The chances are overwhelming, that you are reading this article on a web browser powered by some form of the Blink or WebKit browser engines as used by Google, Apple, and many open source projects, or perhaps the Gecko engine as used by Firefox. At the top end of the web browser world there are now depressingly few maintained browser engines — we think to the detriment of web standards evolution.
Moving away from the big players though, there are several small browser projects which eschew bells and whistles for speed and compactness, and we’re pleased to see that one of the perennial players has released a new version as it passes its quarter century.
Dillo describes itself as ” a fast and small graphical web browser”, and it provides a basic window on the web with a tiny download and the ability to run on very low-end hardware. Without JavaScript and other luxuries it sometimes doesn’t render a site as you’d see it in Chrome or Firefox, but we’re guessing many users would relish some escape from the web’s cycle-sucking garbage. The new version 3.2.0 brings bug fixes, as well as math formula rendering, and navigation improvements.
The special thing about Dillo is that this is a project which came back from the dead. We reported last year how a developer resurrected it after a previous release back in 2015, and it seems that for now at least it has a healthy future. So put it on your retro PC, your original Raspberry Pi, or your Atari if you have one, and try it on your modern desktop if you need reminding just how fast web browsing can be.
This isn’t the only interesting browser project on the block, we’re also keeping an eye on Ladybird, which is aiming for those big players rather than simplicity like Dillo.
Thanks [Feinfinger] for the tip.
In Firefox, I have a number of extensions that allow me to block most of the crap that comes along with most modern web browsing (pop-ups, tracking pixels, etc.). It appears to not support javascript which may or may not be a useful feature depending on what sites your trying to access. Does Dillo have any support for extensions so we can block all the other crap that isn’t javascript based?
What specific crap are you talking about that isn’t javascript based? Just tracking pixels?
I guess you’re right that all crap is javascript based, only some sites nowadays show hardcoded advertisements in html but that is extremely rare.
I doubt that the net is usable without any javascript though…
Of course Dillo does not have “extensions” ;) I use extensions a lot to prevent ads (I don’t remember seeing an online advertisement ever), to prevent fingerprinting, and for a darkreader.
Nowadays I use Brave as browser on smartphones (Firefox on mobile does not support a lot of extensions), and I use Firefox on all workstations with extensions: uBlock Origin, AudioContext scrambler, CanvasBlocker, I still don’t care about cookies, Dark Reader, Decentraleyes, DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials, Font Fingerprint Defender….
Can a good DNS block all that “crap”?
Dillo has plugins, providing e.g. Gemini protocol, man pages or reader view using rdrview. You can block domains using domainrc file or /etc/hosts file, you can block cookies using cookiesrc file. What’s best is that Dillo uses only a few MB of RAM, not GB! It’s great for reading Wikipedia or blogs.
web’s cycle-sucking garbage. Loved it :) for a second i thought it was “f”
I used it back in 2014
Due to some circumstances, my main PC at the time was a pentium 4 with 1gb Ram
Oh my. That’s like using an 286 w/ 1MB RAM in 2004.. 😢
LXDE, PCManFM, Dillo… all running on Slackware. It was a nice and sleek desktop back then, circa 2007. Time flies….
Chances are you will find broken websites when you don’t use landlord’s Chrome.
Not to mention streaming services only support a handful ones with their DRM.
I need SDL2 version
I no nneded a gui. any gui only rendering html.
“to the detriment of web standards evolution” is an odd criticism…i don’t think i agree with it.
i remember in the early aughts when there were several browsers with distinct pedigrees, and the HTML standard was barely advanced enough to do what i needed. it was a nightmare world of feature tests and compatibility hacks. just a couple years later, the important standards started to solidify but they were adopted unevenly by the popular browsers. and some vendors didn’t push updates on their users, so as every new standardized feature came out i always had the feeling “oh this is great, solves a big problem i have!” matched with a larger feeling “ugh when will MSIE users get this? and how broken will it be?” there was no point using the clean solution because you had to maintain it in parallel with the legacy hack.
i really think today is a golden era for web standards. the features i really want as a web developer are all about a decade old now, and are widely adopted in a compatible fashion by every browser. and every vendor pushes updates so the median browser in use in the wild is less than 6 months old.
there are a bunch of downsides, especially in the way people tend to use these things (jquery ugh). but i really think the evolution of the standards has never been in a better state. the folly of jquery really highlights how great the standards are…if you use stackexchange or whatever to solve some thorny UI problem, there’s always a ton of people telling you to load up 2MB of jquery code just to center some text…but the fact of the matter is, in almost every case, good use of CSS will finally do it without any javascript at all. the standards are good now it’s just the practice that is braindead.
Next week (1 & 2 February 2025), Rodrigo Arias Mallo Will talk about Dillo at FOSDEM in Brussels.
See https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-4100-resurrecting-the-minimalistic-dillo-web-browser/