the wallstreet journal has been pretty great at blocking their site for all modern web browsers.
So the trick is to use an ancient basic one, called Dillo
for windows: https://sourceforge.net/projects/dillo-win32/
for everyone else: https://www.dillo.org/
True, but there is a case to be made for non-full-fledged browsers. Simple browsers like links or dillo, where users are happy to trade assured website compatibility for very low resource usage or simple UX. Or quickly displaying known-reasonable pages, like a user manual or generated rust docs. Lots of software embed an overkill rendering engine for those tasks.
it's a 2007 Acer TravelMate 5335 ;) Battery is way beyond its maximum life extent, as also confirmed by envstat(8), and doesn't last more than 15 min =P. It got fried up buy a thunder a couple of years ago (no joking) and as a consequence now unfortunately only 1 UHCI port works. Anyway, being loving it as always
disclaimer: compiles with decent performance and acceptable time wait
> Netsurfcan do wonders
Indeed I'm using netsurf and vimb :). I agree with you, netsurf is kind of magic, a trump card that can run wherever (like plan9). Dillo browser, even more barebone, runs even on DOS,like most FLTK-based software
I was wondering about qutebrowser port,since it seems to bring many cool features over vimb, and appears mostly up to date (1.2) catching up official branch on pkgsrc-current...did you compile it successfully by any chance?
>You probably have a lot of knowledge on this
Incorrect! :) I'm actually learning as I go, and not the brightest crayon in the box.
One thing I have found is that Dillo is a fantastic browser option for older systems. By default, it does not run any JS, and ignores some CSS, which does make some pages look funny, and others to not load at all, so it's definitely not for everyone's browsing habits. I can use it most of the time, and be okay with it, but there's those few instances where I need a more robust browser and for that, I tend to prefer Firefox.
There are a ton of browsers out there that are working to minimize their footprint. On one extreme is Dillo but it sounds like you need scripting. I wouldn't jump to Electron hoping it will solve the world's problems, it has its own. Your best bet is to take a stock browser (Edge, Safari, even FF) and disable anything you don't want, don't install extensions, and run with that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_lightweight_web_browsers?wprov=sfla1
I've been using the Dillo web browser lately. It has no Javascript handler in it so things load fast as hell. Now, you can't log into your bank or do e-commerce, but for some things it is a fine experience.
It might be useful to check out the source code for Dillo or NetSurf.
Neither browser fully supports the modern web, especially regardinf CSS and JS support which is poor if not altogether absent. But otherwise they are comparatively complete browsers and should be able to render plain HTML 4.x compliant pages with pictures at the very least.
You could try helping them out and learning how those particular aspects work or just use them as a functional example for reference/testing purposes.
Dillo is a very lightweight browser. We're talking a handful of MBs footprint. It uses a novel rendering engine, unrelated to either WebKit or Gecko. It supports only HTML and CSS, no JavaScript is planned.
Well, using a virtual machine is cumbersome. On the flip side, sure, I can run my windows programs in a VM on linux - but it takes up ram, time, space etc... I was looking for something that can do so in windows.
This all came about though when earlier today I was going to recommend the browser Dillo, but it doesn't have a windows download option.
Its a VERY light weight browser and booting a VM to run it is like a rocket launcher to swat a fly.
((why was I recommending such a crappy browser you may ask --- when a website throws up a blocker so that you can't read the article --- Dillo is SO BASIC that it doesn't do any of that, but the text of the article still loads :) ))
The fastest and most minimal would be Lynx, Links or w3m.
The modern web is resource-heavy. You can be fast either by ignoring most of what it does (as is the case with the TUI browsers) or by using a lot of resources.
The main GUI browsers are all about the same. Aside from Firefox they pretty much all use some variant of Webkit/Webengine/Blink. There are a few completely independent web browsers that use their own engines, like Dillo, but I've never found them to work particularly well.
My personal, subjective experience is that Firefox feels faster than Chrome (and other Webkit-derived-engine powered browsers) and is slightly lighter on resources. You can improve things by using something like Umatrix to block a lot of stuff and speed things up further. I use Firefox with VimVixen (for vim-like key bindings) and AutoFullscreen which results in a minimal interface.
Qutebrowser (which uses Webengine for rendering) is probably the most minimal of the maintained, usable browsers in terms of default interface but it's not (and doesn't claim to be) fast by any stretch of the imagination.
I don't know about NetScape per se, but using older browsers is handy for dodging ads on spammed-to-death sites, pop-ups, autoplay videos, soft paywalls, redirects, and general garbage overload.
I keep an install of Dillo on every machine just so when a website misbehaves and I must have the information on it immediately, I can paste the URL there and get in, get out. They keep apologizing for not updating it and I'm like "No, please don't update it!"