xombrero (until 2012 known as xxxterm) is a discontinued

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

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 ...

developed with a goal to be a lightweight and secure replacement for full featured browsers like

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curr ...

. The browser has found a niche among minimalist browsers for heavy keyboard users by balancing minimalism with usability. xombrero is based on GTK+ 3.

Features

xombrero is based on the

WebKit WebKit is a browser engine primarily used in Apple's Safari web browser, as well as all web browsers on iOS and iPadOS. WebKit is also used by the PlayStation consoles starting with the PS3, the Tizen mobile operating systems, the Amazon K ...

engine and provides an ability to control cookies, plug-ins and

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 ...

policies on per-

website A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...

basis. The user can define the

whitelist A whitelist or allowlist is a list or register of entities that are being provided a particular privilege, service, mobility, access or recognition. Entities on the list will be accepted, approved and/or recognized. Whitelisting is the reverse of ...

s of trusted websites for each of those security risks. xombrero was designed for experienced

command-line interface A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with software via command (computing), commands each formatted as a line of text. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as an interactive and more user ...

users, so it includes the features typically requested by such an audience: mouseless browsing, no URL prefetch, vi-like

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine fro ...

and navigation (including ''command'' mode), plain text file configuration, and link hinting.

User interface

xombrero provides a ''command mode'' (designed after vi) for entering commands for the common tasks, including tabs (''buffers'') switching, entering URLs, following links and navigating through browser history and bookmarks. The same functionality can be accessed with

keyboard shortcut In computing, a keyboard shortcut (also hotkey/hot key or key binding) is a software-based assignment of an action to one or more keys on a computer keyboard. Most Operating system, operating systems and Application software, applications come ...

s. By default xombrero window contains two panels, providing the ordinary layout of a web browser window. The first one (on the top) – "''fancy bar''" – provides URL entry, ''backward'', ''forward'', ''stop'' and ''white-list toggle'' buttons and optional search string entry. Another panel (on the bottom) – "''status bar''" – reports the current URL (or page title), zoom level and position in page. With these panels enabled and a

mouse A mouse (: mice) is a small rodent. Characteristically, mice are known to have a pointed snout, small rounded ears, a body-length scaly tail, and a high breeding rate. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse (''Mus musculus'' ...

attached, the user may operate xombrero like

or Midori.

History

The development of the browser began in February 2010 under the name "xxxterm" by several

OpenBSD OpenBSD is a security-focused operating system, security-focused, free software, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by fork (software development), forking NetBSD ...

users specifically for that operating system. Initially the releases of the browsers were identified by CVS revision numbers, though more common "X.Y.Z" version numbering scheme was introduced as development moved to Git. In the release announcement for version 1.11.2, Peereboom revealed the plan to rename xxxterm to xombrero, though an emergency release under the old name happened later the same day. Later it was revealed that the version numbers for the browser under the new name would start again from 1.0. In early 2017, it appeared the project was likely to be discontinued, as xombrero depended on an old version of WebKit which had multiple security vulnerabilities, and a port to a modern version of WebKit would be difficult. Due to these issues, OpenBSD removed xombrero from its ports tree on 1 February 2017.

References

External links

* {{Web browsers, desktop Free software programmed in C Free web browsers POSIX web browsers Software based on WebKit Web browsers that use GTK Software using the ISC license Discontinued web browsers

Features

User interface

History

See also

References

External links