[Malvern] Text Browsers

[Richard Smedley]

> > I know there's been discussion before but what are the text based
> > browsers called?

> The one I sometimes use is called "lynx".

_Lynx_ is the original text mode browser. It can be found on all 
platforms, and was pretty popular in the early 90s.
Until recently it was a default on most GNU distributions.
Often used by blind  web surfers in conjunction with TTS or
braille reader.
It handles frames and tables very badly. V fast to use, once you
set up a few defaults for cookies.

_w3m_ A Japanese program that started out as a pager. Sophisticated
handling of frames, by rendering as tables. 
_w3m-img_ puts images onto the terminal, too.

_Links_ excellent update to the cli browser, also available as
_eLinks_ with various enhancements. However:

_Links2_ trumps them all with its option to render graphics
onto the virtual console, utilising the SVGA library. Gives
/extremely/ fast rendering of graphical pages - it was my
main browser when I ran 24 virtual consoles on my Debian iBook 8-)

Links2 & w3m-img are far better than the Dillo graphical browser. =)

Personally I /really/ dislike graphical browsers - though this may
be a consequence of wasting so much time working around CSS
implementation differences between every single browser on
the planet :-/

 - Richard
(still browsing with wget & MC ;)

-- 
Richard Smedley,                                         rs at m6-it.org
Technical Director,                                     www.M6-IT.org
M6-IT CIC                                        +44 (0)779 456 07 14

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