Dillo is a minimalistic

web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

particularly intended for older or slower computers and

embedded system An embedded system is a specialized computer system—a combination of a computer processor, computer memory, and input/output peripheral devices—that has a dedicated function within a larger mechanical or electronic system. It is e ...

s. It supports only plain

HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...

XHTML Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) is part of the family of XML markup languages which mirrors or extends versions of the widely used HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the language in which Web pages are formulated. While HTML, pr ...

(with CSS rendering) and images over

HTTP HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, wher ...

and

HTTPS Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is an extension of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). It uses encryption for secure communication over a computer network, and is widely used on the Internet. In HTTPS, the communication protoc ...

; scripting is ignored entirely. Current versions of Dillo can run on

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginni ...

OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

IRIX IRIX (, ) is a discontinued operating system developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) to run on the company's proprietary MIPS architecture, MIPS workstations and servers. It is based on UNIX System V with Berkeley Software Distribution, BSD extensio ...

and

Cygwin Cygwin ( ) is a free and open-source Unix-like environment and command-line interface (CLI) for Microsoft Windows. The project also provides a software repository containing open-source packages. Cygwin allows source code for Unix-like operati ...

. Due to its small size, it is a popular choice for light-weight

Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...

s. Dillo is

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

, released under the GNU GPL-3.0-or-later. Chilean software engineer Jorge Arellano Cid conceived the Dillo project in late 1999, publishing the first version of Dillo in December of that year. 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 the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is an information system that enables Content (media), content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond Information technology, IT specialists and hobbyis ...

. To this end, he designed Dillo to be small, fast, and efficient, capable of performing well even on an

Intel 80486 The Intel 486, officially named i486 and also known as 80486, is a microprocessor introduced in 1989. It is a higher-performance follow-up to the i386, Intel 386. It represents the fourth generation of binary compatible CPUs following the Inte ...

CPU with a

dial-up Internet access Dial-up Internet access is a form of Internet access that uses the facilities of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to establish a connection to an Internet service provider (ISP) by dialing a telephone number on a conventional telepho ...

Development

Dillo was originally written in the

C programming language C (''pronounced'' '' – like the letter c'') is a general-purpose programming language. It was created in the 1970s by Dennis Ritchie and remains very widely used and influential. By design, C's features cleanly reflect the capabilities of ...

with the

GTK+ GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free software cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both free and proprietary s ...

GUI toolkit A widget toolkit, widget library, GUI toolkit, or UX library is a library or a collection of libraries containing a set of graphical control elements (called ''widgets'') used to construct the graphical user interface (GUI) of programs. Most wid ...

. The first versions were based on an earlier browser called ''Armadillo'', hence the name. Dillo is funded by private donations; efforts to obtain public grants and corporate sponsors have been unsuccessful. Lack of funding led to a slowdown in development in 2006, and a complete stop in 2007. The project restarted again in 2008 and two months later received a €115 donation from DistroWatch. Dillo 2 was written with both C and C++ components and the Fast Light Toolkit (FLTK), and was released on October 14, 2008. Text antialiasing, support for

character sets Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to graphical character (computing), characters, especially the written characters of human language, allowing them to be stored, transmitted, and transformed using computers. The numerical v ...

other than Latin-1,

HTTP compression HTTP compression is a capability that can be built into web servers and web clients to improve transfer speed and bandwidth utilization. HTTP data is compressed before it is sent from the server: compliant browsers will announce what methods ar ...

capability, and improved page rendering were all added. The move to FLTK from GTK+ also removed many of the project's dependencies and reduced Dillo's

memory footprint Memory footprint refers to the amount of main memory that a program uses or references while running. The word footprint generally refers to the extent of physical dimensions that an object occupies, giving a sense of its size. In computing, t ...

by 50%. 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. The original domain had expired in June 2022. Developers had lost access to it and a Wordpress zombie lookalike is operating without their oversight ever since. Dillo 3.1.x was released in 2024, after development was restarted in December 2023 by Rodrigo Arias Mallo.

Features

Features of Dillo include bookmarks,

tabbed browsing In interface design, a tab is a graphical user interface object that allows multiple documents or Panel (computer software), panels to be contained within a single window (computing), window, using tabs as a navigational widget for switching be ...

, and support for

JPEG JPEG ( , short for Joint Photographic Experts Group and sometimes retroactively referred to as JPEG 1) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degr ...

, PNG (including alpha transparency),

GIF The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , ) is a Raster graphics, bitmap Image file formats, image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released ...

and SVG images. Partial support for CSS was introduced in release 2.1. Settings such as the default fonts, background color, downloads folder, and home page are customizable through configuration files.

