Web browser
Forum: DSL Ideas and Suggestions
Topic: Web browser
started by: haary
Posted by haary on May 18 2007,20:47
Hello, first I want to introduce myself. I'm the maintainer and developer of DeLi Linux, a desktop distro for old hardware. Since DSL and DeLi have much in common I wanted to ask you what your opinons are about a new lightweight web browser.I saw that DSL includes dillo as DeLi did until version 0.7.1. Since dillo freezed its development I looked for alternatives. Firefox could hardly be called lightweight, though DeLi offers firefox 1.5.0.11 as an optional package.
In the new version 0.7.2 I released today I included Konq-E (Konqueror Embedded) as new default web browser. The version shipped is based on qt2 and Konqueror 2, qt ist statically compiled in. It needs much lesser RAM than Firefox, not much more than dillo and it has Javascript and CSS support. The source for this is at < http://developer.kde.org/~hausma.....tar.gz >
Since this version has still slightly problems with current CSS and Javascript I want to include a newer version of Konq-E in future version of DeLi. Problem is that newer versions of Konq-E are based on Qt3 which is bloat compared to Qt2.
There has been some work done to backport a newer version of Konq-E to Qt2. See < http://www.basyskom.de/index.pl/konqe >
But this runs only on embedded systems running Qtopia2 and/or QT/E, but not on qt-x11.
I'm sure it is not much work needed to backport this thing to qt2-x11. But since I don't know much of C++ and Qt programming I wanted to ask you if you are interested to join forces to create a new web browser for both our distros?
Regards,
Henry
Posted by mikshaw on May 18 2007,23:32
IANAP (...not a programmer), so I couldn't help. I'd like to express my opinion, though, since you asked for it =o)I personally hate Qt, even if it is statically built, and my experiences with Konqueror's instability and tremendous slowness have been nothing short of disappointing.
I wish someone, anyone with programming skills would be willing to either design a decent standards-compliant browser using a truly lightweight toolkit such as FLTK, or else add CSS and authentication support to dillo or glinks. At this time there are no lightweight graphical browsers that fit neatly between the minimalism of Dillo and the bloat of Firefox. Many people say Opera is fast and lightweight, but I disagree. It's no better than Firefox in that respect (plus it isn't open source).
I couldn't care less about script support, since I have it disabled on 99% of the web, but I'm sure most people want it. I just want a small fast browser that supports the *basics* of modern html/xhtml/css.
Posted by haary on May 19 2007,20:07
It's my opinion too, that we lack a light standards compliant web browser. Personally I don't like Qt as well since it is bloat. But people who are experts in web programming and know the w3c standards in and out keep telling me that kHTML respectively Webcore (Apples fork of kHTML) is the best browser engine. It is relative small (compared with Gecko from Mozilla) and full standards compliant. There will never be such thing as a small Mozilla/Firefox based browser because Gecko is bloat and one big dirty hack.
So I think kHTML is the way to go. It must not be Konqueror, there is already a port named GtkWebcore (which is a port of Apples Webcore actually) and there are two web browsers for this. Unfotunately those browsers are at alpha stage at best (gave me lot of segfaults) and GtkWebcore needs Gtk 2, which you can't hardly call lightweight.
FLTK would be better than nothing, but since there are so many incompatible versions out there (fltk, fltk2, efltk, fltk-utf8) I gave up my hopes on FLTK. I think FOX is a nice small toolkit too and it looks better than fltk. Problem here, as with all small toolkits, is that ther aren't many apps for this.
Posted by mikshaw on May 19 2007,20:59
Incompatable versions don't necessarily mean trouble. It's like this with any popular open source project. When I said FLTK I meant FLTK proper, as in the "official" and original line. FLTK 2 is the development version of this line, and I assume it will eventually be considered a replacement of the current stable 1.1.7. I just hope it doesn't become another Gtk1.2 vs. Gtk2 fiasco, with the differences being so vast that they are essentially two separate toolkits.I haven't had any experience with Fox, but you're right that it looks appealing. The 5mb source download is particularly attractive, although that's still more than twice the size of FLTK's source =o)
Of course, the size of a source distribution doesn't really say much at all about the compiled size, speed, or functionality of the project. I just have a particular bias toward FLTK because I've become accustomed to using it in Lua-FLTK and murgaLua, and it is very efficient. The visual appearance of a toolkit doesn't mean much to me, as long as the lines and fonts are cleanly drawn so you don't need to put much effort into interpreting the interface.
I also don't know anything about the differences between browser engines, so I can't give any opinion of it.
Posted by jpeters on May 30 2007,00:09
| Quote (haary @ May 19 2007,16:07) |
| It's my opinion too, that we lack a light standards compliant web browser. |
It's useless trying to get site managers to adapt much beyond IE and Firefox. What good is a browser (or a pc, for that matter), if I can't access info at various sites because they don't support my efficient browser? I even gave up on Opera in this regard. I've happily employed faster and more efficient software in every other area (e.g., spreadsheets, PDF readers, text editors, word processors, etc.) EXCEPT the browser.
Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on May 30 2007,01:48
In my experience, Opera has always been my choice. It loads significantly faster than FF, and seemed to crash less with many things open -- and it worked much better on my p1 with 28mb ram [DSL 1.x frugal]. However, these are not comparable to light-weight browsers in terms of consumption.The limitations on light-weight browsers brings to me to believe the main reason why FF was included in DSL in the first place is that accurate modern web browsing is a big priority despite the costs. Perhaps embedded versions of Opera, etc. should also be released for the PC platform as a lite version (not sure about their capabilities though)?
Posted by jpeters on May 30 2007,05:06
| Quote (^thehatsrule^ @ May 29 2007,21:48) |
| The limitations on light-weight browsers brings to me to believe the main reason why FF was included in DSL in the first place is that accurate modern web browsing is a big priority despite the costs. |
I was unable to get Opera to work correctly with TradeKing's data download feature; selections would disappear before you could click on them. Quirks at other sites are noted on their support forum. Web support generally amounts to telling you that their site requires the latest version of IE.
I haven't found anything IE does that FF doesn't do better. I click on my efficient Web Browser (Dillo) only to reread basic DSL info (usually after Mikshaw chastises some transgressor*).
* like the guy who wanted to know how to get rid of his Dillo popup, which tells how to get rid of it.
Posted by curaga on May 30 2007,07:24
I'm also an Opera fan. 9.2 is the newest, probably a lot better than FF, and still smaller space requirement than FF 1.0.3...But it also isn't "light"..
Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on May 30 2007,18:36
Yea... there are some sites that I used to not be able to access, but after opera 9 came out, more worked (those other sites I would load in FF). However, I have even encountered site problems in FF, and it seems Konquerer was only able to render them (or IE I would assume). Different versions will always change this outcome. In any case, designing a web browser sure looks complicated, or else someone would've made what mikshaw wants by now 
Posted by WDef on June 03 2007,23:23
Nonetheless I'll be interested to see how that konqueror embedded performs.
Posted by sankarv on June 05 2007,04:55
sea monkey can also be a good choice. this link also seems good with lot of browsers. easy to get one i suppose...
< List of browsers for linux >
Posted by cmanb on June 05 2007,13:48
I've never been a huge fan of Opera. Proprietary, banner-ad, yada, yada, yada.I've always been pleased as punch with Links2 or Links-hacked, with firefox on reserve as a "last resort" kind of situation if a page won't load right.
I just noticed that there is also a < links-lua > project, which seems pretty interesting since some scripters around here loooove lua.
I don't think netrik is all that terribly functional yet, and for all that it does, we might as well ship with a nice variety of links instead.