| Dillo | |
|---|---|
 | |
 Dillo 3.1 displaying a Wikipedia article | |
| Original author | Jorge Arellano Cid |
| Developer | Rodrigo Arias Mallo |
| Initial release | December 1999; 26 years ago (1999-12) |
| Stable release | |
| Written in | C andC++ |
| Operating system | Linux,BSD,macOS,FreeDOS |
| Available in | English |
| Type | Web browser |
| License | GPL-3.0-or-later |
| Website | https://dillo-browser.org/ |
| Repository | |
Dillo is a minimalisticweb browser particularly intended for older or slower computers andembedded systems.[2] It supports only plainHTML/XHTML (withCSS rendering) and images overHTTP andHTTPS; scripting is ignored entirely.[2][3] Current versions of Dillo can run onLinux,BSD,macOS,IRIX[4] andCygwin.[5] Due to its small size, it is a popular choice forlightweight Linux distributions. Dillo isfree software, released under theGNU GPL-3.0-or-later.[6]
Chilean software engineer Jorge Arellano Cid conceived the Dillo project in late 1999,[7] publishing the first version of Dillo in December of that year.[8] 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 theWorld Wide Web.[9] To this end, he designed Dillo to be small, fast, and efficient, capable of performing well even on anIntel 80486 CPU with adial-up Internet access.[2][10]
Dillo was originally written in theC programming language with theGTK+GUI toolkit. The first versions were based on an earlier browser calledArmadillo, hence the name.[11]
Dillo is funded by private donations;[12] efforts to obtain public grants and corporate sponsors have been unsuccessful.[13] Lack of funding led to a slowdown in development in 2006, and a complete stop in 2007.[6][14] The project restarted again in 2008 and two months later received a €115 donation fromDistroWatch.[6][15]
Dillo 2 was written with both C andC++ components and theFast Light Toolkit (FLTK),[8] and was released on October 14, 2008.[6] Textantialiasing, support forcharacter sets other thanLatin-1,HTTP compression capability, and improved page rendering were all added.[8] The move to FLTK from GTK+ also removed many of the project's dependencies and reduced Dillo'smemory footprint by 50%.[6]
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.
Development stalled in 2016 due to the death of the main developer of the rendering engine, Sebastian Geerken. Arellano Cid made his last post to the development mailing list in 2019.[16][17]
Dillo 3.1.x was released in 2024, after development was restarted in December 2023 by Rodrigo Arias Mallo.[18]
The original[19] domain had expired in June 2022.[20] Developers had lost access to it. Since then, the domain is used by alookalike site, that copied the original pages and added advertisements. The site uses Wordpress, which relies on JavaScript and, thus, is incompatible with Dillo.
Features of Dillo includebookmarks,tabbed browsing, and support forJPEG,PNG (includingalpha transparency[21]),GIF[22] andSVG images.[23] Partial support forCSS was introduced in release 2.1. Settings such as the default fonts, background color, downloads folder, and home page are customizable through configuration files.[24][25]Cookies are supported but disabled by default due to privacy concerns.[26] While most web browsers retain theweb cache and history after the program is closed, Dillo automatically clears them to improve both privacy and performance.[27]
A developer tool called the "bug meter" is provided in the lower-right corner. When clicked, it displays information about validation problems, such as unclosedtags, that Dillo found in the web page.[28] Unlike most browsers, Dillo does not have aquirks mode to improve compatibility with web pages that use invalid HTML. Instead, Dillo processes all web pages according to the publishedweb standards.[29]
In 2003, two Linux enthusiasts successfully ran Dillo on anIntel 486 processor and demonstrated that even with such meager hardware, Dillo could renderHome - BBC News in 10–15 seconds.[30] Furthermore, Dillo can run on a variety ofsoftware platforms, includingLinux,BSD,Solaris,macOS,MS-DOS compatible operating systems,[31] and somehandheld devices.[5] However, Dillo's developers have made little effort to make the browser work onMicrosoft Windows. Arellano Cid stated that Windows goes against Dillo's goal of democratization by artificially increasing hardware requirements and software costs.[32] Nevertheless, Dillo has been reported to work on Windows viaCygwin.[33]
Dillo does not supportJavaScript,Java,Flash,right-to-left text, orcomplex text layout.[22][34] Support forframes is also very limited; Dillo presents a link to each frame to allow the user to view them one at a time.[35]
Dillo-Win32 was a project to port Dillo to Windows which is now defunct.[36]D+ browser or Dplus continues where Dillo-Win32 left off, forked from the final Dillo-Win32 release (3.0p9), it does not attempt to maintain upstream compatibility with Dillo. The most recent version is 0.5b (Oct 15, 2013).[37]
DilloNG is a fork hosted onGitHub which moved the code fromMercurial while adding new features like a speed dial main page, support for opening videos in an external video player[38] and merged some previously published fixes. It was last updated in 2021.[39]
A fork called Dillo-browser[40] 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.[41] It had applied numerous patches from DilloNG and added support for renderingGopher,Gemini and markdown pages, reader mode and extended CSS support.[42] A new Python scripting system was introduced with modules for renderingRSS,EPUB, publicTelegram channel logs and zip file contents.[43] It is still maintained as of 2024.[44]
Reviews of Dillo have praised its extraordinary speed, but noted that this speed comes at a price.[22][45][46] The most visible cost is Dillo's inability to display complex web pages as they were meant to be. A 2008 review byLinux.com commented that Dillo's user interface may be "intimidating" for new users, and pointed out the scarcity ofplug-ins for Dillo.[24] In all, Dillo's global usage share is less than one hundredth of one percent.[47]
Dillo is, however, the browser of choice in several space-consciousLinux distributions, such asDamn Small Linux,[48]Feather Linux,[49]VectorLinux,[50]antiX[45] and Mustang Linux.[45]
