dwb - a webkit web browser

Ambrevar · 2015-10-19 13:34:54

@Steef435: Can you browse the login page of Bitbucket with one of the webkitgtk-based program you mentioned? I'm curious cause I tried a dozen webkitgtk web browsers and it would systematically hang.

Steef435 · 2015-10-19 16:18:43

No, I can't and I know that webkitgtk hangs on the website. That does not mean, however, that all other dwb crashes can be explained by the fact that it uses webkitgtk. For me, dwb has been crashing with every web page I open, and that's definitely not the result of webkitgtk. With webkit2gtk the page loads fine by the way.

You can check using this (site specific quirks disabled):

/* Load argv[1] as URI in WebKitWebView
 *
 * Compiling:
 * WebKitGTK+:   gcc this.c `pkg-config --cflags --libs gtk+-3.0 webkitgtk-3.0`
 * WebKit2GTK+:  gcc this.c `pkg-config --cflags --libs gtk+-3.0 webkit2gtk-4.0` -DWEBKIT2
 */

#include <gtk/gtk.h>

#ifdef WEBKIT2
        #include <webkit2/webkit2.h>
#else
        #include <webkit/webkit.h>
#endif

int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
        GtkWidget *win, *view;

        gtk_init(&argc, &argv);

        win = gtk_window_new(GTK_WINDOW_TOPLEVEL);
        view = webkit_web_view_new();

        webkit_web_view_load_uri(WEBKIT_WEB_VIEW(view), argv[1]);

        g_signal_connect (win, "destroy", G_CALLBACK(gtk_main_quit), NULL);
        gtk_container_add(GTK_CONTAINER(win), view);
        gtk_widget_show_all(GTK_WIDGET(win));

        gtk_main();
        return 0;
}

Ambrevar · 2015-10-19 17:32:58

dwb is not so problematic for me. A few crashes here and there, but most websites would do. Non-git dwb has issues with updated packages mentioned a few messages ago. dwb-git has a work-around. Besides the adblocker would crash dwb systematically.

Ambrevar · 2015-10-20 10:23:43

I've given a try to qutebrowser despite the heavy load of dependencies: I must say I am very impressed!

Compared to dwb:
* All websites I've tested so far work.
* The separation between cache, data and config is clearer. It is possible to run a session with the same config but with different data/cache.
* Embedded adblocker.
* Page loading might be a tad faster.
* Startup is slower.
* No bookmarks page for now But bookmarks are stored in the dwb's plain text format

It is still very young and actively developed. Despite this, it might be the best web browser I've tried so far!

I am considering a full switch to qutebrowser. The dependencies is not such a big deal since the current state of dwb forced me to use chromium on the side, which is heavier anyways.

Steef435 · 2015-10-20 11:43:30

Oh, I thought it was like this for everyone, my bad. I do have the ad blocker enabled so I guess that's the thing.

Thanks for the comparison. I'm still exploring the possibilities of webkit2gtk but maybe I just have to accept qt ^^

ayekat · 2015-10-20 11:48:08

My main issues with qutebrowser currently is that I cannot get japanese input through uim to work and that it handles sessions differently than dwb (and thus breaks my workflow).

The first one is probably just a Qt issue and nothing qutebrowser-specific, and I could probably troubleshoot it if I took the time, but the second one is a design decision, so I can't see any hope there.

The Compiler · 2015-10-20 11:58:40

ayekat wrote:

My main issues with qutebrowser currently is that I cannot get japanese input through uim to work and that it handles sessions differently than dwb (and thus breaks my workflow).
The first one is probably just a Qt issue and nothing qutebrowser-specific, and I could probably troubleshoot it if I took the time, but the second one is a design decision, so I can't see any hope there.

For the first issue, see this for a workaround.

For the second issue - I don't use sessions much myself, so I wouldn't call the way sessions work at the moment a conscious design decision I'd be glad to hear more about how you use sessions and how qutebrowser's sessions don't fit into that (but via PM or the qutebrowser thread please).

