Comparison of lightweight web browsers

Last updated

A lightweight web browser is a web browser that sacrifices some of the features of a mainstream web browser in order to reduce the consumption of system resources, and especially to minimize the memory footprint. [1] [2] [3]

Contents

The tables below compare notable lightweight web browsers. Several of them use a common layout engine, but each has a unique combination of features and a potential niche. The minimal user interface in surf, for example, does not have tabs, [4] whereas xombrero can be driven with vi-like keyboard commands. [5]

Four of the browsers compared—Lynx, w3m, Links, and ELinks—are designed for text mode, and can function in a terminal emulator. Eww is limited to working within Emacs. Links 2 has both a text-based user interface and a graphical user interface. w3m is, in addition to being a web browser, also a terminal pager. [6]

Overview

Browser Developers Status Engine Programming languages License Latest release
VersionDate
Arora Benjamin C. Meyer et al. [7] Discontinued QtWebKit [8] C++ GPL-2.0-or-later 0.11.0 [9]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg 2010-09-27
Dillo Jorge Arellano Cid et al.ActiveDillo C, C++ GPL-3.0-or-later 3.0.5 [10]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg 2015-06-30
ELinks Petr Baudiš, Jonas Fonseca, et al.ActiveLinks C, C++ GPL-2.0-only 0.16.1.1 [11]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg 2023-05-01
Eww Lars Magne IngebrigtsenActive GNU Emacs libraries Emacs Lisp GPL-3.0-or-later
Falkon (QupZilla)David RoscaActive QtWebKit / Qt WebEngine C++ GPL-3.0-or-later 23.04.0 [12]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg 2023-04-21
hv3 Dan Kennedy & teamDiscontinued Tkhtml Tcl GPL
K-Meleon Christophe Thibault et al.Active Gecko / Goanna (fork) C++ GPL
Links Mikuláš Patočka, Twibright Labs, et al.ActiveLinks C GPL-2.0-or-later 2.29 [13]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg 2023-03-21
Lynx Lou Montulli, Thomas Dickey, et al.Active libwww derivative C (ISO C) GPL-2.0-only 2.8.9rel.1 [14]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg 2018-07-08
NetSurf John-Mark Bell, Michael Drake, et al. [15] ActiveNetSurf C (ANSI C) GPL-2.0-only 3.10 [16]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg 2020-05-24
Otter Browser Michał Dutkiewicz [17] Active QtWebKit / Qt WebEngine C++ GPL-3.0-or-later 1.0.03 [18]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg 2022-02-22
QtWeb LogicWare; LSoft Technologies [19] Unmaintained QtWebKit C++ GPL-2.0-or-later 3.8.5 [20]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg 2013-09-09
qutebrowser Florian Bruhin et al.Active [21] QtWebKit / Qt WebEngine [22] Python3 GPL-3.0-or-later 3.0.0 [23]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg 2023-08-18
rekonq Andrea Diamantini et al.Discontinued QtWebKit [8] C++ GPLv3 2.4.2 [24]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg 2014-01-12
surf Christoph Lohmann et al.Active WebKitGTK C MIT 2.1 [25]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg 2021-05-08
uzbl Dieter Plaetinck et al.Discontinued WebKitGTK C, Python GPL-3.0-only 0.9.1 [26]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg 2016-10-27
w3m Akinori Ito et al.Unmaintainedw3m C MIT 0.5.3 [27]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg 2011-01-15
WebPositive Andrea Anzani, Ryan Leavengood, et al.Active HaikuWebkit C++ MIT 1.3-alpha [28]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg 2021-08-01
xombrero Marco Peerboom et al.Discontinued WebKitGTK C, JavaScript ISC 1.6.4 [29]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg 2015-02-17

