Lightweight Web Browsers For Mobile Devices
What with less processing power than a comparable desktop machine and limited battery life, you don't want the web browser to hog all the system resources. Especially since the web browser will be the most-used application on your system. By definition, we will pass over the two most resource-hungry browsers - Internet Explorer and Firefox - and take a look at some lighter surfing tools that you just might want to download and try out.
Dillo could win a contest for smallest, lightest web browser that still has enough features to get most people by. You won't find any of that fancy stuff here - no Flash, Javascript, Java, frames, tabs, or even CSS. What you will find is a fast, secure basic browser that's ideal for running on even the smallest devices - in fact, it's the number-one choice for embedded browsers. Free.
Slightly heavier than Dillo, it is the hands-down favorite for mobile device platforms which want a lightweight browser that doesn't sacrifice features. It is a true cross-platform browser, which is faster than Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari. And the features are mind-boggling! Along with the standard browser functionality with support for Javascript, Flash, Java, CSS, tabbed browsing, and so on, it also supports SVG (scalable vector graphics), voice-control, page-zooming, popup-blocking, mouse gestures, and it has a built-in BitTorrent client. Oh, by the way, it's also famous for being the most standards-compliant. Crazy! It's free for PC platforms.
Just like Opera, but for smartphones. The main reason to mention it separate from Opera is that Opera Mobile costs a few dollars (we're talking $25 USD currently) while it is free for larger devices. For an example of how light Opera can be, the handheld Nintendo DS runs a version of Opera for its built-in web browser.
This one just coasts in for Mac OS X users. It is faster and lighter than Apple's Safari, but only by so much, and it gets that by dropping a few features. It's like the Safari interface with a Mozilla Gecko engine under the hood. Free.
Mozilla classic is still out there, in its current incarnation as SeaMonkey, but who knows for how much longer? Seamonkey is much lighter than Firefox, but it's far from the lightest browser. It carries on the tradition of Netscape rolling a Navigator, Composer, email client, and chat client all into one package. So it's ideal for web developers and old-school geeks (IRC!). Cross-platform and free.
We can't go without mentioning Chrome, seeing as how the blog world can't stop buzzing about it, but be advised that Chrome is very young yet and we just can't make any bold statements about it until it's had some breaking in. The one claim to Chrome's speed is that it has a turbo-charged Javascript engine. If you use a lot of Javascript/AJAX applications, Chrome will make them go faster. Otherwise, it's as bloated as Internet Explorer or Firefox. Free, but only runs on Windows.
Of course, we're being real cute posting these. They're text-based browsers. They're the least on features - you get scrolling text in a terminal and you use the keyboard to control it. No Flash, Java, CSS, nothing. You cannot appreciate how wacky this is until you've tried it. It feels like watching a film through Morse code. But you came here looking for lightweight web browsers, and you cannot get lighter-weight than a text browser. If you're still reading, the benefits are that they're very secure (can't run a virus from a script when you can't run scripts, ha ha!) and as a matter of fact, search engines use a form of text-browsing to crawl your site, so webmasters can use Lynx or W3m to get a search-engine-eye view of their site. Also, text browsers are part of what works with screen-readers for the blind. Cross-platform and free.
Here, in case you didn't think we had enough geek cred around here, I now present this very site in W3m:
Note that we thought of messing with your head even more by running it in a transparent desktop text terminal, so you can see the desktop wallpaper right through the web page.
Who Didn't Make the Grade:
Safari - The default Apple browser. If you're using Apple, you know about it; if you aren't, then like KDE, it's hardly worth the bother to get the port.Epiphany - Nice though it is, it will only run on Unix-based Gnome desktops. Too bad; it could have been a contender here.
Konqueror - While it does run on Windows, you have to install the whole Unix-based KDE desktop suite to support it, defeating the purpose of being light-weight. It's fair to run on a Linux desktop, however, but even there it's the heaviest browser you can use after Firefox. Especially since it has a file manager built-in.
Epiphany - Nice though it is, it will only run on Unix-based Gnome desktops. Too bad; it could have been a contender here.
Safari - The default Apple browser. If you're using Apple, you know about it; if you aren't, then like KDE, it's hardly worth the bother to get the port.
Netscape Navigator - It's dead. See its second reincarnation, Mozilla.
Ice-Weasel/Ice-Cat - This is nothing but a re-branded Firefox. And it was started by a petty quarrel between the Linux platform and Mozilla Firefox, and then the IceWeasel people had a petty quarrel between themselves and split off to make IceCat, and by the time you read this they've probably had more fights by now and have most likely split off into IceGoat, FireBear, MudSquid, SkySnail, WaterWorm, FogFish, and Creamed Caviar in White Brussels Sauce.
Flock - Like Firefox and Internet Explorer combined, while towing a garbage scow.
Filed Under: Mobile Internet • The Internetz
