NetSurf, a multi-platform web browser

by butz • 6 years ago

202 100 6 years ago

ok... i'll bite... how does this compare to chrome in terms of rendering and compatibility? i don't see this thing listed on caniuse.com.

sprash• 6 years ago

It does not even pass the ACID2 test. It is however the best independently developed browser engine out there. If you want an alternative to Webkit and whatever Firefox uses, Netsurf is the only viable option at the moment.

ori_b• 6 years ago

Basically, it's the only browser out there even trying to handle modern sites that's not mostly funded by Google or Apple (Firefox revenue is mostly coming from Google, and there's Safari), and which runs on rarer platforms.

It's still relatively big, because web standards are incredibly complicated, but it's almost tractable.

If you care about browser diversity, it's important.

riquito• 6 years ago

It does not even pass the ACID2 test. It is however the best independently developed browser engine out there

Flow browser passes ACID3 [1], closed source but independent (afaik, dont't really know much about it)

Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23508979

[1] https://www.ekioh.com/devblog/acid/

Santosh83• 6 years ago

Have a look here (but page not updated in years apparently, so its compatibility maybe better in reality)

http://www.netsurf-browser.org/documentation/progress.html

The general impression I get is that it is not bad when it comes to HTML and CSS but not even close for Javascript (disabled by default because of minimal support apparently), so comparing this with Chrome is like apples to oranges, given the way the modern Web is going.

userbinator5• 6 years ago

In other words, HTML4 and CSS2.

As a counterpoint, when you come across a site which should but doesn't work in one of these minimal browsers, maybe the blame should be put on the site for using needless complexity instead of the browser for not implementing it.

justapassenger• 6 years ago

It's good at old-school "websites". 0 support for modern web, aka "webapps".

tomphoolery• 6 years ago

what in the 1993 is this

jeppesen-io2• 6 years ago

no kidding - looks like even the web server is old too. Seems to be Cherokee, a project which last stable release was 6 years ago

miles• 6 years ago

Cherokee was updated 17 days ago:

https://github.com/cherokee/webserver/commits/master

bandrami• 6 years ago

Cherokee, a project which last stable release was 6 years ago

Its last CVE was 10 years ago[1].

It's not actually necessary for software to change if it already does what you want it to.

1: https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-1005...

userbinator5• 6 years ago

...and that's a good thing.

The utter waste of resources that is the mindless trendchasing of the "modern web" is in desperate need of some strong opposition.

zzo38computer2• 6 years ago

I agree. And there are more problems than waste of resources, although that is one of them.

dddbbb• 6 years ago

I noticed that in the screenshots section[1], the Linux screenshots for the Netsurf site and Wikipedia are from this year, but the BBC one is from 2011. How does the current BBC site fare?

[1] -- https://www.netsurf-browser.org/about/screenshots/

ddevault• 6 years ago

Front page: https://l.sr.ht/RfrR.png

Reading an article: https://l.sr.ht/ZSwt.png

anthk2• 6 years ago

Netsurf was a bit unstable and prone to lock compared to Dillo or Links+.

Also, the duktape JS capabilities are behind even edbrowse.

forgotmypw17• 6 years ago

netsurf is a great browser, i test with it regularly, and it,s a pleasure to both use and develop for.

mouldysammich• 6 years ago

I've played around with NetSurf a little for fun recently. It performed surprisingly well on a few of the sites i use. old.reddit, hackernews both rendered ok with some issues, also miniflux which i use for rss reading worked well too.

I think its a very cool and admirable project

james412• 6 years ago

I was able to download and build the Gtk3 version of this in under 5 minutes. For compactness alone, gets my seal of approval. I'm posting this comment from NetSurf, HN works fine.

unicornporn• 6 years ago

Does it block ads?

Asking because: DNS-level adblocking is stupid.

CyberDildonics• 6 years ago

DNS level adblocking is fantastic, especially since it can be done network wide so easily and used as an extra layer of ad filtering.

1vuio0pswjnm77• 6 years ago

Can you elaborate?

iforgotpassword2• 6 years ago

I'll try this tomorrow. The old opera presto also built in under five minutes and was in general very lean, but crashes on most modern JavaScript heavy sites. I still sometimes wonder where it would be today if they hadn't abandoned it or properly made it open source at least.

userbinator5• 6 years ago

I remember looking at this and Dillo a while ago, and while it definitely looked more polished than Dillo, I recall downloading the Windows binary and it crashing the first time I ran it - not a good start. On the other hand, Dillo ran immediately and was at least usable. Maybe it's time to try it again, especially now that there are even fewer independent browsers...

livre2• 6 years ago

The Windows binary doesn't crash anymore, I have it installed and use it occasionally. I also use it on my very low end Linux laptop and it works wonderfully for anything that doesn't require JavaScript.

