On Thu, Aug 24, 2006 at 05:07:21PM +0000, Sam Trenholme wrote:
This is the kind of computer that is perfect for Dillo:
http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS6828123924.html
Summary: About $100, P166, 128 megs of memory, roughly the size of a VHS videocasette.
This is the perfect computer for Dillo--128 megs of ram really isn't enough memory to run Firefox well, and Firefox's rendering will be quite slow on a P166, especially on big pages.
I have a laptop with Pentium M 266 MHz and 96 MB RAM. I'm using Firefox and Dillo on that machine, while Firefox is most times much to slow (and slows down the rest of the system).
That said, I feel there are some issues that stop Dillo from being the browser to use on such a machine.
I agree, that's why I still use firefox on my laptop (which is a pain)
Now, before giving out my "shoulds", I understand what it takes to make code happen in the open source world: The submission of money or patches. I have my own little open-source project, and I do let out a sigh whenever someone says "Your program should be able to do XXX". I do listen to these requests, but it sometimes takes years for those requests to become real code.
So, I hope people on this list will humour me and let me share my thoughts about Dillo.
The problem is that Dillo doesn't support a lot of high-profile internet sites right now.
OK, you say, so submit a patch and help with Dillo development.
Well, the problem is that I don't think such a patch will be accepted by the Dillo developers.
People, of course, know about the patches over at http://teki.jpn.ph/pc/software/index-e.shtml#dillo-i18n
This patched version of Dillo (or should I say, this fork of Dillo) also supports tabs, frames, UTF-8, and even has buggy support for real HTML redirects.
I was able to read and send webmail both with Yahoo and Gmail using the "i18n" version of Dillo. I can't say the same for the last stock version of Dillo I tried; I understand that the "i18n" changes may make the code more messy. I think we're looking at different philosophies here, and I think we may hit the point of having a true fork should these enhancments continue to not be merged in to the main Dillo source.
If I were to take some time out from my own project on work on Dillo, I would not work on the main version--I would work on the "i18n" version, since it is usable with a number of sites that the mainline Dillo can not access.
I would look at the "i18n" version and try and add Javascript support to it (or, better yet, EMCAscript support). Personally, I think Dillo needs some level of Javascript support; a lot of high-profile sites (can we say MySpace and their crappy JavaScript and HTML) plain simply do not work without Javascript.
I remember a discussion on this list about this patched Dillo version (or Fork). I think the main reason against it was, that the code is to much messed up and doesn't fit dillo programming guidlines (Naming Conventions and so on), but maybe I remember wrong.
I also believe that Dillo shouldn't try to get CSS support; the last thing I want is yet another browser with buggy CSS that I have to design around. If Dillo is going to support CSS, I don't think the support should become a part of a stable release of Dillo until Dillo can render ACID2 perfectly. A site that uses CSS is perfectly usable, albeit a bit ugly, in a browser that doesn't have CSS.
I definitely disagree. From my point of view, CSS is the most missing feature in Dillo. Frames are minor impotant (as only bad websites use them), Javascript is very much necessary, but CSS seems to be the most important feature Dillo needs. Some basic CSS attributes like colors, positioning would be a good start. I agree, that it is very important to implement CSS support as close to the standard as possible.
Anyway, these are just my 2 millicents. I understand that it takes either real code or real money to make these changes real, and since I'm currently offering neither, feel free to cheerfully ignore my thoughts or to flame me to a crisp. :) - Sam
-- derhans
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