Midori: Low-fat Browser

Productivity Sauce

My recent weekend project involved putting my trusty ASUS Eee PC 900 back in service as my couch and kitchen machine. Despite its modest specs, this little netbook is still capable of performing daily computing tasks with aplomb. But to make Eee PC 900 a decent machine for accessing the web, I had to replace the Chromium browser bundled with the latest version of Lubuntu. After trying several lightweight alternatives, I settled for Midori. Although Midori may not include the advanced features of mainstream browsers, all the essential functionality is there. This includes tabs and a speed dial feature which lets you add shortcuts to often-used Web sites.

Unlike Chromium, Midori sports a separate search bar, but you can also use the main address bar to perform searches. The browser supports several popular search engines, and you can easily add your own. Midori supports extensions, and even though the supplied collection of extensions is pretty limited, it includes a couple of must-have tools like an ad blocker, a feed reader, and a user add-ons extension. The browser also provides support for private browsing, and you can easily change the user agent, so the Web sites and services can identify the browser as Firefox, Safari, or even Internet Explorer. Last but not least, Midori is lightning fast, which makes it a perfect choice for older machines.