Last edited by The Compiler (2015-10-20 11:59:15)

ayekat · 2015-10-20 13:53:47

Thanks for the answer!

I'll have a look those two tonight.

Trilby · 2015-10-28 15:44:36

Just checking back in on this thread as firefox just ate my profile and changed how userChrome is handled. As I started regenerating my userChrome and kept hitting dead ends I figured it was time to go back to other browsers that needed less of a beating to work the way I want.

DWB from the repos segfaults and crashes as soon as I try to load *any* page. But dwb-git is working well for now.

I'll also have to get around to building qutebrowser. For admittedly no rational reason, I'm not a fan of the python dependencies - especially when at least one of them needs to itself be built from the AUR. But as I recognize that this isn't a rational critique, I'll give it a shot today.

EDIT: I just discovered that firefox didn't just eat my old profile, but it regurgitated it back up in a new folder in my home directory ("Old Firefox Files" or some such). So I was able to restore *most* of my settings. But after firing up dwb then going back to firefox, I realized just how slow firefox was. So now I'm on dwb-git as long as it works (fingers-crossed).

Last edited by Trilby (2015-10-28 16:41:02)

nomorewindows · 2015-10-28 15:51:18

Trilby wrote:

Just checking back in on this thread as firefox just ate my profile and changed how userChrome is handled. As I started regenerating my userChrome and kept hitting dead ends I figured it was time to go back to other browsers that needed less of a beating to work the way I want.
DWB from the repos segfaults and crashes as soon as I try to load *any* page. But dwb-git is working well for now.
I'll also have to get around to building qutebrowser. For admittedly no rational reason, I'm not a fan of the python dependencies - especially when at least one of them needs to itself be built from the AUR. But as I recognize that this isn't a rational critique, I'll give it a shot today.

There was something said about Chrome being replaced by a malware that looks identical to chrome, but that's opera that uses the chrome framework.

Alad · 2015-10-28 16:02:49

nomorewindows wrote:

There was something said about Chrome being replaced by a malware that looks identical to chrome, but that's opera that uses the chrome framework.

I have no idea what you're trying to say, nor how it is related to this thread.

nomorewindows · 2015-10-28 16:08:00

Alad wrote:

nomorewindows wrote:
There was something said about Chrome being replaced by a malware that looks identical to chrome, but that's opera that uses the chrome framework.
I have no idea what you're trying to say, nor how it is related to this thread.

Not sure what userChrome in firefox is. So I was thinking Chromium.
But then dwb-git doesn't want to work for me without blowing up either. So I've had to switch back to firefox.

Trilby · 2015-10-29 00:50:55

Well crap - dwb-git is also crashing consistently on some sites. I did try qutebrowser - it seems more stable, but currently is a bit too limited (greasemonkey scripting would allow me to do everything I want).

sekret · 2015-10-29 08:39:37

Yeah, right now there's no browser out there that doesn't suck...

Grus · 2015-12-18 04:01:38

I switched to dwb recently and I'm having some issues binding keys. I wanted the same hotkeys to switch to the next and previous tabs like Firefox, Control-Tab for next tab, Control-Shift-Tab for the previous tab.

The problem I'm having is that "Control @Tab@" as key for "next tab" works perfectly, but "Control Shift @Tab@" (or any variation I could think of) doesn't work at all. The manpage briefly goes over the neccessary syntax for rebinding keys, and I don't understand why it doesn't work, or how else it would be formatted. Does anyone have any ideas?

Also, the scheme-handler. Everything that dwb doesn't understand as an URL gets passed to that, right? Only how, and in what way, what format and what syntax...? What scheme-handler are you guys using? I'm having absurd amounts of trouble finding any information on that. I'd like the functionality to just type in any random words and having them passed to a specific searchengine, e.g. duckduckgo, but it seems there is no information on this anywhere, or I'm retarded. Could I use something like the following as a scheme-handler, and if so, how?

dwb https://duckduckgo.com/?q=$DWB_URI

That example doesn't work at all, but how would a working version look like? I've spent hours googling for this, as well as using other searchengines, and I just can't find anything that would lead to any sort of information on this whatsoever. Or is scheme-handler the wrong place to look for a functionality like automatically googling any non-URL terms?

