Jump to content

Dillo

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, seeDillo (disambiguation).
Dillo
Original author(s)Jorge Arellano Cid
Initial releaseDecember 1999;24 years ago(1999-12)
Stable release
3.1.1[1]Edit this on Wikidata / 8 June 2024;2 months ago(8 June 2024)
Repository
Written inCandC++
Operating systemLinux,BSD,OS X,FreeDOS
Available inEnglish
TypeWeb browser
LicenseGPL-3.0-or-later
Websitehttps://dillo-browser.github.io/

Dillois a minimalisticweb browserparticularly intended for older or slower computers andembedded systems.[2]It supports only plainHTML/XHTML(withCSSrendering) and images overHTTPandHTTPS;scripting is ignored entirely.[2][3]Current versions of Dillo can run onLinux,BSD,OS X,IRIXandCygwin.[4]Due to its small size, it was the browser of choice in several space-consciousLinux distributions.Dillo isfree software,released under theGNU GPL-3.0-or-later.[5]

Chilean software engineer Jorge Arellano Cid conceived the Dillo project in late 1999,[6]publishing the first version of Dillo in December of that year.[7]His primary goal in creating Dillo was to democratize access to information. Arellano Cid believed that no one should have to buy a new computer or pay for broadband in order to enjoy theWorld Wide Web.[8]To this end, he designed Dillo to be small, fast, and efficient, capable of performing well even on anIntel 80486CPU with adial-up Internet access.[2][9]

Development

[edit]

Dillo was originally written in theC programming languagewith theGTK+GUI toolkit.The first versions were based on an earlier browser calledArmadillo,hence the name.[10]

Dillo 2 was written with both C andC++components and theFast Light Toolkit(FLTK),[7]and was released on October 14, 2008.[5]Textantialiasing,support forcharacter setsother thanLatin-1,HTTP compressioncapability, and improved page rendering were all added.[7]The move to FLTK from GTK+ also removed many of the project's dependencies and reduced Dillo'smemory footprintby 50%.[5]

In 2011, Dillo-3.x was released, using FLTK-1.3. According to the Changelog, this change was prompted in part by the lack of an official release of FLTK-2, which stopped Dillo-2's inclusion in lightweight distributions for which it would otherwise have been suitable.

Jorge Arellano Cid is still Dillo's lead developer today.[11]Dillo is funded by private donations;[12]efforts to obtain public grants and corporate sponsors have been unsuccessful.[13]Lack of funding led to a slowdown in development in 2006, and a complete stop in 2007.[5][14]The project restarted again in 2008 and two months later received a €115 donation fromDistroWatch.[5][15]

Features

[edit]

Features of Dillo includebookmarks,tabbed browsing,and support forJPEG,PNG(includingAlpha transparency[16]), andGIFimages.[17]Partial support forCSSwas introduced in release 2.1. Settings such as the default fonts, background color, downloads folder, and home page are customizable through configuration files.[18][19]Cookiesare supported but disabled by default due to privacy concerns.[20]While most web browsers retain theweb cacheand history after the program is closed, Dillo automatically clears them to improve both privacy and performance.[21]

Dillo's bug meter reports errors Dillo encountered in the web page being viewed

A developer tool called the "bug meter" is provided in the lower-right corner. When clicked, it displays information about validation problems, such as unclosedtags,that Dillo found in the web page.[22]Unlike most browsers, Dillo does not have aquirks modeto improve compatibility with web pages that use invalid HTML. Instead, Dillo processes all web pages according to the publishedweb standards.[23]

In 2003, two Linux enthusiasts successfully ran Dillo on anIntel 486processor and demonstrated that even with such meager hardware, Dillo could renderHome - BBC Newsin 10–15 seconds.[24]Furthermore, Dillo can run on a variety ofsoftware platforms,includingLinux,BSD,Solaris,Mac OS X,DOS,[25]and somehandheld devices.[4]However, Dillo's developers have made little effort to make the browser work onMicrosoft Windows.Arellano Cid stated that Windows goes against Dillo's goal of democratization by artificially increasing hardware requirements and software costs.[26]Nevertheless, Dillo has been reported to work on Windows viaCygwin.[27]Additionally,Dillo-Win32was a project to port Dillo to Windows which is now defunct.[28] D+ browser or Dplus continues where Dillo-Win32 left off, it's forked from the final Dillo-Win32 release (3.0p9) and does not attempt to maintain upstream compatibility with Dillo. Last version is 0.5b (Oct 15, 2013). [29]

Dillo does not supportJavaScript,Java,Flash,right-to-lefttext, orcomplex text layout.[17][30]Support forframesis also very limited; Dillo presents a link to each frame to allow the user to view them one at a time.[31]

Forks

[edit]

The original[32]domain had expired in June 2022.[33]Developers had lost access to it and aWordpress zombie lookalikeis operating without their oversight ever since.

