Hi, On Thu, Jul 03, 2008 at 04:19:29PM -0400, Jorge Arellano Cid wrote:
Hi there,
Looking to a future dillo2 release for the public, I was wondering about the main drive behind dillo2.
I mean, in this years of Facebook, WebKit, Flash, propietary video codecs, etc. what's the main point behind dillo2?
From the objectives:
1.- The democratization of internet information access. 2.- Personal security and privacy.
For me these two are becoming more important in the face of: http://news.slashdot.org/news/08/07/04/1343214.shtml http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/07/03/2156204.shtml http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/07/03/0310203.shtml ...
3.- High software efficiency.
The first one is interesting to analyze along the lines that dillo allows to search for tons of information spread through the Internet using low HW requirements and low bandwidth as a dialup. This is reassuring as dillo efectively enables information access to any person under such constraints.
The second one is partly attained by not writing to HD and by a non-existent scripting support.
Yes, non-existent scripting is a feature. However I think there is more we can do regarding security. Bug fixes and reviewing of the parser. Someone already talked about some tool to test dillo with random incorrect html - I need to check this. Also we could try to make dillo work nice as an untrusted X11 client. It almost works fine already btw.
The third one is the one to brag about. ;-)
:-)
Since some time, the thought that enabling dillo2 as a help browser could also bring local information (i.e. in HD) closer to the user came as a powerful one. Having an app. that pops-up in a second and that's quick, responsive and easy to use is certainly a strong drive for a person in search of information (that's why I'd like to see it inside Debian as a help system).
In the near future, I'd like to have CSS and proper floating text rendering (DIV element), plus an API as a help browser.
There're countries where paying Universitary studies is the state's burden. If a citizen doesn't want to study there, it's a choice. I think the same may happen with dillo, once people know about it, they can choose to use it or not.
While thinking about it, these comments surprised me:
"Slashdot | What Do You Want On Future Browsers?" http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/30/1845201
(yes, give them a read!)
(They're talking from a full featured Firefox basis. I don't know how may of them would like to use something like dillo)
I'm sure there will be quite some interest in dillo. Even more, if it will support CSS one day. http://fltk.org/newsgroups.php?s4845+gfltk.development+v4846+T0 and http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Web_Browser is interesting too. Also it should already be possible to compile dillo-fltk on OSX and with some work also under Cygwin. No X11 needed in both cases! Anyway, if we focus on making a browser that suits our needs, it will most probabely also suit others.
Behind a project like ours, there're two communities: developers and users. The main factor to push forward the project is developers and their motivations (in a commercial environment what pushes the development is the money invested and the profit margins/strategy sought).
That's why I'm asking you to help me with your views, needs visions on the future of dillo2 these days.
My vision is a secure, fast, and stable browser with a nice community :-)
With regard to the user community, I'd love to have some feedback from them, but I guess we need to release dillo2 first!
:-)
Cheers, Johannes