Operating system support

Browser BSD Haiku Linux macOS OpenIndiana OS/2 QNX RISC OS Windows Android
Arora YesYesYesYesYes [30] YesNoNoYes
Dillo YesNoYesYesYes [31] NoNoYes [31] Cygwin [31] [32]
ELinks Yes [33] ?Yes [33] Yes [33] Yes [33] Yes [33] No [33] Dropped [33] ?
Falkon (QupZilla)Dropped [34] [35] Yes [34] [35] Yes [34] [35] Dropped [34] [35] NoDropped [34] [35] NoNoYes [34] [35]
K-Meleon Wine No Wine [36] Wine NoNoNoNoYes
Links UnofficialNoYesUnofficial?YesNoNoYes
Lynx YesYesYesYesYesYesYesYes [37] [38] Yes
NetSurf Yes [39] Yes [40] Yes [39] Yes [39] Yes [39] No?Yes [41] Yes [42]
Otter Browser Yes [43] Unofficial [44] Yes [43] Yes [43] NoNoNoNoYes
QtWeb YesUnofficial [45] YesYesUnofficial [lower-roman 1] NoNoNoYes
qutebrowser Yes?YesYes????Yes
rekonq YesNoYesNoUnofficial [lower-roman 1] NoNoNoInactive [lower-roman 2]
surf YesNoYes????NoNo
uzbl ??YesYes?????
w3m UnofficialUnofficialYesUnofficialUnofficialInactiveNoNo Cygwin
WebPositive NoYesNoNoNoNoNoNoNo
xombrero YesNoYesYesYesNoNoNoYes
Notes
  1. 1 2 Must be built from source code; requires a compatible version of Qt.
  2. ↑ rekonq v1.1 for Windows was published in September 2012. As of June 2014, it is the only published version for Windows. [46]

Features

Test scores reflect the version of the browser engine in use. Generally, a lower score indicates an older version of the browser engine.

Image formatsAdvancedTest scoresPlug-in APIs
Browser GIF, JPEG, PNG WebP JavaScript Frames Acid3 HTML5test Netscape Pepper
Arora YesNoYesYes 100/100 [lower-roman 1] 359/550 [47] No [lower-roman 2] No
Dillo YesNoNoPartial— [lower-roman 3] — [lower-roman 3] NoNo
ELinks NoNoPartial [lower-roman 4] Partial— [lower-roman 3] — [lower-roman 3] NoNo
Falkon (QupZilla)YesYesYesYes 100/100 [lower-roman 1] 497/550 [49] PartialPartial
K-Meleon YesNoYesYes 100/100 [lower-roman 1] 416/555 [50] Partial [51] No
Links Yes [lower-roman 5] YesNo [lower-roman 6] Partial— [lower-roman 3] — [lower-roman 3] NoNo
Lynx NoNoNoPartial— [lower-roman 3] — [lower-roman 3] NoNo
NetSurf Yes [53] YesPartial [54] Yes— [lower-roman 3] — [lower-roman 3] No [55] No
Otter Browser YesYesYesYes 100/100 370/550 [56] YesNo
QtWeb YesNoYesYes 100/100 [lower-roman 1] [lower-roman 7] 234/550 [57] No [lower-roman 2] No
qutebrowser YesYesYesYes99/100[ citation needed ]521/550NoNo
rekonq YesNoYesYes 100/100 [lower-roman 1] 385/555 [58] No [lower-roman 2] Partial [59]
surf YesYes [lower-roman 8] YesYes 100/100 [lower-roman 1] 385/500 [61] Yes?
uzbl YesYesYesYes 98/100 461/500 Yes?
w3m Yes [62] NoNo [63] Yes— [lower-roman 3] — [lower-roman 3] NoNo
WebPositive YesNoYesYes 98/100 [lower-roman 1] 358/500 [64] NoNo
xombrero YesYes [lower-roman 8] YesYes 100/100 385/500 [65] Yes?
Notes
  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Some tests take too much time to complete.
  2. 1 2 3 NPAPI is ported to QtWebKit, but is not implemented in this browser.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 The test requires JavaScript, which is not sufficiently supported by this browser.
  4. ↑ ELinks implements Mozilla's SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine. [48]
  5. ↑ Only Links 2 supports graphics.
  6. ↑ JavaScript support was removed in 2007 (in release 2.1pre29). [52]
  7. ↑ The final state does not match the reference rendering.
  8. 1 2 WebP is supported via the WebKitGTK browser engine. [60]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">K-Meleon</span> Lightweight web browser for Microsoft Windows

K-Meleon is a free and open-source, lightweight web browser for Microsoft Windows operating systems. Unlike cross-platform browsers, it uses the native Windows API to create its user interface. Early versions of K-Meleon render web pages with Gecko, Mozilla's browser layout engine, which Mozilla's browser Firefox and its email client Thunderbird also use. K-Meleon became a popular Windows browser and was available as an optional default browser in Europe via BrowserChoice.eu. K-Meleon continued to use Gecko for several years after Mozilla deprecated embedding it. Current versions of K-Meleon use the Goanna layout engine, which is a fork of Gecko that was created for the browser Pale Moon.

