title: Making lightweight web browser - Gecko vs Webkit vs ???; Qt4 vs Qt5 vs?
body: <p>Since I'm not fully content with any of the mainstream browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Opera), and none of the less popular ones I've tried out (nearly a dozen), I decided to DIY and make a web browser I would like the best.</p>
  
  <p>The main goal is to make it use as little RAM as possible - my laptop has 1GB installed and is not extendable. But it must preserve all the basic functionality I need - full JavaScript support, support for external Flash plugin (as in, the Adobe's one), and maybe ad blocker using EasyList filters.</p>
  
  <p>But I don't have much experience in making native GUI apps, and after quite some time spent googling I've found virtually none info about what frameworks would do the job best. So I'm asking:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Which of these: Gecko or Webkit, uses less memory in general case? If they are about the same, which is easier to use and "mess in" (as in, remove redundant functionality)? Are there any other browser engines I could give a try in this task?</li>
  <li>Which one uses less memory for displaying basic controls: Qt4 or Qt5? What about QtWebkit - did it grow fat in Qt5, or just the opposite? If I decided to use Qt4, would I be able to update the Webkit engine (from QtWebkit) to new versions? How hard is integrating vanilla Webkit or Gecko into Qt application?</li>
  <li>Do you know any other native GUI libraries that would do the job as good or better than Qt, especially in the matter of memory consumption? wxWidgets? GTK+? I need to support both Windows and Linux, at least.</li>
  <li>Which of the open source JS engines uses the least amount of memory? It doesn't necessarily need to run fastest.</li>
  </ol>