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NetSurf, a multi-platform web browser
- codevark 6y agoAmiga!
- thrownaway954 6y agook... i'll bite... how does this compare to chrome in terms of rendering and compatibility? i don't see this thing listed on caniuse.com.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sprash 6y agoIt does not even pass the ACID2 test. It is however the best independently developed browser engine out there. If you want an alternative to Webkit and whatever Firefox uses, Netsurf is the only viable option at the moment.
- ori_b 6y agoBasically, it's the only browser out there even trying to handle modern sites that's not mostly funded by Google or Apple (Firefox revenue is mostly coming from Google, and there's Safari), and which runs on rarer platforms. It's still relatively big, because web standards are incredibly complicated, but it's almost tractable. If you care about browser diversity, it's important.
- mappu 6y agoThere are a few others but all with their own caveats - https://www.ekioh.com/flow-browser/ https://www.ekioh.com/flow-browser/ is fully independent and can run Gmail, but it's commercial / non-FOSS. It's funded by contracts in the set-top-box industry. https://sciter.com/ https://sciter.com/ is non-FOSS with a free edition but you shouldn't run untrusted javascript on it And there are some lightly-maintained forks of the leaked Presto 12.x engine from before Opera became a Chromium derivative, but of course it's copyright infringement.
- monocasa 6y agoI would love if Opera open sourced Presto. It's unfortunate that the lack of resources that pushed them to Chromium probably translate to a lack of resources needed to open source Presto properly, so I doubt we'll ever see it. : \
- ralls_ebfe 6y agoI loved presto so much, not going open source is a huge loss. And now the future of servo is unclear as well. :(
- riquito 6y ago> It does not even pass the ACID2 test. It is however the best independently developed browser engine out there Flow browser passes ACID3 [1], closed source but independent (afaik, dont't really know much about it) Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23508979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23508979 [1] https://www.ekioh.com/devblog/acid/ https://www.ekioh.com/devblog/acid/
- ezluckyfree 6y agonot available for Linux?
- Santosh83 6y agoHave a look here (but page not updated in years apparently, so its compatibility maybe better in reality) http://www.netsurf-browser.org/documentation/progress.html http://www.netsurf-browser.org/documentation/progress.html The general impression I get is that it is not bad when it comes to HTML and CSS but not even close for Javascript (disabled by default because of minimal support apparently), so comparing this with Chrome is like apples to oranges, given the way the modern Web is going.
- userbinator 6y agoIn other words, HTML4 and CSS2. As a counterpoint, when you come across a site which should but doesn't work in one of these minimal browsers, maybe the blame should be put on the site for using needless complexity instead of the browser for not implementing it.
- justapassenger 6y agoIt's good at old-school "websites". 0 support for modern web, aka "webapps".
- tomphoolery 6y agowhat in the 1993 is this
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jeppesen-io 6y agono kidding - looks like even the web server is old too. Seems to be Cherokee, a project which last stable release was 6 years ago
- miles 6y agoCherokee was updated 17 days ago: https://github.com/cherokee/webserver/commits/master https://github.com/cherokee/webserver/commits/master
- jeppesen-io 6y agoSorry, I should of said stable release
- bandrami 6y ago> Cherokee, a project which last stable release was 6 years ago Its last CVE was 10 years ago[1]. It's not actually necessary for software to change if it already does what you want it to. 1: https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-1005/Cherokee.html https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-1005...
- dddbbb 6y agoI noticed that in the screenshots section[1], the Linux screenshots for the Netsurf site and Wikipedia are from this year, but the BBC one is from 2011. How does the current BBC site fare? [1] -- https://www.netsurf-browser.org/about/screenshots/ https://www.netsurf-browser.org/about/screenshots/
- ddevault 6y agoFront page: https://l.sr.ht/RfrR.png https://l.sr.ht/RfrR.png Reading an article: https://l.sr.ht/ZSwt.png https://l.sr.ht/ZSwt.png
- anthk 6y agoNetsurf was a bit unstable and prone to lock compared to Dillo or Links+. Also, the duktape JS capabilities are behind even edbrowse.
- forgotmypw17 6y agonetsurf is a great browser, i test with it regularly, and it,s a pleasure to both use and develop for.
- mouldysammich 6y agoI've played around with NetSurf a little for fun recently. It performed surprisingly well on a few of the sites i use. old.reddit, hackernews both rendered ok with some issues, also miniflux which i use for rss reading worked well too. I think its a very cool and admirable project
- james412 6y agoI was able to download and build the Gtk3 version of this in under 5 minutes. For compactness alone, gets my seal of approval. I'm posting this comment from NetSurf, HN works fine.
