Dillo
Template:Short description Template:Otheruses Template:Update Template:Infobox Software Dillo is a minimalistic web browser particularly intended for older or slower computers and embedded systems.<ref name="infoworld" /> It supports only plain HTML/XHTML (with CSS rendering) and images over HTTP and HTTPS; scripting is ignored entirely.<ref name="infoworld">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Current versions of Dillo can run on Linux, BSD, OS X, IRIX and Cygwin.<ref name="compatibility">Template:Cite web</ref> Due to its small size, it was the browser of choice in several space-conscious Linux distributions. Dillo is free software, released under the GNU GPL-3.0-or-later.<ref name="Home Page">Template:Cite web</ref>
Chilean software engineer Jorge Arellano Cid conceived the Dillo project in late 1999,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> publishing the first version of Dillo in December of that year.<ref name="changelog">Template:Cite web</ref> 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 the World Wide Web.<ref>Template:Cite web English translation available.</ref> To this end, he designed Dillo to be small, fast, and efficient, capable of performing well even on an Intel 80486 CPU with a dial-up Internet access.<ref name="infoworld" /><ref>Template:Cite web English translation available.</ref>
Development
[edit]Dillo was originally written in the C programming language with the GTK+ GUI toolkit. The first versions were based on an earlier browser called Armadillo, hence the name.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Dillo 2 was written with both C and C++ components and the Fast Light Toolkit (FLTK),<ref name="changelog"/> and was released on October 14, 2008.<ref name="Home Page"/> Text antialiasing, support for character sets other than Latin-1, HTTP compression capability, and improved page rendering were all added.<ref name="changelog"/> The move to FLTK from GTK+ also removed many of the project's dependencies and reduced Dillo's memory footprint by 50%.<ref name="Home Page"/>
In 2011, Dillo-3.x was released, now using FLTK-1.3. According to the Changelog, this change was partly driven by the absence of an official FLTK-2 release, which had previously prevented Dillo-2 from being included in lightweight distributions where it would have otherwise been suitable.
Jorge Arellano Cid is still Dillo's lead developer today.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Dillo is funded by private donations;<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> efforts to obtain public grants and corporate sponsors have been unsuccessful.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Lack of funding led to a slowdown in development in 2006, and a complete stop in 2007.<ref name="Home Page"/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The project restarted again in 2008 and two months later received a €115 donation from DistroWatch.<ref name="Home Page"/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Features
[edit]Features of Dillo include bookmarks, tabbed browsing, and support for JPEG, PNG (including alpha transparency<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>), and GIF images.<ref name="Arndt">Template:Cite web</ref> Partial support for CSS was introduced in release 2.1. Settings such as the default fonts, background color, downloads folder, and home page are customizable through configuration files.<ref name="Byfield">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Cookies are supported but disabled by default due to privacy concerns.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> While most web browsers retain the web cache and history after the program is closed, Dillo automatically clears them to improve both privacy and performance.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
A developer tool called the "bug meter" is provided in the lower-right corner. When clicked, it displays information about validation problems, such as unclosed tags, that Dillo found in the web page.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Unlike most browsers, Dillo does not have a quirks mode to improve compatibility with web pages that use invalid HTML. Instead, Dillo processes all web pages according to the published web standards.<ref name="strange">Template:Cite web</ref>
In 2003, two Linux enthusiasts successfully ran Dillo on an Intel 486 processor and demonstrated that even with such meager hardware, Dillo could render Home - BBC News in 10–15 seconds.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Furthermore, Dillo can run on a variety of software platforms, including Linux, BSD, Solaris, Mac OS X, DOS,<ref>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.com. Retrieved on 2013-12-09.</ref> and some handheld devices.<ref name="compatibility" /> However, Dillo's developers have made little effort to make the browser work on Microsoft Windows. Arellano Cid stated that Windows goes against Dillo's goal of democratization by artificially increasing hardware requirements and software costs.<ref>Template:Cite web English translation available.</ref> Nevertheless, Dillo has been reported to work on Windows via Cygwin.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Additionally, Dillo-Win32 was a project to port Dillo to Windows which is now defunct.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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). <ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Dillo does not support JavaScript, Java, Flash, right-to-left text, or complex text layout.<ref name="Arndt"/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Support for frames is also very limited; Dillo presents a link to each frame to allow the user to view them one at a time.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Forks
[edit]The original<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> domain had expired in June 2022.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Developers had lost access to it and a Wordpress zombie lookalike is operating without their oversight ever since.
DilloNG is a fork hosted on GitHub which moved the code from Mercurial while adding new features like a speed dial main page, support for opening videos in an external video player<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and merged some previously published fixes. It was last updated in 2021.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
A fork called Dillo-browser<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> It had applied numerous patches from DilloNG and added support for rendering Gopher, Gemini and markdown pages, reader mode and extended CSS support.<ref>See [1] for coverage</ref> A new Python scripting system was introduced with modules for rendering RSS, EPUB, public Telegram channel logs and zip file contents.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> It is still maintained as of 2024.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Reception
[edit]Reviews of Dillo have praised its extraordinary speed, but noted that this speed comes at a price.<ref name="Arndt"/><ref name="Kingman">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The most visible cost is Dillo's inability to display complex web pages as they were meant to be. A 2008 review by Linux.com commented that Dillo's user interface may be "intimidating" for new users, and pointed out the scarcity of plug-ins for Dillo.<ref name="Byfield"/> In all, Dillo's global usage share is less than one hundredth of one percent.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Dillo is, however, the browser of choice in several space-conscious Linux distributions, such as Damn Small Linux,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Feather Linux,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> VectorLinux,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> antiX<ref name="Kingman"/> and Mustang Linux.<ref name="Kingman"/>
See also
[edit]- Comparison of lightweight web browsers
- Comparison of web browsers
- List of web browsers
- List of web browsers for Unix and Unix-like operating systems