How Would You Improve the Midori Web Browser?

[Deleted member 111282]

This is an off-shoot of a previous thread I made: https://linux.org/threads/what-would-you-do-with-discontinued-browsers.37504/. I think the reason it never went anywhere is because I didn't include any tags for anyone to search for (good thing I'm including them in this one). Feel free to pick up on where that thread left off.

Unlike the other thread, Midori is still being developed but is mostly unheard of. I came across it in the Mint repos a few years ago and have occasionally used it. While it's not as feature rich as LibreWolf, it still does the job for simple web surfing. Because the browser market has been reduced to an arm wrestling match between Google and Mozilla (with Google having the upper hand), what would you do to Midori to put both of them to shame?

 

[osprey]

SpongebobFan19 wrote:

Midori is still being developed but is mostly unheard of. I came across it in the Mint repos a few years ago and have occasionally used it. While it's not as feature rich as LibreWolf, it still does the job for simple web surfing. Because the browser market has been reduced to an arm wrestling match between Google and Mozilla (with Google having the upper hand), what would you do to Midori to put both of them to shame?

There's a brief article on wikipedia on midori: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midori_(web_browser). It's actually been around a long time, since 2007, and is well known in my circles, but not for reasons it might be pleased about. Now I see it's really just a name for a browser that is very different from it's original conception having changed from the webkitgtk engine to electron. The article mentions its past foibles ... crashes and dearth of extensions, which resonates loudly here. Perhaps that motivated the change. It remains to be seen where it goes.

It's quite contentious to characterise the linux browser market as an "arm wrestling match between Google and Mozilla", if that's what is being proposed. Browser wars have existed since the days of Netscape and Internet Explorer, but today there are in fact so many options for linux users, the very idea of "war" in the linux biosphere has been replaced by "choice". A relatively brief search online will confirm it.

 

[KGIII]

How would I improve it?

I actually considered taking this application under my wing. The best way to improve it would be to get the most current version(s) into the default repositories. Hands down, that's the best way to improve it.

Which would mean (in my world) either packaging it myself in a PPA (and/or Snap) - which isn't the actual goal. That'd be an interim step. Then, I'd have to ask one of my buddies that's a Debian maintainer and show them my work. I'd have to then convince them to upload packages on my behalf, which is something they're used to and is how the system works for this.

Then, it'd end up in the default repositories all the way down through the various distros based on Debian.

I'd then have to pay attention and re-package it every time a new version came out, preferably within a few hours. This would take some work and probably be made easier if the project's authors appreciated my work and included me in the publication schedule - at least giving me a notification in chat or in email.

That'd be the best way to improve Midori.

How? It'd bring more eyes and more resources to the project, including some sporadic donations and/or sponsorship.

This is actually the project I considered using to learn how to package so that I could take some weight off the developers. Fortunately, I never really got around to it and we now have a new team member who is still full of piss and vinegar, and hasn't burnt out yet.

Still, I should really learn the packaging process... I already have time constraints and give a whole lot of my time to the Linux community, but it'd be a good skill to have.

 

[osprey]

KGill wrote:

The best way to improve it would be to get the most current version(s) into the default repositories.

It really needs to work reliably before it's accepted into repos.

 

[KGIII]

It really needs to work reliably before it's accepted into repos.

Ha! Yeah, right! LOL

Actually, I've never really had any problems. It does have issues rending stuff if there's a lot of JavaScript, but that's no worse than a bunch of other software. I've never really had it act any worse than any other minimal browser. That and it's already in some default repositories - or was. It only got removed because it didn't get updates for like a year - during which I believe the project changed hands.

Hell, if you use an Ubuntu, open 'sudo software-properties-***' (qt or gtk), click on the third tab over, and click on click on the Import Key button. Lemme know what happens.

And THAT is included by default.

This is Linux. It's full of bugs and software that has issues.

Use Shutter to take enough "Selection" screenshots... Then, try using the export feature to upload it to the various listed sites - only imgur works.

I can go on and on listing software that's all sorts of buggy but in the repos. (That's why there are constant security and bug fixes.)

 

[osprey]

Of course I take all your points about bugs and software development. Certainly finding and fixing them is crucial to progress.

My comment really came out of my early experience with midori since its release. I was always interested in light browsers and midori was certainly a candidate. I found the early versions of midori effective, but then a patchy history of reliability set in until it seems its development went into recess for a while.

By "reliability" of the program I meant no more than it starts up each time and goes online as one expects of a browser, or at least do that very close to each time one selects it to use. That doesn't reflect on its further capabilities. It's in those further capabilities that one may find bugs, limitations, inefficiencies, and that's really the sphere where the significant development happens and where I understand your observations to apply.

