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Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

dillo-browser.github.io

131–140 of 179 posts

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> MS Teams I really do empathize here, after having to use Teams for around 2 years. It's amazingly slow, confusing, buggy (it would crash the tab quite regularly), and just generally a perfect role model for what software shouldn't be[0]. I'm still quite amazed that Microsoft decided this was acceptable. I'm curious how Slack performs; perhaps they're not trying harder because there's no[t much] competition in this…

> I'm curious how Slack performs My colleagues and myself used Slack for years, were forced to use Teams for about 2 years because of our new parent company, and finally went back to Slack after we collectively quit that shitshow to start a new company. While Slack isn't perfect either, it's miles better.

> While Slack isn't perfect either, it's miles better.

We switched from HipChat to Google Chat, which in my mind is pretty bad. Customers are often on Teams, which somehow manages to be MUCH MUCH worse. People kept telling me that Slack is much better than either Google Chat or MS Team, but after using it I can't say that I'd agree. Teams is clearly the worst, Slack is awful in its own way and Google Chat manages to be the best of the three, but mostly because the two others are so terrible.

It's clearly not an easy problem to solve, but I do wonder why all of these "enterprise" messaging/meeting/chat platforms are so terrible.

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#132
post #91
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still browse the web using Opera 12.18, which takes a little memory, but the HTML5 support will be poor. The web has evolved since then.

Opera 12 source code leaked, so you could even port it to new platforms. Sadly multiple exploits, html5, and finally licensing make it a dead end :(.

Opera really should have open source Presto when they switched to Blink.

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#133
post #126
post #110

After getting my own fair share of nostalgia (anyone remember running dillo on Damn Small Linux? I used to do that because all I had to run Linux in ~2003-2004 was a 486dx) and reading some of the comments, I think that Dillo could be a nice alternative to what Gemini was supposed to be. If we could agree on some kind of "low-tech web" (a subset of html, a subset of css, a subset of javascript -- or maybe no javascri…

If a 486 can do TLS with mbedtls, you might be able to run cgmnlm as the Gemini client, albeit slowly.

I have faster machines nowadays, luckily :)

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#134
Real-life alternatives are a corner stone to a sane environment. Good to see that happening in the noscript/basic (x)html realm where Big Tech web engines killed everything for their own benefit.

But in the SDK space, ultra complex syntax languages should be avoid as f... and then c++ (and similar like rust/java/etc) should be avoided.

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#135

I suggest contacting this guy Renato Bravo https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuklruLsO-CFoKK_rjNXrXg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6mb9qt2-3o At video above Renato comments " ese es mi compañero Jorge " translated "that's my mate Jorge" I found a Renato Bravo at Linkedin but I don't think is the same person.

Good idea. I think it may be this one[1] as it is also from the same region Valparaíso in Chile as Jorge. I don't use LinkedIn, but if someone can message him that would be great, thanks!

[1]: https://cl.linkedin.com/in/renatobravo

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#136
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out more lightweight web browsers: NetSurf, Pale Moon, K-Meleon on Goanna, Otter Browser, Ultralight, as well as terminal apps: Carbonyl, Browsh, Links (it has a graphical mode too).

When you run a chromium in headless mode it doesn't make the browser any lighter. I think what the OP means is that you need to have a browser with the most important JS and CSS functionality to render modern websites, but without all the junk on top of it. qutebrowser and nyxt would fit the bill better. to be honest I feel like nyxt is really cool, but I'm not sure if choosing a lisp was the right idea.

You can install Carbonyl in a VPS and use my Carbonyl Terminal (https://github.com/niutech/carbonyl-terminal) as a thin client for it.

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#137
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out more lightweight web browsers: NetSurf, Pale Moon, K-Meleon on Goanna, Otter Browser, Ultralight, as well as terminal apps: Carbonyl, Browsh, Links (it has a graphical mode too).

There even was elinks that used svgalib instead of X. So one could use it on a machine that did not even have any desktop enviroment installed.

This was Links, not Elinks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_%28web_browser%29

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#138
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out more lightweight web browsers: NetSurf, Pale Moon, K-Meleon on Goanna, Otter Browser, Ultralight, as well as terminal apps: Carbonyl, Browsh, Links (it has a graphical mode too).

I tried using palemoon a few years ago, but many web pages just didn't work at all. I wonder if that's changed?

Check out yourself, the latest release was 2 weeks ago: https://www.palemoon.org/releasenotes.shtml

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#139

I used to test out sites on Dillo a lot to see if the experience was absolutely broken, but Dillo got too rusty so I went to checking Netsurf, w3m & elinks--so a revival is encouraging, especially for underpowered systems. Shame to see a project moving from a self-hosted Mercurial repository to a US-megacorparate-owned Git repository in Microsoft GitHub. …But at least the maintainer is committed to accepting email pa…

> I used to test out sites on Dillo a lot to see if the experience was absolutely broken

Thanks! That should be done more often :-)

> Shame to see a project moving from a self-hosted Mercurial repository to a US-megacorparate-owned Git repository in Microsoft GitHub

Agreed. I decided that it was a good starting point moving to GitHub as a first start, to increase the chances the project gets more visibility and hopefully attract more contributions. I also trust GitHub to be alive for at least 5 to 10 more years, so I can put a redirect notice on the main webpage.

But yeah, I agree it would be better to self host or move to a federated forge. There is an issue to cover other options[1], but our current problem is that other forges like Codeberg don't have a way (as a free account) to run the CI pipelines in other platforms like MacOS. My idea was to eventually get hold on some real hardware so we can setup our own runners and also test in different architectures. Feel free to add other alternatives and I will take a look.

[1]: https://github.com/dillo-browser/dillo/issues/39

Keep in mind also, that because the project was previously self-hosted (including the mail server) that created a gigantic single point of failure (which failed very badly) that I'm trying to avoid.

> But at least the maintainer is committed to accepting email patches so folks aren’t required to create accounts / accept ToS with them.

Yeah, I'm thinking in creating a mailing list for that purpose, but apart from sourcehut (at least on alpha) and googlegroups, I don't know that many places that offer one free of charge.

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#140
post #120

Cool, I remember the name Dillo from ... way back when, I guess. Interesting to see a mix of C and C++ in the same codebase, that always makes me curious if there is some internal/mental "pressure" to convert the C code to C++ since that does seem simpler in many ways if you're already using C++. Also, does anyone know why the functions have a (to me, incredibly random) "a_" prefix? Like this, from "dicache.h" [1]: v…

> Interesting to see a mix of C and C++ in the same codebase, that always makes me curious if there is some internal/mental "pressure" to convert the C code to C++ since that does seem simpler in many ways if you're already using C++.

The initial Dillo was fully written in C and it used GTK+. As it moved to FLTK it began rewriting parts in C++.

> Also, does anyone know why the functions have a (to me, incredibly random) "a_" prefix? Like this, from "dicache.h" [1]:

This is something Jorge came up with around 1999[1] for the C part, so the "a_" prefix states functions that are used outside the module (like public in C++), while the others are not. The choice of "a" is explained as:

> Why the "a_" prefix? > > Because it reads better "a_Menu_create" than "d_Menu_create" cause the first one suggests "a Menu create" function!

[1]: https://dillo-browser.github.io/old/NC_design.html

I don't think this alone is a good choice, as one should better use "static" to enforce it.

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