Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

dillo-browser.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 179 posts

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#42

Post by minitech »

krylon wrote: post #19

Given the circumstances, I am happy to read this. I own two ~2009 netbooks with Intel Atom N270 CPUs and 1GB of RAM each - running Firefox on those is ridiculous, whereas dillo will run very well on these. I used to use dillo on my main desktop too, for browsing documentation that wasn't too heavy on CSS - having 20 to 40 tabs open would gobble up a lot of RAM in Firefox, whereas dillo happily stayed around 100MB no…

> Also, the lack of a Javascript engine makes it a very secure browser. Whenever I try to open a link that I am suspicious of, I do so in dillo.

I would suggest using a Chromium or Firefox profile with JavaScript and webfonts disabled for this instead of questionably maintained C software that doesn’t have a sandbox for any of the complex and commonly exploited things it does (image decoding, HTML/CSS parsing, network protocols, local file access).

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#43

Post by rodarima »

shiomiru wrote: post #32

The extension system[0] seems interesting; it reminds me of w3m's local CGI scripts. (From what I can tell, w3m's local CGI came first, but I don't know if it influenced DPI and/or if w3m's system had a predecessor too...) For a short description of what w3m local CGI scripts can do: * They can be used for implementing a man page viewer, as in w3mman. It seems Dillo has a similar plugin[1]. * w3m's bookmark system is…

> * w3m's bookmark system is implemented using local CGI; it seems Dillo's bookmarks are implemented as a dpi plugin too.

Yeah, a lot of things [1] are implemented as DPI in Dillo. Some of the plugins implement "websites" like file:, vsource: and ftp: but others implement other features like the handling of cookies, downloads or bookmarks. As they are a different process, if you close the browser, the downloads continue.

[1]: https://github.com/dillo-browser/dillo/tree/master/dpi

> * w3m can use urimethodmap + local CGI to implement additional protocols. I guess DPI can do that too? (At least the custom man: scheme in dillo-plugin-man seems to indicate it can.)

Yes, there is a file (~/.dillo/dpidrc) that associates the protocol to the plugin binary (like this "proto.man=man/man.filter.dpi"). There is also gemini: gopher: and even git: available as external plugins.

> I had no idea any browser supported this besides w3m. I mostly imitated w3m's design in my own project (which includes the twist that support for every protocol, including HTTP, is implemented on top of a similar plugin system); I guess I have a second reference point now :)

In fact, not so long ago, the HTTPS protocol was implemented as a DPI plugin, but it was changed to be part of the browser.

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#45

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

rodarima wrote: post #14
janice1999 wrote: post #13

Fantastic work. I remember using Dillo in Puppy Linux from Live CDs back in the day. What's the minimum compiler you target? Any big long term plans? Fuzzing? Moving to 'modern' build system like CMake?

Thanks! > What's the minimum compiler you target? I didn't defined any (yet), but shouldn't be too hard to add to the CI. > Any big long term plans? First preventing it from dying and getting removed from distros. Then it depends of how much free time I can dedicate to it, but at least maintaining it. > Fuzzing? I would say first adding some of the other browser tests suites. That should catch a lot of rendering issu…

Speculation: I wonder if it's relatively easy to fuzz because the extension system already has things adapted to communicate over std in/out.

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#48

Post by foul »

rodarima wrote: post #44
foul wrote: post #35

Very nice to hear! Anybody knows what happened to Jorge A. Cid?

I have no news, but I hope HN could reach him :-)

I hope he's doing well, wherever he is. An active community around Dillo sparkles my wanting of hacking on it, Dpi (especially filters) is the best plugin system a browser could have imho.

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#50

Post by pipeline_peak »

> Project objectives :

> Lower the barrier of entry to the web.

> Support old or small machines and slow connections.

Ram is cheap today, unfortunately the industry isn’t very humanitarian so they took advantage of that.

Now as the world expects fluent animation and eye candy, it’s virtually impossible to have a browser support as many sites as chrome and support older machines.

Post reply on HN