It also scrolls extremely slow, and the scroll-step setting seems to do absolutely nothing, no matter what values I try. dwb is also extremely slow and laggy when opening a saved session (opening multiple tabs at once) even when just opening like ~5 tabs with javascript and other things disabled, on an i5-2500k @ 4.5 Ghz and 16GB RAM. It's WAY slower and less responsive than Firefox in the case, what am I doing wrong?

I hope I'm not too annoying and someone can help me out. I also feel rather retarded for not finding any place for information on this - neither the wiki nor manpage have anywhere enough information and I can't find any other places except this thread, which I also didn't have much luck searching. I'm using dwb-git.

Edit: It seems that binding Shift @Tab@ in general doesn't work, it just defaults to the general Shift+Tab behaviour of switching back to a previous form/text field. Oddly enough, binding Tab alone works.

Alright, what the hell, using Shift together with Tab is explicitly mentioned in the man page:
"where Shift can only be used with non printable keys such as F1, space, Tab, ..."
Why can't I get it to work? I tried endless variations of "Control Shift @Tab@" or just "Shift @Tab@", I'm completely out of ideas.

Last edited by Grus (2015-12-18 08:53:53)

Grus · 2015-12-22 00:32:47

dwb seems really cool, but it crashes constantly and there's a lot of undocumented or ignored settings. I can't get it to a daily-use state because of the constant crashes/segfaults and some irregularities, but it's really too bad. I wish there was some form of alternative out there.

bstaletic · 2015-12-22 08:03:51

Grus, have you tried luakit or vimb?

g.salmeri · 2016-01-01 18:15:27

Hello everybody. Excuse me if I'm writing here even if I do not use ArchLinux (I use Xubuntu, perhaps for lazyness...), but this is the only discussion about dwb I have found. I have discovered dwb by chance and I am totally fallen in love with it: in the past I tried other minimalist browser (uzbl, surf) but dwb seems to me way superior: in a few days, after some tweaking of the configuration files, dwb has become my primary browser (even if vim is not my primary editor) and I have become much more productive than before. In the repositories of Ubuntu there is an old version with several problems, but after compiling dwb-2014.03.07.tar.gz virtually all problems I had found were solved. Kudos to portix! I have understood that the development is somewhat stalled: does anybody know if there is some possibility that the situation will change? dwb seems to me already almost perfect, but little improvements are always possible... Thank you!

Steef435 · 2016-01-02 14:20:48

Most of the instabilities seem to be caused by the engine (WebKitGtk+) itself, so dwb would have to be ported to a different engine. Which would take quite some time.

If I recall correctly Portix said he was thinking about porting to various engines but nothing definitive was ever announced. I believe someone made a fork some months back but I don't think that ever became a thing either.

Currently it doesn't look like anyone's planning to continue development.

Trilby · 2016-01-02 16:13:24

Sadly I must second everything Steef said. There was talk a while back about using the Blink render, and I hope someday that will happen, but it will not be any time soon.

In the mean time there is qutebrowser. It is pretty similar in goals and design. I'd still much prefer to use dwb myself, but gtk webkit has been completely unusable for me of late. qtwebkit in qutebrowser is fairly stable and reliable (not so much so as blink or gecko, but very useable). There is also real development towards a qtWebEngine backend for qutebrowser.

mhertz · 2016-01-08 22:24:56

I don't get it... How come dwb doesn't crash immediately for you guys, when it does for me, except if running older versions of webkitgtk2, icu, harfbuz-icu and now also libwebmp, which makes other apps not work like firefox, chromium and mpv for some...

I've tried using firefox/pentadactyl for a little while instead, but always comes back to dwb since it's so much faster...