DilloNGis a fork hosted onGitHubwhich moved the code fromMercurialwhile adding new features like a speed dial main page, support for opening videos in an external video player[34]and merged some previously published fixes. It was last updated in 2021.[35]

A fork called Dillo-browser[36]appeared in 2019 forked from the then-current version of DilloNG. It stalled until 2023 when its development resumed and is ongoing as of 2024.

Dillo+ (Dillo-Plus) started in 2023 based on Dillo 3.0.5 source code found in the OpenBSD 6.8 package.[37]It had applied numerous patches from DilloNG and added support for rendering gopher, gemini and markdown pages, reader mode and extended CSS support.[38]A new Python scripting system was introduced with modules for rendering RSS, Epub, public Telegram channel logs and zip file contents.[39]It is still maintained as of 2024.[40]

Reception

[edit]

Reviews of Dillo have praised its extraordinary speed, but noted that this speed comes at a price.[17][41][42]The most visible cost is Dillo's inability to display complex web pages as they were meant to be. A 2008 review byLinuxcommented that Dillo's user interface may be "intimidating" for new users, and pointed out the scarcity ofplug-insfor Dillo.[18]In all, Dillo's global usage share is less than one hundredth of one percent.[43]

Dillo is, however, the browser of choice in several space-consciousLinux distributions,such asDamn Small Linux,[44]Feather Linux,[45]VectorLinux,[46]antiX[41]and Mustang Linux.[41]