Edit: just a warning, the Windows version has problems with the <select> element, it won't display the options when you click it.

pixxel• 6 years ago

You have discovered websites that don’t demand JS! Seriously though I have JS disabled (FireFox ext. to turn back on per site) and the amount of broken or blank pages is saddening.

chriswarbo• 6 years ago

Dillo is faster whilst NetSurf has better CSS support. For text- and table-heavy sites Dillo can be nicer to use (since everything has a uniform look and feel); for sites which rely on CSS for usability then NetSurf is nicer to use (e.g. headers and sidebars packed with nested mouse-over menus, which Dillo and text-mode browsers tend to render as a gigantic column of cruft above the actual content).

Klonoar• 6 years ago

For all that this browser lacks, I think it's simple enough to build that it's been the "first" browser on a few alternative/hobby OS's, no?

e.g, Redox, maybe Haiku pre-WebKit port? Haiku I could easily be misremembering as there was probably a BeOS browser that ran, albeit outdated...

tl;dr I appreciate the simplicity of it in contrast to modern browsers.

unixhero2• 6 years ago

I wonder if it would build to MSDOS

Jaruzel• 6 years ago

Not a silly question. However, (at a guess) I reckon a lot of the underlying net code is probably POSIX based, which MS-DOS is not.

I notice there's a framebuffer version, so building a nano-linux distro that boots instantly into that shouldn't be that hard.

unixhero2• 6 years ago

So there's the framebuffer code that's needed and then it's netcode.

So for the framebuffer code, maybe an MSDOS UNIVBE wrapper could be used.

For netcode, I have no idea, but a wrapper for POSIX calls must surely exist there also.

Anyyways. I guess the userbase would be pretty much nil, for this as alternatives do exist on DOS :)

paulie_a2• 6 years ago

Wasn't that the name of some shitty product from the 90s?

ajxs2• 6 years ago

I've been using NetSurf for a long time now on my Thinkpad when I'm traveling. If I only need to check webmail and read articles NetSurf suffices perfectly, without draining as much battery power as a regular browser.

dang• 6 years ago

If curious see also

2018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18692837

2015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10417807

2010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1913332

shock• 6 years ago

Is there any browser that implements container tabs à la Firefox?

buzzert• 6 years ago

If anyone here is running Linux and is now researching a "backup plan" in case Firefox pivots, I would highly recommend Epiphany (now called GNOME Web): https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Web

silisili• 6 years ago

Or perhaps Konqueror? Seems apt seeing that KDE wrote what became WebKit.

LeoPanthera2• 6 years ago

"Falkon" is the current KDE web browser. It used to be called QupZilla.

TedDoesntTalk• 6 years ago

Firefox pivots

Pivots to what?

bickeringyokel• 6 years ago

I can only guess they mean if they pivot to be less privacy focused.

noah_buddy• 6 years ago

There were massive layoffs today apparently with discussion of finding better ways to make money. Some are taking it as a sign of Firefox potentially deciding to monetize data (and, thus, deincentivize privacy focus internally). That might be what OP is talking about.

LeoPanthera2• 6 years ago

Gnome Web (for Gnome), Falkon (for KDE), and Safari (for macOS) are really underrated browsers. It's true that they all use the WebKit engine, so it doesn't exactly promote a variety of engines, but at least none of them have any "monetization" features built in.

dependenttypes3• 6 years ago

There are also surf https://surf.suckless.org/ and qutebrowser https://qutebrowser.org/, both based on webkit.

imiric• 6 years ago

I use my own fork of surf daily, but am having to fallback to mainstream browsers quite often these days as sites stop working on it or it's unusably slow. Slack no longer works, GitHub breaks occasionally, etc.

Is there a well-maintained fork that fixes these issues? The main repo[1] hasn't seen updates in over a year now. I read that development slowed down after the main maintainer left suckless, but I'm hoping the community will pick it up. It's an excellent minimal browser.

[1] https://git.suckless.org/surf/

dependenttypes3• 6 years ago

There is also badwolf https://hacktivis.me/projects/badwolf (again based on webkit)

The-Compiler2• 6 years ago

qutebrowser uses QtWebEngine by default, which is based on Chromium.

You can use it with QtWebKit instead, but given that's based on a 2016 WebKit with no process isolation or sandboxing, I wouldn't recommend it.

RandomWorker• 6 years ago

I’m surprised that no one has mentioned Opera yet.

wwwwwwwww2• 6 years ago

Opera is now Chinese owned.

