NetSurf
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I was surprised to find that NetSurf is still around and being developed! Itâs another independent browser like Dillo that goes waaaay back (as you might guess from its website), but never caught on outside a small niche.
It is, however, fast and light â and while it doesnât support the full range of website capabilities that a modern Chromium, Gecko or WebKit browser does, itâs got some minimal JavaScript support (off by default) and can handle enough CSS to display older websites and sites that arenât too complex. (And unlike Dillo, it seems to handle emoji consistently on Linux!)
For the most part, sites that are still mainly documents tend to be readable at least (even if they donât look right), while sites that are mainly applicationsâŠwell, I canât even log into Nextcloud, Dropbox, or GMail even after enabling JavaScript. I can log into Wallabag and read saved articles, but canât add new ones. Flickr confuses it terribly, and it doesnât even know where to start with OpenStreetMap. My WordPress/ClassicPress theme (SemPress) displays fine, but I canât log into the dashboard.
Ironically, I couldnât sign up for the NetSurf users mailing list using NetSurf. The list provider thought I was a bot!
There are a few incomplete features that can be frustrating. For example, you can edit the name of a bookmark, but I havenât found a way to edit where it points to. I was really hoping I could use bookmarklets for a few things since there arenât any extensions.
Overall itâs a little more capable than Dillo, but a bit slower. Either would be good to keep on hand for low-spec hardware, with a more âmainstreamâ browser when you need it. (Falkonâs a good choice, since itâs light for a Chromium browser and available on most of the same platforms.)
The web would be more usable overall if more developers tested their sites in a browser like this one.
Availability
NetSurf started out on RISC-OS, and the ports to Linux/Unix, AmigaOS and Haiku are all active, though the Haiku port is missing a few features like being able to change settings (which means you canât turn on JavaScript). Debian still includes it in their native repository, and thereâs a Flatpak with the latest version for other Linux distros.