NetSurf is a lightweight web browser which sports its own layout and rendering engine written entirely from scratch.
NetSurf is designed to be lightweight and portable, supporting both mainstream systems (e.g. Mac OS X and Unix-like) and older or uncommon platforms.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Implements most of the HTML 4 and CSS 2.1 specifications using its own bespoke layout engine. Most CSS 3 selectors are implemented.
- Uses Hubbub, an HTML parser that follows the work-in-progress HTML5 specification.
- Renders GIF, JPEG, PNG and BMP images, as well as formats native to RISC OS, including Sprite, Draw and ArtWorks files.
- HTTPS for secure online transactions.
- Unicode text.
- Web page thumbnailing.
- Local history trees.
- URL completion.
- Scale view.
- Bookmarks.
- Full screen mode.
- Hotlist provides a convenient way of storing these addresses (URLs).
- Keyboard shortcuts.
- Framebuffer frontend available.
- No particular operating system or GUI toolkit requirements.
Website: www.netsurf-browser.org
Support: Documentation
Developer: The NetSurf Developers
License: GNU General Public License v2.0

NetSurf is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Lightweight Graphical Web Browsers | |
|---|---|
| qutebrowser | Keyboard-focused browser with a minimal GUI |
| Vimb | Vim-like browser based on the WebKit web browser engine |
| Nyxt | Keyboard-oriented extensible web browser |
| Luakit | Fast, extensible, and customizable WebKit-based web browser |
| Midori | Based on WebKit and the GTK+ 2 or GTK+ 3 interface |
| surf | Simple web browser based on WebKit2/GTK+ |
| Kristall | Small internet browser |
| Falkon | Lightweight Webkit browser following the UNIX philosophy |
| Dillo | Small, stable, developer-friendly, usable, very fast, and extensible |
| Dooble | Minimal, scientific, and stable web browser |
| Netsurf | Has its own layout and rendering engine entirely written from scratch |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Discovered a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |

