25 years of Dillo

+Written on 2024-12-15 by Rodrigo Arias Mallo + +

Back in 1999, a group of developers lead by Jorge Arellano Cid forked the +Gzilla/Armadillo code originally +developed by Raph Levien, and began working on what is now known as the Dillo +web browser. + +

Today, as of December of 2024, Dillo is 25 years old!

+ +

During this long journey, the project has seen a lot of changes and has +stalled several times, but it managed to survive to this day. As a commemoration +of this milestone, so I wanted to write a short history of the project.

+ +

Notice that Jorge had lead the project from 1999 until 2019, and as of +today, we don't have more news about him anymore. I hope he is okay and just +decided to move on to other projects. Since then, I (Rodrigo) decided to +resurrect the project and bring it back to life. I have no relationship with the +previous developers, but I try to do my best to keep the original goals intact. + +

This document tries to tells the history as I have observed it through the pieces I was +able to collect from the +mailing + list, the +changelog +and the +git + history. + +

GTK period (1999 - 2006)

+ +

When Dillo was forked, it was using GTK 1.0 as the UI library. The first +releases were done in December of 1999 as recorded in the ChangeLog. At the +time, this is how Gzilla 0.3.9 looked like: + +

Gzilla 0.3.9 — Dillo 0.8.3, source WikiMedia +

+ +

During the initial development, Jorge first designed and wrote the naming +convention for the function names (like prefixing them with a_ when they are +public) or using 3 spaces for indentation, and began adjusting the code base to +follow the same convention. + +

On March of 2000, the license was changed to the GPLv3 with the permission of +Raph Levien (the main developer of Gzilla/Armadillo). + +

The browser experimented a large rewrite with the idea to maintain several +flows of communication following a signal driven approach. This work ended up in the +publication +Network programming + internals of the Dillo Web browser by Jorge Arellano-Cid and H.H. +Von Brand. This work would later derive in the Concomitant Control Chain (CCC), +the mechanism that Dillo still uses today to track multiple connections and +among its internal modules. + +

Sebastian Geerken began working on the code base at least since June of 2000. +First submitting small patches and then moving to the rendering engine, of which +he became the main architect. The rendering engine is one of the most important +components of the browser, which essentially reads a tree of elements and +determines the size and position of each element on the screen, like the +words of paragraphs and images. + +

The support for HTML and CSS features started to grow during the coming +years, specially for tables and text elements. + +

Shortly after GTK2 was released, the team was considering porting Dillo to +it, but there were some concerns regarding the complexity and size of the new +GTK version. + +

On October of 2003, + + Jorge asked the FLTK maintainer Michael Sweet if it would be feasible to +port Dillo to FLTK, as it was considered to align better with the objectives of +speed and stability: + +

+We were following our plan to port dillo from GTK1 (currently +used TK) to GTK2, when one of our list subscribers suggested +considering FLTK because of shared philosophy backgrounds +

+ +

The team decided to focus on FLTK 2 instead of GTK 2.0, as it was considered +far more bloated and slow. Notice that at the time, FLTK 2 was not yet released, +but is was planning to be released "soon". + +

On August 2004, Sebastian decided to make an interesting design decision, +to make the + Dillo widget toolkit independent. This way it was posible to continue the +development of GTK1 and FLTK2 in parallel, among other benefits. + +

+The most complex part is certainly Dw, since it is tightly bound to +Gtk+. By all means, I want to prevent, that there exist different +versions of Dw, with different features (e.g., when the development of +the Gtk+ version continues, while the FLTK version is developed), +which are hard to integrate. + +
For this reason (and others), I'm currently working on a redesign of +Dw, which will make Dw toolkit independant. This is not the single +goal of this redesign, it will also make some other features possible, +e.g. a preview window, in which the whole page may be seen with +reduced size, also, it will make reusage of Dw within graphical +plugins possibel, and some more. (Actually, the idea for this design +is already older, except the platform independency, but this was simple +to add.) +

+ +

During this period, the DPI mechanism (plugins) was improved and some +functionality was moved to external programs that talk to the browser via the +DPI protocol, like the downloads, bookmarks, FTP and also HTTPS. The version +0.8.3 released on October, 2004 had already HTTPS support. Here is how it looked +like (still using GTK1): + +

+ +

During the following years, the development of the FLTK port was underway. +The functionality that was provided by glib was implemented in a custom Dlib +library so Dillo would not need to depend on glib anymore. + + +

On February 2005, Jorge and Sebastian gave +a + talk at FOSDEM about the Dillo browser. Unfortunately, there is no +recording of that talk. But shortly after, Jorge gave another talk at LSM in +2005 which is was recorded, which was the first time the FLTK2 implementation +was shown. + +

Picture of Jorge from the LSM 2005 video, from the YouTube video +

+ +

The last release that still used GTK1 was 0.8.6 on April, 2006. We will have +to wait two years until the next release 2.0.0 was finally published with the +port to FLTK2 completed. + +

FLTK 2 period (2005 - 2011)

+ +

The porting to FLTK2 was intended to make the browser smaller and provide other +features like antialiasing. On April 2005, Jorge reported that the port to FLTK2 +was making +great + progress. + +

+
Here are some good news with our current progress in porting +dillo to FLTK. It has being going-on very fast and we have made great progress +so far. +