Gecko is a browser engine developed by Mozilla. It is used in the Firefox browser, the Thunderbird email client, and many other projects.

A browser engine is a core software component of every major web browser. The primary job of a browser engine is to transform HTML documents and other resources of a web page into an interactive visual representation on a user's device.

Cross Platform Component Object Model (XPCOM) is a cross-platform component model from Mozilla. It is similar to Microsoft Component Object Model (COM) and Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA). It features multiple language bindings and interface description language (IDL) descriptions; thus programmers can plug their custom functions into the framework and connect it with other components.

In computing, cross-platform software is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software requires a separate build for each platform, but some can be directly run on any platform without special preparation, being written in an interpreted language or compiled to portable bytecode for which the interpreters or run-time packages are common or standard components of all supported platforms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">KHTML</span> Discontinued web browser engine

KHTML is a discontinued browser engine that was developed by the KDE project. It originated as the engine of the Konqueror browser in the late 1990s, but active development ceased in 2016. It was officially discontinued in 2023.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Camino (web browser)</span> Discontinued open-source web browser

Camino is a discontinued free, open source, GUI-based Web browser based on Mozilla's Gecko layout engine and specifically designed for the OS X operating system. In place of an XUL-based user interface used by most Mozilla-based applications, Camino used Mac-native Cocoa APIs. On May 30, 2013, the Camino Project announced that the browser is no longer being developed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNOME Web</span> Free and open-source web browser for Unix-like systems

GNOME Web, called Epiphany until 2012 and still known by that code name, is a free and open-source web browser based on the GTK port of Apple's WebKit rendering engine, called WebKitGTK. It is developed by the GNOME project for Unix-like systems. It is the default and official web browser of GNOME, and part of the GNOME Core Applications.

In computing, the User-Agent header is an HTTP header intended to identify the user agent responsible for making a given HTTP request. Whereas the character sequence User-Agent comprises the name of the header itself, the header value that a given user agent uses to identify itself is colloquially known as its user agent string. The user agent for the operator of a computer used to access the Web has encoded within the rules that govern its behavior the knowledge of how to negotiate its half of a request-response transaction; the user agent thus plays the role of the client in a client–server system. Often considered useful in networks is the ability to identify and distinguish the software facilitating a network session. For this reason, the User-Agent HTTP header exists to identify the client software to the responding server.

WebKit is a browser engine developed by Apple and primarily used in its Safari web browser, as well as all web browsers on iOS and iPadOS. WebKit is also used by the PlayStation consoles beginning from the PS3, the Tizen mobile operating systems, the Amazon Kindle e-book reader, Nintendo consoles beginning from the 3DS Internet Browser, and the discontinued BlackBerry Browser. WebKit's C++ application programming interface (API) provides a set of classes to display Web content in windows, and implements browser features such as following links when clicked by the user, managing a back-forward list, and managing a history of pages recently visited.

This article compares browser engines, especially actively-developed ones.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NetSurf</span> Web browser

NetSurf is an open-source web browser which uses its own layout engine. Its design goal is to be lightweight and portable. NetSurf provides features including tabbed browsing, bookmarks and page thumbnailing.

This is a timeline of web browsers from 1990 to the present. Prior to browsers, many technologies and systems existed for information viewing and transmission. For an in-depth history of earlier web browsers, see the web browser article.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LXDE</span> Lightweight desktop environment for Linux and BSD

LXDE is a free desktop environment with comparatively low resource requirements. This makes it especially suitable for use on older or resource-constrained personal computers such as netbooks or system on a chip computers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Midori (web browser)</span> Free and open-source web browser

Midori is a free and open-source web browser. In 2019, the Midori project merged with the Astian Foundation, then Midori was revamped entirely, switching from WebKitGTK to using Electron.

