I have been using Firefox for several years, and while it is a solid browser I have slowly been getting tired of its size and bloat (it is not just a web browser, but also a bookmark manager, download manager, RSS reader, configuration manager, software updater, etc.). I have seen a number of lighter browsers, but these have the same problem to varying degrees and are usually less functional.

However, earlier this year Uzbl appeared on the Arch Linux forums. It describes its goal as following the UNIX philosophy. The browser itself is a simple window with only a web page and an optional status and input bar, while everything else can be added externally through scripts attached to keyboard and event bindings. It uses WebKit as the rendering engine, so it should handle most web pages. While Uzbl is still alpha and is rapidly changing, it is the most promising web browser project I've seen.

Besides Uzbl there is now also Surf, also using WebKit. It appeared after Uzbl and was presumably inspired by it. I haven't seen anything describing its goals, but I gather it may be aiming for a dwm style with most configuration done in C.

Given that Uzbl and Surf use WebKit, they don't help with bloat in the sense of lowering code size, but rather in the sense of doing only one thing. The title of this post is based on the slides (which are in English) for a presentation by Markus Schnalke. The slides identify interface, size, and lack of software leverage as three problems with most web browsers, and argue that focusing on solving the last issue as Uzbl and Surf seem to makes sense because interface improvements are relatively easy and reducing size is hopeless since the modern web is itself insane and requires large software to render.