Thoughts on Web-Browser Design

I’m quite unhappy with the webbrowser situation on linux at the moment and regularly try to find one meeting my requirements. To have something to link to instead of explaining my problems with those that exist, I describe both my requirements and my problems with existing software here.

1. Power to the user! Protect privacy!

Things the browser should only do with explicit consent from the user, if applicable the user should be able to choose which protocol/host/port triplets to white/blacklist:

• load/run executable code, like js, flash, java applets, … (think NoScript)
• requests to other domains, ports or using a different protocol than what the user requested (think RequestPolicy)
• accept cookies
• storing/saving/caching things, e.g. open tabs (“session”), cookies, page contents, browsing/download history, form data, …
• send referrer
• disclose any (presence, type, version, settings, capabilities, etc.) information about OS, browser, installed fonts, plugins, addons, etc.

2. Be efficient!

I tend to leave a lot of tabs open and nobody can deny that some websites simply suck, so the browser should, unless told otherwise by the user:

• load tabs only when needed
• run code in tabs only when needed, i.e. when the tab is currently being used/viewed (background tabs doing some JS magic even when they are not being used can create a lot of unnecessary load on the machine)
• finish requests to the domain the user requested (e.g. www.example.org) before doing any requests to other subdomains (e.g. images.example.org) and finish those before doing requests to thirdparty domains (e.g. example.com)

3. Be stable!

• one site should not make the complete browser crash, only that site’s tab