Cookies A cookie is a sweet biscuit with high sugar and fat content. Cookie dough is softer than that used for other types of biscuit, and they are cooked longer at lower temperatures. The dough typically contains flour, sugar, egg, and some type of ...

are supported but disabled by default due to privacy concerns. While most web browsers retain the

web cache A web cache (or HTTP cache) is a system for optimizing the World Wide Web. It is implemented both client-side and server-side. The caching of multimedia and other files can result in less overall delay when web browser, browsing the Web. Parts o ...

and history after the program is closed, Dillo automatically clears them to improve both privacy and performance. A developer tool called the "bug meter" is provided in the lower-right corner. When clicked, it displays information about validation problems, such as unclosed tags, that Dillo found in the web page. Unlike most browsers, Dillo does not have a quirks mode to improve compatibility with web pages that use invalid HTML. Instead, Dillo processes all web pages according to the published

web standards Web standards are the formal, non-proprietary standards and other technical specifications that define and describe aspects of the World Wide Web. In recent years, the term has been more frequently associated with the trend of endorsing a set of st ...

. In 2003, two Linux enthusiasts successfully ran Dillo on an

Intel 486 The Intel 486, officially named i486 and also known as 80486, is a microprocessor introduced in 1989. It is a higher-performance follow-up to the Intel 386. It represents the fourth generation of binary compatible CPUs following the 8086 of ...

processor and demonstrated that even with such meager hardware, Dillo could rende
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in 10–15 seconds. Furthermore, Dillo can run on a variety of software platforms, including

Solaris Solaris is the Latin word for sun. It may refer to: Arts and entertainment Literature, television and film * ''Solaris'' (novel), a 1961 science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem ** ''Solaris'' (1968 film), directed by Boris Nirenburg ** ''Sol ...

Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

DOS DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...

, and some handheld devices. However, Dillo's developers have made little effort to make the browser work on

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

. Arellano Cid stated that Windows goes against Dillo's goal of democratization by artificially increasing hardware requirements and software costs. Nevertheless, Dillo has been reported to work on Windows via

. Dillo does not support

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

, Flash,

right-to-left A writing system comprises a set of symbols, called a ''script'', as well as the rules by which the script represents a particular language. The earliest writing appeared during the late 4th millennium BC. Throughout history, each independen ...

text, or complex text layout. Support for frames is also very limited; Dillo presents a link to each frame to allow the user to view them one at a time.

Forks

Dillo-Win32
was a project to port Dillo to Windows which is now defunct. 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).
DilloNG
is a fork hosted on

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

which moved the code from

Mercurial Mercurial is a distributed revision control tool for software developers. It is supported on Microsoft Windows, Linux, and other Unix-like systems, such as FreeBSD and macOS. Mercurial's major design goals include high performance and scalabi ...

while adding new features like a speed dial main page, support for opening videos in an external video player and merged some previously published fixes. It was last updated in 2021. A fork called Dillo-browser 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. It had applied numerous patches from DilloNG and added support for rendering

Gopher Pocket gophers, commonly referred to simply as gophers, are burrowing rodents of the family Geomyidae. The roughly 41 speciesSearch results for "Geomyidae" on thASM Mammal Diversity Database are all endemic to North and Central America. They ar ...

, Gemini and markdown pages, reader mode and extended CSS support. A new Python scripting system was introduced with modules for rendering

RSS RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many ...

EPUB EPUB is an e-book file format that uses the ".epub" file extension. The term is short for ''electronic publication'' and is sometimes stylized as ''ePUB''. EPUB is supported by many e-readers, and compatible software is available for most smart ...

, public

Telegram Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas pi ...

channel logs and zip file contents. It is still maintained as of 2024.

Reception

Reviews of Dillo have praised its extraordinary speed, but noted that this speed comes at a price. The most visible cost is Dillo's inability to display complex web pages as they were meant to be. A 2008 review by Linux.com commented that Dillo's user interface may be "intimidating" for new users, and pointed out the scarcity of plug-ins for Dillo. In all, Dillo's global usage share is less than one hundredth of one percent. Dillo is, however, the browser of choice in several space-conscious

s, such as Damn Small Linux, Feather Linux, VectorLinux,

antiX antiX () is a Linux distribution, originally based on MEPIS, which itself is based on the Debian stable distribution. antiX initially replaced the MEPIS KDE desktop environment with the Fluxbox and IceWM window managers, making it suitable ...

and Mustang Linux.

References

External links