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^"Release v3.1.1".8 June 2024.
  2. ^abcWayner, Peter (19 October 2010)."Top 10 specialty Web browsers you may have missed".InfoWorld.p. 3.Retrieved28 October2010.
  3. ^Arellano Cid, Jorge (1 July 2002)."Introducing Dillo, a lightweight embeddable browser".LinuxDevices. Archived fromthe originalon 2009-03-09.Retrieved14 February2009.
  4. ^ab"Dillo Web Browser:: Compatibility".University of Bremen.16 November 2008. Archived fromthe originalon 24 August 2011.Retrieved13 February2009.
  5. ^abcde"Dillo Web Browser:: Home Page".University of Bremen.7 December 2008. Archived fromthe originalon 28 May 2007.Retrieved12 February2009.
  6. ^Arellano Cid, Jorge."Personal info for Jorge Arellano Cid".Archived fromthe originalon 24 November 2015.Retrieved12 February2009.
  7. ^abcNieradzik, Tim (19 April 2009)."dillo:ChangeLog".Mercurial. Archived fromthe originalon 6 November 2018.Retrieved21 April2009.
  8. ^Arellano Cid, Jorge (December 2002)."Cuál sería el principal uso de Dillo?"(in Spanish). tux.cl. Archived fromthe originalon 13 April 2003.Retrieved13 February2009.English translationavailable.
  9. ^Arellano Cid, Jorge (December 2002)."Básicamente, de que se trata el proyecto Dillo?"(in Spanish). tux.cl. Archived fromthe originalon 13 April 2003.Retrieved13 February2009.English translationavailable.
  10. ^Arellano Cid, Jorge (31 December 1999)."Home page (ASCII version)".SourceForge.net.Retrieved21 April2009.
  11. ^"Dillo Web Browser:: Project team".University of Bremen.Retrieved13 February2009.
  12. ^"Dillo Web Browser:: Donations".University of Bremen.14 October 2008.Retrieved13 February2009.
  13. ^"Embeddable browser project hits milestone release, seeks funding".LinuxDevices.org. 19 February 2004. Archived fromthe originalon 16 February 2009.Retrieved13 February2009.
  14. ^Arellano Cid, Jorge (August 2008)."Dillo is eight years old!".Archived fromthe originalon 2012-02-20.Retrieved12 February2009.
  15. ^Martin, Caitlyn (1 December 2008)."DistroWatch News".DistroWatch Weekly.Retrieved13 February2009.
  16. ^Roelofs, Greg (17 May 2008)."PNG-supporting Browsers".SourceForge.Retrieved13 February2009.
  17. ^abcArndt, Matthias (June 2002)."Dillo--a Web Browser as Fast as Lightning".Archived fromthe originalon 15 February 2009.Retrieved13 February2009.
  18. ^abByfield, Bruce (5 November 2008)."Dillo 2.0 is fast, but limited".Linux.Retrieved13 February2009.
  19. ^"Sample dillo initialization file".University of Bremen.Archived fromthe originalon 26 December 2017.Retrieved13 February2009.
  20. ^"Q: How do I enable cookies?".Dillo Web Browser:: Frequently Asked Questions.University of Bremen.15 January 2009. Archived fromthe originalon 9 May 2008.Retrieved11 February2009.
  21. ^"Dillo Web Browser:: Funding Presentation:: Advantages".University of Bremen.Retrieved13 February2009.
  22. ^"Dillo Web Browser:: About Dillo's Bug Meter".University of Bremen.Retrieved13 February2009.
  23. ^"Why do some pages look strange?".Dillo Web Browser:: Frequently Asked Questions.University of Bremen.15 January 2009. Archived fromthe originalon 9 May 2008.Retrieved11 February2009.
  24. ^"Dam(sic) Small Linux on retro hardware -- 486SX and 486DX2".John Andrews. 19 October 2003.Retrieved24 May2009.
  25. ^Downloads - nanox-microwindows-nxlib-fltk-for-dos - This project ports the Nano-X, Microwindows, NXlib and FLTK 1.3.0 libraries to the DOS operating system using DJGPP - Google Project Hosting.Code.google. Retrieved on 2013-12-09.
  26. ^Arellano Cid, Jorge (December 2002)."El hecho de que Dillo este programado en C hace que sea portable a otros sistemas operativos, debería Windows ser su objetivo principal, ya que la" democratización de internet "tendría más impacto debido a la cantidad de usuarios de este s.o.?"(in Spanish). tux.cl. Archived fromthe originalon 13 April 2003.Retrieved13 February2009.English translationavailable.
  27. ^Vibber, Kelson (13 October 2008)."Installing Dillo on Cygwin".Archived fromthe originalon 4 June 2011.Retrieved13 February2009.
  28. ^"Project Status".Dillo-Win32. 5 December 2011. Archived fromthe originalon 15 March 2012.Retrieved1 January2012.
  29. ^"Official D+ Browser page".Retrieved5 December2013.
  30. ^"Q: Internationalization and Localization (i18n & l10n)".Dillo Web Browser:: Frequently Asked Questions.University of Bremen.15 January 2009. Archived fromthe originalon 9 May 2008.Retrieved12 February2009.
  31. ^Krause, Ralph (26 February 2002)."Dillo, the GTK Web Browser".Linux Journal.Retrieved13 February2009.
  32. ^"Dillo Web Browser:: Home Page".
  33. ^"Dillo.org".
  34. ^"README - w00fpack/dilloNG".
  35. ^"Commits - w00fpack/dilloNG".
  36. ^"Dillo, a multi-platform graphical web browser".
  37. ^"Working base from OpenBSD 6.8 pkg, switched from autotools to plain Makefiles".
  38. ^See[1]for coverage
  39. ^"Overview".GitHub.
  40. ^"Commits - crossbowerbt/dillo-plus".
  41. ^abcKingman, Henry (16 October 2008)."Lightweight, Linux-compatible browser evolves".DesktopLinux. Archived fromthe originalon 14 February 2009.Retrieved13 February2009.
  42. ^Tatham, Paul (15 September 2002)."Linux Web Surfing - Get Armed with Dillo".Archived fromthe originalon 3 March 2016.Retrieved13 February2009.
  43. ^"Browser Market Share".Net Applications. January 2009.Retrieved12 February2009.
  44. ^"Damn Small Linux, Featured Desktop applications".John Andrews.Retrieved11 February2009.
  45. ^"Feather Linux - About".BerliOS.Archived fromthe originalon 27 January 2009.Retrieved11 February2009.
  46. ^"Lesser known" mini "Linux runs from RAM".DesktopLinux. 25 January 2007. Archived fromthe originalon 15 February 2009.Retrieved13 February2009.
[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has media related toDillo.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dillo&oldid=1242181655"