Blink is a browser engine developed as part of the Chromium project with contributions from Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Opera Software, Adobe, Intel, IBM, Samsung, and others. It was first announced in April 2013.

qutebrowser Free keyboard-focused web browser with a minimal GUI

qutebrowser is a QTwebengine-web browser for Linux, Windows, and macOS operating systems with Vim-style key bindings and a minimal GUI. It is keyboard-driven and is inspired by similar software such as Vimperator and dwb. It uses DuckDuckGo as the default search engine. qutebrowser is included in the native repositories of Linux distributions such as Fedora and Arch Linux. qutebrowser is developed by Florian Bruhin, for which he received a CH Open Source award in 2016.

References

  1. ↑ Arora, Himanshu (6 November 2013). "5 lesser-known browsers: Free, lightweight and low-maintenance". Computerworld . International Data Group. Retrieved 18 June 2014.
  2. ↑ Klimkiewicz, Kamil (18 January 2003). "Lightweight Web Browsers". Freecode . Dice Holdings. Retrieved 18 June 2014.
  3. ↑ Arimbra, Krishnan (16 July 2013). "Memory usage of the browsers – Lightest browser". Geekiest.Net. Retrieved 18 June 2014.
  4. ↑ "surf" . Retrieved 30 August 2014.
  5. ↑ Peereboom, Marco; Hill, David; et al. (1 March 2012). "xombrero wiki § Quick-Start Tutorial". Conformal Systems. Archived from the original on 28 September 2014. Retrieved 30 August 2014.
  6. ↑ Ito, Akinori. "w3m". w3m.sourceforge.net. Retrieved 30 August 2014.
  7. ↑ Meyer, Benjamin (2 October 2009). "Arora 0.10.0!". Arora Development. Archived from the original on 11 November 2013. Retrieved 29 August 2014.
  8. 1 2 Poulain, Benjamin; et al. (10 May 2010). "Applications Using QtWebKit". Qt Wiki. Qt Project Hosting. Archived from the original on 15 April 2013. Retrieved 21 June 2014.
  9. ↑ "Release 0.11.0". 27 September 2010. Retrieved 19 July 2018.
  10. ↑ "ChangeLog". 30 June 2015. Archived from the original on 15 March 2022.
  11. ↑ "v0.16.1.1". 1 May 2023. Retrieved 31 May 2023.
  12. ↑ "Falkon 23.04.0 released Apr 21, 2023". 21 April 2023. Retrieved 11 July 2023.
  13. ↑ "ChangeLog".
  14. ↑ "Lynx2.8.9" . Retrieved 9 December 2018.
  15. ↑ "The NetSurf Developers". netsurf-browser.org. Retrieved 26 August 2014.
  16. ↑ "NetSurf 3.10 released". 24 May 2020. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
  17. ↑ "Otter Browser". otter-browser.org. Retrieved 11 April 2017.
  18. ↑ "Releases v1.0.03".
  19. ↑ "About QtWeb". QtWeb.NET. Retrieved 29 August 2014.
  20. ↑ "Qt Web Browser".
  21. ↑ "qutebrowser/qutebrowser". GitHub. Retrieved 23 May 2018.
  22. ↑ "qutebrowser - ArchWiki". wiki.archlinux.org. Retrieved 23 May 2018.
  23. ↑ "Release 3.0.0". 18 August 2023. Retrieved 19 August 2023.
  24. ↑ "rekonq 2.4.2". 12 January 2014.
  25. ↑ "surf".
  26. ↑ "Release 0.9.1". 27 October 2016. Retrieved 21 June 2018.
  27. ↑ "w3m Files".
  28. ↑ "WebPositive: update version to 1.3". 1 August 2021.
  29. ↑ "XOMBRERO_1_6_4" . Retrieved 31 January 2018.
  30. ↑ "Spec Files Extra Repository". OpenIndiana Wiki. 2011. Archived from the original on 27 November 2020. Retrieved 21 June 2014.
  31. 1 2 3 "Dillo Web Browser Compatibility". Dillo.org. Archived from the original on 24 August 2011. Retrieved 7 July 2014.
  32. ↑ Vibber, Kelson (28 April 2005). "Installing Dillo on Cygwin". Hyperborea. Archived from the original on 4 June 2011. Retrieved 7 July 2014.
  33. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Qupzilla - Lightweight multiplatform browser: Download". Qupzilla.com. Retrieved 13 April 2018.
  34. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Download - Falkon". falkon.org. Retrieved 13 April 2018.
  35. ↑ "UKmeleon: Unofficial K-Meleon Distributions". kmeleonbrowser.org. 26 March 2011. Retrieved 2017-02-14.