But the former Opera devs started Vivaldi some years ago. And it's really great.

anthk2• 6 years ago

Icecat is better. Epiphany is pretty slow and huge, and it depends on a lot of libraries.

niutech• 6 years ago

There is also a cross-platform Otter Browser (https://otter-browser.org) based on WebKit.

zzo38computer2• 6 years ago

It is many good idea, but should need a better customization, and perhaps better keyboard commands, Xaw widgets, bitmap fonts, etc. Support specifying pipes and stuff for files like Heirloom-mailx does. What we need is the browser that you have enough ropes to hang yourself and also a few more just in case, and NetSurf may be the one to base it from. Make it for the user first; assume any file received is potentially hostile (whether or not the connection is secure; a secure connection merely prevents spies from tampering with it, it does not prevent the server operator from tampering with it!). Support specifying scripts that the user can replace with their own implementaiton; this would ensure that the user can alter any document received, and would even make it more efficient too since the user's implementation need not be written in an interpreted programming language and need not be sandboxed as much either.

jraph2• 6 years ago

I find NetSurf's source code beautiful and quite easy to read and follow, and straightforward. I am impressed. It's like the pure version of "makes sense". It's also split into independent libraries that can be used outside of NetSurf, which make them useful on their own, and NetSurf very modular. If I had to implement something that requires a feature implemented in a browser, I'd seriously consider one of them. Especially their CSS parser and engine.

I really recommand to have a look at the code.

userbinator5• 6 years ago

To be honest, I wouldn't exactly call this "beautiful"...

https://source.netsurf-browser.org/libdom.git/tree/src/core/...

https://source.netsurf-browser.org/libcss.git/tree/src/parse...

Looks like the authors have a severe case of goto-phobia that causes a quadratic explosion of copy-pasted code in the error-return paths. Some of the files also feel like they have been translated into C from C++ or some other OO language by some automated tool, resulting in some very long "namespaced"-looking identifiers.

Then again, I don't think Firefox or WebKit code is that much better either, so my impression of this codebase is neither great nor horrible. As "beautiful" is subjective, to give a reference for what I'd consider beautiful, look at BSD or early UNIX.

Hello71• 6 years ago

there are other "C++ programmer trying to write C" anti-patterns, such as typedefed structs and one "class" per file, leading to terrible performance without LTO. stuff like https://source.netsurf-browser.org/libdom.git/tree/src/core/... has more signs of excessive C++ love: "vtable", "protected", etc. I don't know that these things are inherently bad, but they certainly don't exist in C.

ajxs2• 6 years ago

I agree with the above sentiment regarding the 'gotophobia'. Still, at a glance it looks like a codebase where lots of care and diligence has been taken in documentation and code presentation.

tomcam• 6 years ago

I also find the code to be clear and easy to read. Looking at the samples you provided, I feel like I could step right in and work on this project with minimal cognitive load. I actually like the style.

Thorham• 6 years ago

That first one is madness! That's not even goto-phobia, that's just not knowing what arrays and loops are.

The third one is true goto-phobia of course. Crazy how people can't see the mess they make by avoiding goto for the sake of avoiding goto.

catsarebetter• 6 years ago

Taking a look, it's been a while since I've heard someone speak that highly about any source code, I admit that alone makes me very intrigued

jraph2• 6 years ago

I don't see many people speaking about code they find good. I'd appreciate this. Pointing out bad code is usual, but good ones?

My comment may seem exagerated but that retranscribes very well how I felt when I discovered this code. Often, I'm overwhelmed by the code tree of medium to big-sized projects, with many abstractions and complicated folder structures. This is a browser and yet it was easy to figure out where to find the parts I was interested in and to understand what the code did.

Now, one can always find problems and discuss about the lack of gotos or arrays, but if as a complete outsider I can navigate and understand the code, and even feel that I could hack it quite easily with no documentation, something must be right with it.

I'm not in any way connected to the project, I don't even use this browser (sadly, it is too impractical).

interfixus2• 6 years ago

So obviously caters to what the web once was and should have stayed, not to the metastasizing idiocy it has become.

I'm ancient enough to remember when mainstream browsers came in packages of a few megabytes and got us through the day just fine with a featureset less than (or at the very most equal to) the current state of NetSurf. In a somewhat more rational world there would be massive popular pressure for this to remain the case.

Yes, sites break in NetSurf. This is squarely their own fault for not providing civilized degradation. Although it certainly wouldn't go amiss if the NetSurf engine encorporated the worthwhile elements of CSS 3, basically meaning Grid and possibly Flexbox.

nyanpasu64• 6 years ago

Not sure when CSS variables were added, but I'd consider them more friendly to user customization than preprocessors that inline the same font stack 20 times in autogenerated class names (looking at medium.com), requiring you to override the font stack 20 times.

interfixus2• 6 years ago

Granted. Lack of variables was always among the more serious defects of the confusion that is CSS.

thom• 6 years ago

Also might be of interest that this can be run in a framebuffer. Sometimes I work in a virtual console to avoid distractions but when Emacs’ built in web browser doesn’t serve a purpose, I’ll open NetSurf in another console, and it’s fine for almost all “search for errors or docs” workflows.

steveharman• 6 years ago

Do some pages on the website need a little love for the copyright date?

fouric• 6 years ago

Is the NetSurf rendering engine multi-core/multi-thread? It's not clear from the homepage, which makes me think that it's single-core only.

NetSurf, a multi-platform web browser

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