The experience I had was to increasingly find that midori would not even start up, and when it failed, usually show few or no errors, and none that I had the ability to remedy other than do the sketchiest of bug reports. At that time, running a small network with different distributions, midori exhibited the same unreliability on a variety of reliable machines. It was very disappointing. There was another really light browser at that time called xombrero which was also in development by a small number of coders and it's reliability lead to the replacement of midori on the machines in the network. As it happened, xombrero died altogether, but midori struggled on and with its change of engine to electron in development, it does look to be promising from what I have read.

 

[osprey]

Out of interest, from debian packages on midori:

This package is not in any development repository. This probably means that the package has been removed (or has been renamed). Thus the information here is of little interest ... the package is going to disappear unless someone takes it over and reintroduces it.

Since it does look like it has been developing, see: https://news.itsfoss.com/midori-astiango/, it may return.

 

[KGIII]

The experience I had was to increasingly find that midori would not even start up, and when it failed, usually show few or no errors, and none that I had the ability to remedy other than do the sketchiest of bug reports.

You might want to give it another try - though I should probably check this first. It was dropped due to lack of development (so I understand) and someone else has picked up the torch. It was pretty effective the last time I played with it. (I love trying obscure browsers.) It still choked on some things like lots of JavaScript - it wouldn't render properly. I think it only has/had partial CSS support and wasn't completely HTML5 ready, but it was otherwise better than a text-only browser for my use.

 

[osprey]

KGill wrote:

You might want to give it another try

I'm certainly up for it. Downloaded the midori-ng_10.0.2_amd64.deb file from: https://astian.org/midori-browser-desktop/download-midori-browser-desktop/.

Unfortunately, there was an error.

[ben@fen ~/Downloads]$ su
Password: 
root@fen:/home/ben/Downloads# apt install ./midori-ng_10.0.2_amd64.deb 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Note, selecting 'midori-ng' instead of './midori-ng_10.0.2_amd64.deb'
<snip>
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  midori-ng
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 62 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/63.2 MB of archives.
After this operation, 240 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 /home/ben/Downloads/midori-ng_10.0.2_amd64.deb midori-ng amd64 10.0.2 [63.2 MB]
W: Unknown TAR header type 120 
W: Unknown TAR header type 120
W: Unknown TAR header type 120
W: Unknown TAR header type 120
W: Unknown TAR header type 120
Selecting previously unselected package midori-ng.
(Reading database ... 417034 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../midori-ng_10.0.2_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking midori-ng (10.0.2) ...
dpkg: error processing archive /home/ben/Downloads/midori-ng_10.0.2_amd64.deb (--unpack):
 corrupted filesystem tarfile in package archive: unsupported PAX tar header type 'x'
dpkg-deb: error: paste subprocess was killed by signal (Broken pipe)
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /home/ben/Downloads/midori-ng_10.0.2_amd64.deb
W: Unknown TAR header type 120
W: Unknown TAR header type 120
W: Unknown TAR header type 120
W: Unknown TAR header type 120
W: Unknown TAR header type 120
W: Unknown TAR header type 120
W: Unknown TAR header type 120
W: Unknown TAR header type 120
W: Unknown TAR header type 120
W: Unknown TAR header type 120
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

The culprit appears to be:

 corrupted filesystem tarfile in package archive: unsupported PAX tar header type 'x'

I'll wait.

 

[KGIII]

I'll wait.

LOL Well, you have a point! It worked quite well the last time I installed it - which wasn't that long ago. I almost wrote an article explaining how to install it.

 

[osprey]

LOL Well, you have a point! It worked quite well the last time I installed it - which wasn't that long ago. I almost wrote an article explaining how to install it.

Thanks for the encouragement. I'm hopeful of developments with midori from what I've read of the recent releases. I floated off a bug report to their contact email since I couldn't find a bug reporting site for them in my brief hunt online.

 

[KGIII]

I'm hopeful of developments with midori from what I've read of the recent releases.

I want to say there's a Snap version, but I think that might predate the changes made to the project and may not be the most current version.

There's also 'Min' browser out there. I have that one installed on this system.

 

[osprey]

KGill wrote:

There's also 'Min' browser out there

Thanks again ... this time for min. I'm writing this note from it. Seamless dpkg -i install. Now to explore.

 

[osprey]

In post #11 I mentioned sending a bug report to the contact email of the midori site mentioned in post #9. Just moments ago I received this response:

Hello Corella

Thank you for sending the report, we are reviewing the error in order to give you a solution as soon as possible.

Your opinion is very important to us, and we are launching the corresponding improvements.

Thank you.


El 2022-12-04 22:44, [email protected] escribió:

Terrific response.

 

[KGIII]

Terrific response.

Now that it's a fresh day, sans any wine or anything...

Like I mentioned above, it worked 'just fine' not all that long ago. I can't be sure of the date, but it wasn't that long ago. I seem to recall testing an image galleries (like imgur I think it was) where it broke down. There was one site that I couldn't log into.

I tested the CSS3 and HTML5 and the scores were low - but no browser scores a perfect score at those. I think I tested a few other things. I was planning on writing a review for it, but something came up and that article got pushed back and then forgotten.