like dillo with all of the EMCA/CSS/etc support of Firefox. Now take this product and integrate it with an OS kernel (like Linux of course), and something like YouOS becomes a very intersting and possibly usable product.

It's interesting that the post right after this one focused on Plan 9... maybe this is what THEY need...

my $0.02.

Lynx is still alive and kickin' – I'm a Linux hacker, so use it all the time myself (great if the latest dev build of X doesn't want to work, or I just need to grab a quick file and don't know the exact URL... plus it's just so much faster than most of the other browsers I know, and I'm always running at least one Eterm window so I like having it run in the terminal). Of course, if you'd rather have a more graphical browser, Dillo (see also another comment I wrote so I don't have to repeat myself) is a really nice one, at least if you run a UNIX-ish operating system – actually, I think there's a Windows port available as well, although I don't remember the site.

Personally, I think the best "power user's browser" is Konqueror – it has tabs and split windows, supports XHTML/CSS/JavaScript, manages my files, can open almost every known filetype embedded within its own program window, – and the rarely-mentioned but highly useful ability to run a terminal emulator inside itself, which is great if you're trying to design a Web site and need to see both the code and preview at the same time.

The thing is, though, Firefox isn't truly a minimalist browser – even though it looks fairly simple, and it's definitely lightweight compared to the Mozilla suite, it's nonetheless a pretty powerful program with a lot of configuration options, dialogs, features, etc., and not to mention an extremely complex rendering engine. I don't think a "minimalist" Web browser would use heavy-duty cross-platform GUI abstraction layers or take over an hour to build on a fast new Pentium4/Athlon system, either.

Now, if you want a truly minimalist graphical browser, may I suggest Dillo; while it isn't stated outright as one of the design goals, Dillo is definitely a very simple, compact program which does what it needs to, and does it well – but doesn't implement additional bloat. I suggest checking for one of the patched versions, because they add in nice features like tabs and anti-aliasing, but whichever Dillo version you choose, it's guaranteed a tiny little program for the real minimalist!

...on whether Negreponte is a novice or not. If he is, then yes, he's very possibly out of luck, since software designed for novices needs more functions by definition, and thus, has to be bigger.

If on the other hand he already knows a thing or two, (or isn't afraid of learning) then he will find that minimalistic systems are actually one of Linux's primary strengths, at least in my observation. He could probably use this as a base, and then for X use apt-get to install ROX Filer, metacity, (as a background for ROX) and fbpanel as his start menu. Or, if he wants most of that done for him, he could install FVWM instead of metacity and fbpanel, and still use ROX as an explorer clone. Mind you, this is only one possible option, and most people reading this would probably think I'm insane and ask why I don't simply advocate fluxbox/xfce etc. This is a problem with myriad possible solutions.

He'd probably also need to install gtk for Abiword etc, but that doesn't necessarily have to be a problem. There are also any number of lightweight image viewers around as well...he should check freshmeat. For web browsing, there's also dillo.

Hence, what he wants is more than possible. He might have to do a bit of surfing, but then again, with the magic of apt-get, he probably doesn't even need to do that.

So the way I see it is this – you turn it off, page performance suffers because of lack of cache. You turn it on, page performance suffers because of lack of memory. Ah, choices...

Well, I guess I may as well find a different browser since I obviously can't fit Firefox, KDE, Enlightenment, OpenOffice.org, The GIMP, and not to mention every game on my system into my laptop's 96MB of RAM :-) Nah, just kidding.

Seriously though, a lot of the time if I don't need JavaScript or CSS, I'll just pull up Dillo. So much faster... and Konqueror kicks ass too, especially with the embedded file manager / SSH file transfer client / embedded terminal emulator...

IIRC the rationale is that (a) there are many different RPM-based distributions with different requirements and (b) many of those distributions include Firefox anyway, so releasing an RPM for current versions of Fedora or SuSE is just a duplication of effort.

I've got first-hand experience with (a) building RPMs for the Dillo web browser, and let me tell you, it's a pain to keep a zillion different distros and/or mach roots and/or UML virtual machines so that you can build packages with the right set of libraries.

As for (b), there are still some differences, since each distro has its own policies on updates. Fedora Core has released new RPMs for Firefox 1.0.1, 1.0.2, etc. though 1.0.7, while Mandriva sometimes updates to the latest point release and sometimes backports the patches. The latest mozilla-firefox RPM for Mandriva 2006 is version 1.0.6, but the browser itself is roughly equivalent to 1.0.7

All that said, Opera seems to have decided it's worth the effort, as you can download a couple of dozen possible RPMs -- though that may be in part because it's built into fewer distributions.

Someone who resorts to personal insults usually doesn't know what they are talking about. Can you name all of the browsers out there that fully support CSS 2.1? Guess what: There are none. You can not download today a browser that passes the Acid 2 test. Until browsers support the standards, people can't just code to the standards and expect their page to work in a standards-complient browser.

Yes, a page that looks good in Firefox will usually work in Safari. Usually. But Opera doesn't support some things that Firefox and Safari support. Such as the "opacity" tag.

About Macintosh browsers, there is a lot of cruft there that I can't test my pages to, such as iCab, older versions of OmniWeb, and, yes, Cyberdog. I really with iCab had no CSS support whatsoever so a page rendered in iCab looks like the page in Dillo or another non-CSS browser.

Bloated software is more likely to be
downloaded in binary form than software
that can be downloaded in source form
and quickly compiled by the user.

This is yet another reason to avoid BLOATWARE.

Maybe http://www.dillo.org/ is a better option.
Or perhaps the more ancient Beest project.

My first try would be Win98SE and K-Meleon. I remember how slow even Win95 was on 8MB of memory, so maybe that's not an adequate option.

You could also try installing an extremely minimal version of either Linux or BSD, along with a stipped-down X and try to run Dillo or Links. The latter will do SSL and graphics if setup just right.

Other users may be more comfortable at 800x600 or even 640x480.

Actually, less than 0.5% of the users out there will look at a given site at 640x480 resolution. I do design my sites to handle this resolution (with the exception of Dillo, which has completely broken table layout, and is used by less than .01% of the web browsing public), but it's essentially a non-issue.

800x600, however, is viewed by about 30% of the web browsing public, and a web site needs to work at this resolution.

As much heat as we give the editors for duplicate and troll stroies, I would like to thank the editors for running this story. I use a Linux Fund credit card and was quite concerned when the web site went down and Linux Fund's phone number stopped working; I want to see a percentage of my purchases go to help fund Linux.

For example, Dillo is a nice little browser (and the only browser that runs on my 486 antique); they got one batch of money from the fund. I would like to see the fund give them, say, $50,000 to implement JavaScript and SSL to the point that it is possible to use Dillo to log in to Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, and Gmail. Fixing the table render would also be nice with Dillo, since their broken table rendering stops be from being able to do true cross-browser rendering (I can write pages to work with everything but Dillo, but getting a page to work with everything including Dillo is a little more tricky)

Dillo http://www.dillo.org/, on a Playstation 2 Linux kit.