- unicornporn 6y agoDoes it block ads? Asking because: DNS-level adblocking is stupid.
- CyberDildonics 6y agoDNS level adblocking is fantastic, especially since it can be done network wide so easily and used as an extra layer of ad filtering.
- giancarlostoro 6y agoI have to agree. I think DNS adblocking off a Raspberry Pi is the best. Unfortunately a power loss screwed up my Pis SD card.
- vageli 6y ago> DNS level adblocking is fantastic, especially since it can be done network wide so easily and used as an extra layer of ad filtering. It's great, but DNS over HTTPS will end the party soon enough (if I was a smart TV manufacturer, I would be prioritizing adding dns over https to the device firmware to subvert network blocks).
- beamatronic 6y agoThat gives the consumer one more reason not to hook it up to the network, ever.
- Arnavion 6y agoDNS-adblocking in a router can be complemented by the router's firewall blocking outbound to all DoH provider IPs. (It'll need to be a constantly-updating blocklist, but the DNS-adblock lists are also that already.)
- userbinator 6y agoI remember looking at this and Dillo a while ago, and while it definitely looked more polished than Dillo, I recall downloading the Windows binary and it crashing the first time I ran it - not a good start. On the other hand, Dillo ran immediately and was at least usable. Maybe it's time to try it again, especially now that there are even fewer independent browsers...
- livre 6y agoThe Windows binary doesn't crash anymore, I have it installed and use it occasionally. I also use it on my very low end Linux laptop and it works wonderfully for anything that doesn't require JavaScript. Edit: just a warning, the Windows version has problems with the <select> element, it won't display the options when you click it.
- pixxel 6y agoYou have discovered websites that don’t demand JS! Seriously though I have JS disabled (FireFox ext. to turn back on per site) and the amount of broken or blank pages is saddening.
- chriswarbo 6y agoDillo is faster whilst NetSurf has better CSS support. For text- and table-heavy sites Dillo can be nicer to use (since everything has a uniform look and feel); for sites which rely on CSS for usability then NetSurf is nicer to use (e.g. headers and sidebars packed with nested mouse-over menus, which Dillo and text-mode browsers tend to render as a gigantic column of cruft above the actual content).
- Klonoar 6y agoFor all that this browser lacks, I think it's simple enough to build that it's been the "first" browser on a few alternative/hobby OS's, no? e.g, Redox, maybe Haiku pre-WebKit port? Haiku I could easily be misremembering as there was probably a BeOS browser that ran, albeit outdated... tl;dr I appreciate the simplicity of it in contrast to modern browsers.
- unixhero 6y agoI wonder if it would build to MSDOS
- Jaruzel 6y agoNot a silly question. However, (at a guess) I reckon a lot of the underlying net code is probably POSIX based, which MS-DOS is not. I notice there's a framebuffer version, so building a nano-linux distro that boots instantly into that shouldn't be that hard.
- unixhero 6y agoSo there's the framebuffer code that's needed and then it's netcode. So for the framebuffer code, maybe an MSDOS UNIVBE wrapper could be used. For netcode, I have no idea, but a wrapper for POSIX calls must surely exist there also. Anyyways. I guess the userbase would be pretty much nil, for this as alternatives do exist on DOS :)
- iforgotpassword 6y agoFor networking on msdos I recommend mTCP. Although it's C++. The biggest problem however will be compiling the code. The only viable compiler for msdos is openwatcom so the question is if the code uses any fancy extensions or gnuisms. Also the only version of openwatcom that didn't produce broken binaries is the Windows version (or at least was about two years ago). Happy porting :-)
- paulie_a 6y agoWasn't that the name of some shitty product from the 90s?
- ajxs 6y agoI've been using NetSurf for a long time now on my Thinkpad when I'm traveling. If I only need to check webmail and read articles NetSurf suffices perfectly, without draining as much battery power as a regular browser.
- dang 6y agoIf curious see also 2018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18692837 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18692837 2015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10417807 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10417807 2010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1913332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1913332
- shock 6y agoIs there any browser that implements container tabs à la Firefox?
- buzzert 6y agoIf anyone here is running Linux and is now researching a "backup plan" in case Firefox pivots, I would highly recommend Epiphany (now called GNOME Web): https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Web https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Web
- axaxs 6y agoOr perhaps Konqueror? Seems apt seeing that KDE wrote what became WebKit.
- LeoPanthera 6y ago"Falkon" is the current KDE web browser. It used to be called QupZilla.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago> Firefox pivots Pivots to what?
- bickeringyokel 6y agoI can only guess they mean if they pivot to be less privacy focused.
