*NIX: Luakit, dwb, and other alternative browsers

[ewemoa]

Having experienced recurring problems with Firefox, am trying out some alternative web browsers.

Tried midori (feels like needs more polish) and dillo (a little too minimal?) already and am currently trying Luakit and dwb.

Both seem fairly light and configurable -- seems to help to have some vi-background though.

Any favorite alternative browsers?

[40hz]

I've been using the Nix version of Pale Moon courtesy of 4wd's thread here.

Although it's FF-based, it doesn't seem to exhibit many of the annoyances of its parent. I've been happy with it so far. Knock wood...

[TaoPhoenix]

I've been using the Nix version of Pale Moon courtesy of 4wd's thread here.

Although it's FF-based, it doesn't seem to exhibit many of the annoyances of its parent. I've been happy with it so far. Knock wood...

That's interesting because one branch of PaleMoon was supposed to be Windows optimized, so it's interesting that they are trying to do the same thing on the 'Nix side. Though I haven't seen any benefits, and at one point one of MilesAhead's tools BBSS only worked well on pure FF (though now it seems to have misbehaved on that side as well. At some point I'll post a note to that thread whenever I get the urge to bo bug hunting.)

For me the chief use is to run them both side by side as a minor technical finesse that certain sites with aggressive cookies can't see the other process, and also for aesthetic task management they are color coded on the taskbar.

[ewemoa]

Thanks for the suggestion, 40hz.

It was easy enough to get installed, unfortunately, it also suffers from one of the problems that has not gotten fixed in FF [1], so I'm back to dwb for now.


[1] Bug 502307 - Closing multiple tabs in the last browser window with Private Browsing enabled yields no warning regardless of preference setting

[Edvard]

I'm liking dwb mainly for when I need to use a web interface for local stuff like CUPS, HTML help files, or Webmin for my NAS.  Much nicer to not have to open my full browser when I just want to admin my router.

But holy smokes, another webkit browser with vi keybindings? Is this a 'thing' now?  Must be, because they're all over the place:

Uzbl:
http://www.uzbl.org/
Has a nice cat logo.  And the attitude of the Suckless community.

Jumanji:
http://pwmt.org/projects/jumanji/options/
Supports user-scripts, adblock lists, and flash.

Vimprobable:
http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/vimprobable/
Has 'tab-completion' built in, but otherwise very no-nonsense and minimalistic.

Xxxterm:
https://opensource.conformal.com/wiki/xxxterm
Security-minded for the security conscious.

For main browser use, I'm on Firefox Nightly these days, and Chromium when it hasn't been pulled from the "Testing" repos... 

[ewemoa]

Thanks for the suggestions.


I tried uzbl and jumanji a bit -- my initial impression after looking around a bit is that development has slowed or stopped for them.


xxxterm seems to also go by the name have been renamed as 'xombrero' -- just installed.

Pluses:

• I like how a default search engine is not chosen but instead a screen showing a list of choices is displayed
• Keybindings somehow a little easier to learn than some of the others.
• Low-contrast color scheme - handy for JoTo and like-minded folk
• Focusing search field via key binding seems to work pretty well (in contrast, things I happened to try with dwb didn't work out so well)
• Can jump to beginning / end of document using Home / End keys - dwb provides this via gg and G
• Can reopen closed tabs

Minuses:

• A bit ironic that at the time of this writing trying to view the github issues page using xombrero leads to a crash here [1]...
• I've yet to figure out how to get it to ask for confirmation on quitting...though I guess the appropriate key bindings could be modified or elimintated...
• I lost part of this post accidentally via some mistyping...but "undo" didn't seem to recover it
• Going back a page seems to position the "view port" at the top of the page - losing where one was looking before going forward or clicking on a link - dwb seems to preserve this
• Haven't found way to open a link in a new tab in the background - dwb seems to have this
• Seems to spawn pop-ups in tabs by default - dwb doesn't appear to do this by default
• Doesn't seem to support key bindings that use multiple modifiers (e.g. both Shift and Control) - dwb doesn't appear to either

Haven't gotten around to Vimprobable yet.  Vimprobable2 also dies on xombrero's github issues page...


[1] He he...also crashed dwb!

[delwoode]

I realy like and use qutebrowser.
website
mostly  keyboard driven but can use the mouse, easy to change the keybindings.

[Tuxman]

Which is based on Python and WebKit - far from being "lightweight", sadly.

[tobi.codes]

I am using the "brave" browser.
I like the user interface and it's really fast.