how does dillo compare with netsurf? I've been considering porting netsurf to an unusual platform, but if dillo has substantially better handling of modern pages, I might use it instead
I think Netsurf renders pages closer to what they "should" look like in a mainstream browser. However, a huge bonus for Dillo is that it is really easy to switch off CSS, images, etc if the page doesn't look "good", and only render the text (IMO this is also very much encouraged by the UI). I recall having some rendering annoyances with Netsurf, but this was at least 5 years ago.
What prevents you from doing some tests? We have seen Dillo running in a lot of old and not very common machines (Atari), so you may have some work already done.
nothing! I look forward to testing it out, just haven't had the time yet
Are you also considering ladybird?
I hope to, though I'm a little concerned its design and dependencies will be harder to handle
Ladybird is much more heavyweight at this point, it uses hundreds MB of RAM, not tens MB like Dillo.