Lightweight, Linux-compatible browser evolves (DesktopLinux.com)

[Posted October 16, 2008 by cook]

DesktopLinux.com takes a look at Dillo 2.0. "The eight-year-old Dillo project has released version 2.0 of its Linux-compatible, ultra-lightweight HTML browser for embedded systems, antiquated PCs, and other low-powered devices. Dillo 2 adds support for anti-aliased text, multiple languages, and tabbed browsing, while improving table rendering and lowering memory usage, says the project."

Lightweight, Linux-compatible browser evolves (DesktopLinux.com)

Posted Oct 17, 2008 12:45 UTC (Fri) by BradReed (subscriber, #5917) [Link] (11 responses)

It's pretty nice for a beta, but at least on my system it is still unusable. Any time I move the mouse over the toolbar, the entire window goes blank except for the icon under the mouse. The page renders text outside the area it should be in, for example on top of a horizontal scrollbar, the status bar area, and the toolbar area. Any time I load a page it loads blank. I have to move the dillo window to get a repaint so I can see the page.

Maybe I'll try CVS, I see 2.1 is there. I have the prerequisite fltk2-r6403.

Lightweight, Linux-compatible browser evolves (DesktopLinux.com)

Posted Oct 17, 2008 20:37 UTC (Fri) by jh33 (guest, #54760) [Link] (6 responses)

Are you running OSX? If yes, you may try to set
the buffered_drawing option in .dillo/dillorc to 0 or 2.
There are still open issues with dillo 2.0 on OSX. The
main development platform is X11 on Linux / *BSD.
Please help improving the situation on OSX by reporting
open issues on dillo-dev@dillo.org.

Lightweight, Linux-compatible browser evolves (DesktopLinux.com)

Posted Oct 17, 2008 21:48 UTC (Fri) by BradReed (subscriber, #5917) [Link] (5 responses)

Nope, not on OSX. I'm running Slackware-current, xorg-server-1.4.2, nvidia-177.78.

buffered_drawing=0|2 Neither make a difference here.

Lightweight, Linux-compatible browser evolves (DesktopLinux.com)

Posted Oct 18, 2008 16:20 UTC (Sat) by jh33 (guest, #54760) [Link] (3 responses)

Hm, on Linux it should work just fine.
Did You compile fltk2 yourself or is there a pre-built package
for Slackware?
In case you compiled it yourself, you might check whether the
test programs in the fltk2 tarball work ok on your system.
Also please verify that You don't have two different versions of
fltk2 installed (e.g. on in /usr and one in /usr/local).
Could you please report back on this issue on the Dillo mailling
list (dillo-dev@dillo.org) so that other developers can help?

Lightweight, Linux-compatible browser evolves (DesktopLinux.com)

Posted Oct 19, 2008 22:01 UTC (Sun) by BradReed (subscriber, #5917) [Link] (2 responses)

I checked several things...
I had dillo 0.8.6 installed (claws-mail uses it as a plugin)
I also had fltk-1.1.7 installed.
I removed them both.
I recompiled fltk2-2.0.x_r6403 myself, then dillo2.
Still the same weird window-turns-invisible when I move the mouse over the toolbar icons.

I'll take this over to the Dillo list.

Lightweight, Linux-compatible browser evolves (DesktopLinux.com)

Posted Oct 20, 2008 19:14 UTC (Mon) by jh33 (guest, #54760) [Link] (1 responses)

Just for the record, it turned out that the --enable-cairo switch
of the fltk2 configure script caused these issues.
So please verify that fltk2 has not been compiled with this option.
You can check this be running

fltk2-config --ldflags | grep cairo

there should be no output.

Lightweight, Linux-compatible browser evolves (DesktopLinux.com)

Posted Oct 20, 2008 20:14 UTC (Mon) by BradReed (subscriber, #5917) [Link]

I had the --enable-cairo configure option set. Thanks for the heads up.
Will re-build without it.

Lightweight, Linux-compatible browser evolves (DesktopLinux.com)

Posted Oct 18, 2008 16:51 UTC (Sat) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

Are other programs exhibiting such problems, and are you running compiz? There seems to be a compiz-nvidia-xdamage interaction that causes similar problems (that I too have run into). The problem is discussed here. A workaround for compiz suggested here (disable --loose-bindings for compiz) fixed it for me.

If you're not using compiz, perhaps fltk or some other library used by dillo suffers the same problem. Do you use other fltk programs?

Lightweight, Linux-compatible browser evolves (DesktopLinux.com)

Posted Oct 18, 2008 9:34 UTC (Sat) by nano (guest, #54272) [Link] (2 responses)

> Any time I move the mouse over the toolbar, the entire window goes blank
> except for the icon under the mouse.

I get similar erratic behaviour, too (using a somewhat older version of fltk2). If I start dillo 2.0 from a terminal window, I get the following error message:

XOpenIM() failed

Lightweight, Linux-compatible browser evolves (DesktopLinux.com)

Posted Oct 18, 2008 16:21 UTC (Sat) by jh33 (guest, #54760) [Link] (1 responses)

What system do You have (OS, distribution, 32bit/64bit, graphics card)?

Lightweight, Linux-compatible browser evolves (DesktopLinux.com)

Posted Oct 18, 2008 21:57 UTC (Sat) by nano (guest, #54272) [Link]

Thanks for your help offer, but the window redrawing problem (when moving mouse pointer over dillo's toolbar) disappeared after I upgraded fltk from version 2.0.x-r6159 to 2.0.x-r6403. I still get the "XOpenIM() failed" message when I start dillo 2.0 from a terminal window.

My system is Linux, 32bit, and I'm using the proprietary nvidia driver.

Lightweight, Linux-compatible browser evolves (DesktopLinux.com)

Posted Oct 20, 2008 21:31 UTC (Mon) by BradReed (subscriber, #5917) [Link]

Thanks to jh33's help, I have to say Dillo2 is working well for me.

Don't enable cairo support in the fltk2 library. It seems to not be ready for prime time. With a rebuilt fltk. Dillo2 is working great.

None of the issues I raised are still apparent.

Good Job Dillo Team!

Lightweight, Linux-compatible browser evolves (DesktopLinux.com)

Posted Oct 20, 2008 5:37 UTC (Mon) by andikleen2 (guest, #52506) [Link]

links -g is also a pretty good light-weight alternative for a graphical
browser. I often use it when in a hurry.

-g turns on graphical mode and I haven't found many sites that don't work.

Only trick is to use the correct links, you need the original,
not elinks what some distributions ship. The links in opensuse
works at least.