xombrero (until 2012 known as xxxterm) is a discontinued open-source web browser developed with a goal to be a lightweight and secure replacement for full featured browsers like

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current ...

. The browser has found a niche among minimalist browsers for heavy keyboard users by balancing minimalism with usability. xombrero is based on GTK+ 3.

Features

xombrero is based on the WebKit engine and provides an ability to control cookies, plug-ins and

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...

policies on per-

website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wi ...

basis. The user can define the

whitelist A whitelist, allowlist, or passlist is a mechanism which explicitly allows some identified entities to access a particular privilege, service, mobility, or recognition i.e. it is a list of things allowed when everything is denied by default. It is ...

s of trusted websites for each of those security risks. xombrero was designed for experienced command-line interface users, so it includes the features typically requested by such an audience: mouseless browsing, no URL prefetch, vi-like user interface and navigation (including ''command'' mode), plain text file configuration, and link hinting.

User interface

xombrero provides a ''command mode'' (designed after vi) for entering commands for the common tasks, including tabs (''buffers'') switching, entering URLs, following links and navigating through browser history and bookmarks. The same functionality can be accessed with

keyboard shortcut computing, a keyboard shortcut also known as hotkey is a series of one or several keys to quickly invoke a software program or perform a preprogrammed action. This action may be part of the standard functionality of the operating system or ...

s. By default xombrero window contains two panels, providing the ordinary layout of a web browser window. The first one (on the top) – "''fancy bar''" – provides URL entry, ''backward'', ''forward'', ''stop'' and ''white-list toggle'' buttons and optional search string entry. Another panel (on the bottom) – "''status bar''" – reports the current URL (or page title), zoom level and position in page. With these panels enabled and a mouse attached, the user may operate xombrero like

or Midori.

History

The development of the browser began in February 2010 under the name "xxxterm" by several OpenBSD users specifically for that operating system. Initially the releases of the browsers were identified by CVS revision numbers, though more common "X.Y.Z" version numbering scheme was introduced as development moved to

Git Git () is a distributed version control system: tracking changes in any set of files, usually used for coordinating work among programmers collaboratively developing source code during software development. Its goals include speed, data in ...

. In the release announcement for version 1.11.2, Peereboom revealed the plan to rename xxxterm to xombrero, though an emergency release under the old name happened later the same day. Later it was revealed that the version numbers for the browser under the new name would start again from 1.0. In early 2017, it appeared the project was likely to be discontinued, as xombrero depended on an old version of WebKit which had multiple security vulnerabilities, and a port to a modern version of WebKit would be difficult. Due to these issues, OpenBSD removed xombrero from its ports tree on 1 February 2017.

References

External links

* {{Web browsers, desktop Free software programmed in C Free web browsers POSIX web browsers Software based on WebKit Web browsers that use GTK Software using the ISC license Discontinued web browsers

Features

User interface

History

See also

References

External links