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,
HenryIANAP (...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.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.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.
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.Next Page...
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