Trilby · 2016-01-08 22:34:37

What don't you get mhertz, I've said as much a few times - the post directly before yours I said dwb is completely unusable, and earlier on this page I said it was crashing consistently on many sites.

mhertz · 2016-01-08 23:09:20

I'm sorry trilby, i'll admit to not being very up to date on this, but whereas I've first hand experienced dwb's stumbling over many sites or even crashing on them, continuing worse and worse over the last many years, then for the last 6 month or so, i've continually been forced to add more and more stuff in the ignorepkg pacman.conf section to even get dwb to actually start up or starting up and crashing 1sec after no matter site. I just ment that I don't hear much of that, except in one case it was mentioned that only an earlier webkitgtk2 worked, but now I have 4 packages downgraded just for dwb(which messes up other apps), and am wondering why that is, in difference to you other guys...

Just some frustration really, as I don't expect anyone to be able to answer this much...

Edit: Well, obviously it's because it's an older webkit linked to older other packages/libs, so not much of a "why", but more of a "please, if anyone knows how to make dwb work(start-up!) with latest webkitgtk2 without immidiately crashing, then I would much appreciate it"

Last edited by mhertz (2016-01-08 23:15:22)

mhertz · 2016-01-09 03:25:17

Hah! I can't believe I missed this bugreport: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/45067

I've searched A LOT the last ~6 months time, but somehow missed the above... Webkitgtk2 is compiled with -O1, on line 41 of pkgbuild, and gOrelike(thanks!) posted on his system -O1, -O2 and -O3 crashes, but -Os not, so I will try to recompile webkitgtk2 with -Os instead of default -O1 and test, but I will have to get some sleep first, so first some time later... Fingers crossed!

Last edited by mhertz (2016-01-09 03:28:17)

Docbroke · 2016-01-09 06:53:32

Luakit is based on same webkitgtk2, but I am not facing any significant issues, excluding some rendering issue with gmail page (few options not displaying, but not a dealbreaker). No crashing atleast. I had same webpage rendering issue with uzbl also, in addition to occasional crash and poor adblock support. Will look at dwb if crashing issue gets solved. Now using luakit with qupzilla as a backup, for complex pages.

Last edited by Docbroke (2016-01-09 06:55:14)

Arch Linux

#2326 2015-10-19 13:34:54

Re: dwb - a webkit web browser

#2327 2015-10-19 16:18:43

Re: dwb - a webkit web browser

#2328 2015-10-19 17:32:58

Re: dwb - a webkit web browser

#2329 2015-10-20 10:23:43

Re: dwb - a webkit web browser

#2330 2015-10-20 11:43:30

Re: dwb - a webkit web browser

#2331 2015-10-20 11:48:08

Re: dwb - a webkit web browser

#2332 2015-10-20 11:58:40

Re: dwb - a webkit web browser

#2333 2015-10-20 13:53:47

Re: dwb - a webkit web browser

#2334 2015-10-28 15:44:36

Re: dwb - a webkit web browser

#2335 2015-10-28 15:51:18

Re: dwb - a webkit web browser

#2336 2015-10-28 16:02:49

Re: dwb - a webkit web browser

#2337 2015-10-28 16:08:00

Re: dwb - a webkit web browser

#2338 2015-10-29 00:50:55

Re: dwb - a webkit web browser

#2339 2015-10-29 08:39:37

Re: dwb - a webkit web browser

#2340 2015-12-18 04:01:38

Re: dwb - a webkit web browser

#2341 2015-12-22 00:32:47

Re: dwb - a webkit web browser

#2342 2015-12-22 08:03:51

Re: dwb - a webkit web browser

#2343 2016-01-01 18:15:27

Re: dwb - a webkit web browser

#2344 2016-01-02 14:20:48

Re: dwb - a webkit web browser

#2345 2016-01-02 16:13:24

Re: dwb - a webkit web browser

#2346 2016-01-08 22:24:56

Re: dwb - a webkit web browser

#2347 2016-01-08 22:34:37

Re: dwb - a webkit web browser

#2348 2016-01-08 23:09:20

Re: dwb - a webkit web browser

#2349 2016-01-09 03:25:17

Re: dwb - a webkit web browser

#2350 2016-01-09 06:53:32

Re: dwb - a webkit web browser

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