- 0xcde4c3db 6y agoOr pivot to maintaining a half-ass Chromium fork instead of a whole-ass browser, since that's apparently the fiscally responsible thing to do.
- noah_buddy 6y agoThere were massive layoffs today apparently with discussion of finding better ways to make money. Some are taking it as a sign of Firefox potentially deciding to monetize data (and, thus, deincentivize privacy focus internally). That might be what OP is talking about.
- LeoPanthera 6y ago
- zzo38computer 6y agoIt is many good idea, but should need a better customization, and perhaps better keyboard commands, Xaw widgets, bitmap fonts, etc. Support specifying pipes and stuff for files like Heirloom-mailx does. What we need is the browser that you have enough ropes to hang yourself and also a few more just in case, and NetSurf may be the one to base it from. Make it for the user first; assume any file received is potentially hostile (whether or not the connection is secure; a secure connection merely prevents spies from tampering with it, it does not prevent the server operator from tampering with it!). Support specifying scripts that the user can replace with their own implementaiton; this would ensure that the user can alter any document received, and would even make it more efficient too since the user's implementation need not be written in an interpreted programming language and need not be sandboxed as much either.
- jraph 6y agoI find NetSurf's source code beautiful and quite easy to read and follow, and straightforward. I am impressed. It's like the pure version of "makes sense". It's also split into independent libraries that can be used outside of NetSurf, which make them useful on their own, and NetSurf very modular. If I had to implement something that requires a feature implemented in a browser, I'd seriously consider one of them. Especially their CSS parser and engine. I really recommand to have a look at the code.
- userbinator 6y agoTo be honest, I wouldn't exactly call this "beautiful"... https://source.netsurf-browser.org/libdom.git/tree/src/core/document.c#n117 https://source.netsurf-browser.org/libdom.git/tree/src/core/... https://source.netsurf-browser.org/libdom.git/tree/src/core/implementation.c#n62 https://source.netsurf-browser.org/libdom.git/tree/src/core/... https://source.netsurf-browser.org/libcss.git/tree/src/parse/parse.c#n416 https://source.netsurf-browser.org/libcss.git/tree/src/parse... Looks like the authors have a severe case of goto-phobia that causes a quadratic explosion of copy-pasted code in the error-return paths. Some of the files also feel like they have been translated into C from C++ or some other OO language by some automated tool, resulting in some very long "namespaced"-looking identifiers. Then again, I don't think Firefox or WebKit code is that much better either, so my impression of this codebase is neither great nor horrible. As "beautiful" is subjective, to give a reference for what I'd consider beautiful, look at BSD or early UNIX.
- tomcam 6y agoI also find the code to be clear and easy to read. Looking at the samples you provided, I feel like I could step right in and work on this project with minimal cognitive load. I actually like the style.
- Hello71 6y agothere are other "C++ programmer trying to write C" anti-patterns, such as typedefed structs and one "class" per file, leading to terrible performance without LTO. stuff like https://source.netsurf-browser.org/libdom.git/tree/src/core/cdatasection.c https://source.netsurf-browser.org/libdom.git/tree/src/core/... has more signs of excessive C++ love: "vtable", "protected", etc. I don't know that these things are inherently bad, but they certainly don't exist in C.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- interfixus 6y agoSo obviously caters to what the web once was and should have stayed, not to the metastasizing idiocy it has become. I'm ancient enough to remember when mainstream browsers came in packages of a few megabytes and got us through the day just fine with a featureset less than (or at the very most equal to) the current state of NetSurf. In a somewhat more rational world there would be massive popular pressure for this to remain the case. Yes, sites break in NetSurf. This is squarely their own fault for not providing civilized degradation. Although it certainly wouldn't go amiss if the NetSurf engine encorporated the worthwhile elements of CSS 3, basically meaning Grid and possibly Flexbox.
- nyanpasu64 6y agoNot sure when CSS variables were added, but I'd consider them more friendly to user customization than preprocessors that inline the same font stack 20 times in autogenerated class names (looking at medium.com), requiring you to override the font stack 20 times.
- interfixus 6y agoGranted. Lack of variables was always among the more serious defects of the confusion that is CSS.
- thom 6y agoAlso might be of interest that this can be run in a framebuffer. Sometimes I work in a virtual console to avoid distractions but when Emacs’ built in web browser doesn’t serve a purpose, I’ll open NetSurf in another console, and it’s fine for almost all “search for errors or docs” workflows.
- steveharman 6y agoDo some pages on the website need a little love for the copyright date? "Copyright 2003 - 2009 The NetSurf Developers". (eg; Downloads)
- fouric 6y agoIs the NetSurf rendering engine multi-core/multi-thread? It's not clear from the homepage, which makes me think that it's single-core only.