  36. ↑ "Nettle". nettle.sourceforge.net. Retrieved 26 August 2014.
  37. ↑ "New Telnet Client and Web Browser for RISC OS". My RISC OS. 2 September 2001. Archived from the original on 22 May 2008. Retrieved 26 August 2014.
  38. 1 2 3 4 "NetSurf | GTK Downloads". netsurf-browser.org. Retrieved 23 March 2021.
  39. ↑ "NetSurf | BeOS Downloads". netsurf-browser.org. Retrieved 23 March 2021.
  40. ↑ "NetSurf | RISC OS Downloads". netsurf-browser.org. Retrieved 23 March 2021.
  41. ↑ "NetSurf | Windows Downloads". netsurf-browser.org. Retrieved 23 March 2021.
  42. 1 2 3 "OtterBrowser/otter-browser". GitHub. Retrieved 2017-04-11.
  43. ↑ "Otter browser: new recipe by miqlas · Pull Request #1006 · haikuports/haikuports". GitHub. Retrieved 2017-04-11.
  44. ↑ "QtWeb - Web Browser". Haikuware. 31 May 2013. Archived from the original on 30 August 2014. Retrieved 30 August 2014.
  45. ↑ Papp, Laszlo (24 September 2012). "Randa: Rekonq installer for Windows". KDE (Laszlo Papp's blog). Retrieved 21 June 2014.
  46. ↑ "HTML5test results for: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.21 (KHTML, like Gecko) Arora/0.11.0 Safari/537.21". HTML5test.com. Retrieved 22 July 2014.
  47. ↑ Inge Bolso, Erik (8 March 2005). "2005 Text Mode Browser Roundup". Linux Journal . Retrieved 30 August 2014.
  48. ↑ "HTML5test results for: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) QupZilla/2.1.99 Safari/537.36". HTML5test.com. Retrieved 21 February 2017.
  49. ↑ "HTML5test - How well does your browser support HTML5?". html5test.com. Retrieved 23 May 2018.
  50. ↑ "ThirdPartyPlugins". kmeleonbrowser.org. Retrieved 28 July 2014.
  51. ↑ "Links user documentation" . Retrieved 14 March 2022.
  52. ↑ Auza, Jun (27 June 2009). "5 Free and Open Source Web Browsers That You May Have Never Heard Of" . Retrieved 26 June 2014.
  53. ↑ "User Information".
  54. ↑ "0001896: NPAPI plugin support". NetSurf Bug Report System. 22 October 2010. Retrieved 14 August 2014.
  55. ↑ "HTML5test results for: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/602.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Otter/0.9.91". HTML5test.com. Retrieved 11 April 2017.
  56. ↑ "HTML5test results for: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux; en-GB) AppleWebKit/534.34 (KHTML, like Gecko) QtWeb Internet Browser/3.8.5". HTML5test.com. Retrieved 22 July 2014.
  57. ↑ "HTML5test results for: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.21 (KHTML, like Gecko) rekonq/2.4.2 Safari/537.21". HTML5test.com. Retrieved 22 July 2014.
  58. ↑ Howell, Dean (22 May 2013). "ReKonq Gaining Chrome Extension Support, Still Sponsored By Blue Systems". The Powerbase. Archived from the original on 10 June 2013. Retrieved 28 July 2014.
  59. ↑ Jáquez, Víctor (31 December 2013). "Boosting WebKitGTK+ compilation for armhf with icecream". Herostratus’ legacy. Igalia . Retrieved 29 July 2014.
  60. ↑ "HTML5test results for: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Unix; en-US) AppleWebKit/537.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/24.0.1295.0 Safari/537.15 Surf/0.6". HTML5test.com. Retrieved 13 August 2014.
  61. ↑ Hoffman, Chris (23 January 2012). "How to Browse From the Linux Terminal With W3M". How-To Geek. How-To Geek, LLC. Retrieved 30 August 2014.
  62. ↑ "w3m man page". GitHub. Retrieved 14 March 2022.
  63. ↑ "HTML5test results for: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Haiku R1 x86) AppleWebKit/606.1.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) WebPositive/1.2 Version/11.1 Safari/606.1.4". HTML5test.com. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  64. ↑ "HTML5test results for: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/538.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/538.15 Version/6.0". HTML5test.com. Retrieved 28 July 2014.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.