Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Lightweight Browser

Lightweight Browser
 
With Cloud Computing taking bull or the bulk work and Mobiles taking over tablets. a lightweight browser is all one one needs.
I am slow to adopt and adapt myself to hanging needs.
I saw a little clip on the lightening browser Linux Magazine, in an article talking about alternative to Andoid ((See F-Droid elsewhere in this blog site).
Since I have not tested them myself, I have decided to reproduce few notes.
I expected Silk to be available open source, apparently it is not.
Many moons ago I wrote something about SILK but I cannot remember the details.
Second part is my own writing when I searched for a lightweight browser.
It is nice all the developers give a breakdown of the Download size and the Install size, whether cookie free or using cloud source augment the speed of web searching.
Pardon me for my bias on Linux browsers.
There ought to be many other browsers for Apple and Windows.

Reproduction
Amazon Silk
Amazon Silk is a web browser developed by Amazon for Kindle Fire line of tablets and Fire Phone.
It uses a split architecture whereby some of the processing is performed on Amazon's servers to improve webpage loading performance.
It is based on the open source Chromium project.

Today in New York, Amazon introduced Silk, an all-new web browser powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and available exclusively on the just announced Kindle Fire. 
You might be asking, “A browser? 
Do we really need another one?” 

Silk isn’t just another browser. 
We sought from the start to tap into the power and capabilities of the AWS infrastructure to overcome the limitations of typical mobile browsers.  Instead of a device-siloed software application, Amazon Silk deploys a split-architecture. 
All of the browser subsystems are present on your Kindle Fire as well as on the AWS cloud computing platform. 
Each time you load a web page, Silk makes a dynamic decision about which of these subsystems will run locally and which will execute remotely. 

In short, Amazon Silk extends the boundaries of the browser, coupling the capabilities and interactivity of your local device with the massive computing power, memory, and network connectivity of our cloud.
Puffin
Puffin claims superlative speed, achieved through “proprietary” cloud computing and JavaScript rendering technology. It also purports to have the fastest JavaScript benchmark scores out of all browsers. Puffin pre-processes the websites that you visit on its own servers, before sending it back to you in an easier to load form. Theoretically, this method should increase browsing speeds.


Lightning
Lightning was developed by an XDA developer to compensate for the lack of lightweight, tablet-optimized browsers available. It functions similarly to Naked Browser in that it strips away all the browser bloat. It renders using the WebKit engine inside of the Android operating system, which saves on its total installed size.


UC Browser HD
UC claims to be the fastest running browser on the Internet. It offers a number of novel features, such as the ability to load a light version of a webpage. It can also preload the next page on a multipage site, improving load times.

I have used this on a mobile phone but it has so many links that make it slow on a mobile with low RAM.

Maxthon HD
Maxthon browser uses a “cloud engine”, meaning it offloads a great deal of activity to its own servers. Additionally, it syncs users’ data across devices. To read more about Maxthon, check out Jessica’s great review of it.

Gecko  of FIREFOX

Gecko and his territory
I wanted to write about the Gecko, the Firefoxe's background engine thinking it is a little browser.
It is not.
It is a layout engine for multiple browsers that originated in the fold of Linux background.
It takes the content and formatting information and displays on the browsers bland screen.
Gecko has been known previously by the code names "Raptor"
I have decided to support the lightest browser in the line of Abiword as the lightest but a very powerful word processor.
I faintly remembered about its Linux origin.

Currently I favour Midori, IceApe, Dillo and SeaMonkey and not Firefox.

FireFox is light on its own but easily get bloated over 100 MiB with cookies.
IceApe
Download size: 10,27 MB
Installed size: 29,44 MB
Package filename: iceape-browser_2.0.11-5_i386.deb
Source package: iceape
SeaMonkey
Download size: 19,65 MB
Installed size: 48,37 MB
Package filename: seamonkey-2.4-1.el6.x86_64.rpm
Source package: seamonkey-2.4-1.el6.src.rpm 


Dillo
Download size: 441,81 KB
Installed size: 1,04 MB
Package filename: dillo-2.1.1-1.ssl.i386.rpm
Source package: dillo-2.1.1-1.ssl.src.rpm 


wget
Download size: 480,73 KB
Installed size: 1,79 MB
Package filename: wget-1.12-1.4.el6.i686.rpm
Source package: wget-1.12-1.4.el6.src.rpm
Lynx
Download size: 1,38 MB
Installed size: 5,15 MB
Package filename: lynx-2.8.7-7.fc16.x86_64.rpm
Source package: lynx-2.8.7-7.fc16.src.rpm
Links
Download size: 1,81 MB
Installed size: 2,87 MB
Package filename: links-2.2-13.fc15.i686.rpm
Source package: links-2.2-13.fc15.src.rpm
Midori
Download size: 53,20 KB
Installed size: 599,80 KB
Package filename: midori-devel-0.3.6-1.fc15.x86_64.rpm
Source package: midori-0.3.6-1.fc15.src.rpm

I could not find a single article in the web stating their download size (compressed) and installed size.