+ +

Here is how the browser looked like with FTLK2: + +

+ + +

During this time however, the source code for the new FLTK2 port was not +available in the CVS to the public. Instead, Jorge was focusing on rising +funding to cover the project development from some interested companies. +

On March 2006, Jorge reported that so far +it + was not being successful in attracting funding. +The project faced a serious risk of stalling. + +

After mid 2006, there were no more releases of Dillo until 2008, and so far +no success in getting more developers involved or funding for the project. The +project was considered frozen or stalled and the FLTK2 code remained closed +source. + +

On April 2007, Jorge +reports +that he had intentions to release the FLTK2 port +as soon as Sebastian agrees. + +

+In fact, I think it was more or less 6 months ago, after some +emails with Andrew Tanenbaum, who finally helped me to see that +it was a good time to release the code again. + +Since then, I've tried to contact Sebastian to agree on this. +

+ +On September 30, 2007, Jorge finally +announces that the FLTK2 port is now +available: + +

+
This is an alpha release of the next generation of the Dillo +web browser. The code underwent a major rewrite: significant +parts of the codebase were ported to C++, and the rendering +engine now uses the FLTK2 library instead of GTK1. + +
Please read the README inside dillo's tarball. + +
Developers willing to join the project and contribute are +highly encouraged. Sebastian did an excellent work documenting +the new dillo widget engine (just run doxygen inside DW tree). +

+ +

This move started a lot of patches from other developers that were quickly +integrated in the FLTK2 port. These contributions pushed Dillo towards an active +state of development again. + +

On September of 2008, Jorge +announced the support for tabs, which was +included for the release. After a lot of bug fixing, the next version based on +FLTK2 was ready and on October of 2008, Dillo 2.0.0 was finally released. + +

A year later, on July of 2009, +Jorge + announces that he is now a father, and +his time for developing Dillo will (understandably) be affected. + +

+I'm quite happy to let you know that yesterday 19 Aug [July], +my first daughter Lisa was born! + +
Everything is OK, we're vey happy with this "release" :) and I just wanted to +communicate it here, so you more or less know or understand my activities (or +lack of) in the next days. +

+ +

More features and bug fixes were added in the coming releases, until the last +release of the 2.X series, the version 2.2.1 released on 2011. During this +period, we don't observe more patches from Sebastian or emails in the mailing +list. + +

Here is how Dillo was looking in the 2.2 version, very similar as how it +looks today: + +

+ +During this period, another problem was coming in FLTK. The +development for + FLTK2 was considered stalled and there was no official version released. + This caused issued in downstream distributions, as Dillo required to link with + a FLTK package that was not available. + +

So, the team decided to switch to FLTK 1.3 as soon as it was released, and bump +Dillo to the series 3.X. + +

FLTK 1.3 period (2011 - 2016)

+ +

On June 2011, with the FLTK 1.3 release done, the port of Dillo to FLTK 1.3 was +underway. Only a few months later, the first 3.0.0 release using FLTK 1.3 was +published. + +

On July of 2012, Sebastian presented a new hyphenation algorithm that +implements the same mechanism used in TeX. This new implementation makes its way +to the 3.0.3 release on April of 2013. + +

Several releases were made until the version 3.0.5 on June 2015. + +

During these last two years, we see a shift in the amount of commits +introduced by Sebastian, which grow quite substantially. + +

+ +On that time, Sebastian was working on the GROWS redesign, which changed the way +the size of the widgets (elements of the page) where computed. + +

Sadly, on October 2016, Sebastian + passed away, leaving much of his work not included into a new release. + +Since then, the development quickly stalled until in 2019 Jorge sent his last +email recorded + by the mailing list, recommending a user to simply use the current version +of the repository, rather than waiting for the 3.1 release: + +

+> According to the info on
+> https://hg.dillo.org/dillo/raw-file/default/ChangeLog, dillo-3.1 [not +released yet].
+>
+> I will probably wait until they release it officially.
+
+IMHO, you should get it. It's being stable for years.
+
+--
+Cheers
+Jorge.- +

+ +

After this moment, the project began to deteriorate. On 2022 the DNS domain +of dillo.org was lost, causing the website, the +mercurial repository, the mailing list and the email server to disappear. + +

The project quickly became abandoned, as there was no more developer activity +anywhere. The dillo.org site now became a weird zombie copy of the once original +website, but now plagued with SPAM in a Wordpress blog. + +

The resurrection (2024 - present)

+ +

On December of 2023, I began spending some time patching Dillo to make it build +again. I tried to fix some simple bugs, and when I saw that the Atari forum had +managed to port Dillo to Atari (!) based on my repo I though that it may be +feasible to try to resurrect it. I commented it on +Hacker News and it +got surprised on the of interest it drew. + +

I first made a GitHub organization to hold the Git repositories and used the +GitHub pages to make a new Dillo website. I tried to get a copy of all materials +I could, and upload them to the new website and mailing list. + +

I tried to fix all the issues to finally make the 3.1.0 release, and after +some months of work in my free time, I managed to release it on May of 2024. It +caught the attention of +several +news +sites +and soon later it made its way to several +Linux distributions. + +

As of today, 15 of December of 2024, I continue to maintain the project, and +we are getting some new contributors which help with patches and discussion +about the development. We are still far from having enough developers to cover +all the issues, but we are slowly making some progress. + +

The last release of Dillo is 3.1.1, and this is what is looks like when +loading the new Dillo website: + +