[Tech] Character-based web browsers

+1396728992 UTC | class C { public: C() {} }

[re_nortex]

With the news about the Mozilla Foundation and the desire of many FReepers to drop the Firefox browser, there are some viable (IMHO) alternatives, both of which are character-based:

Links is text WWW browser with tables and frames. It runs on Linux, Unix, OS/2 and Windows.

Lynx is a text browser for the World Wide Web. Lynx 2.8.7 runs on Un*x, MacOS, VMS, Windows 95/98/NT, DOS386+ (but not 3.1, 3.11), as well as OS/2 EMX.

[re_nortex]

Thanks for that backward link to Lynx. Easily worth the ten amused minutes spent.

Ha! I do enjoy occasionally opening up the URL to an enemy site to see what they're running with that '=' keystroke in Lynx:

   Linkname: Daily Kos :: News Community Action
        URL: http://www.dailykos.com/
     Server: lighttpd/1.4.31-devel-783a962

   Linkname: Democratic Underground
        URL: http://www.democraticunderground.com/
     Server: Apache

   Linkname: Elizabeth Warren for Senate
        URL: http://elizabethwarren.com/
     Server: nginx  

   Linkname: Wendy Davis for Texas
        URL: http://www.wendydavistexas.com/
     Server: Apache

   Linkname: UAW.org | UAW
        URL: http://www.uaw.org/
     Server: Apache/2.2.16 (Debian)   

   Linkname: American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)
        URL: http://www.afscme.org/
     Server: nginx

   Linkname: HillaryClinton.com
        URL: http://www.hillaryclinton.com/
     Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.5

[re_nortex]

A very small, very fast browser for Linux distributions is Dillo.

Thank you! I had completely forgotten about it over the years and am now building Dillo 3.0.3. To give you an idea of how long it's been for me, my previous NEWS file has this as the most recent entry:

Nov 2000:

  Introduced a new design layer between the IO and the Dw.

  We'll try to focus on table rendering.

[rarestia]

why would I want to quit the Mozilla suite of services?

I've been wondering the same thing. So the homosexuals "won" by shaming the former CEO of Mozilla out of the position for his support of anti-gay-marriage initiatives in California. His resignation does not mean that Mozilla products are now "pro-gay." It means that a very vocal minority made enough to a kerfuffle to force a man to make a decision for his own good.

If the next CEO comes out and openly supports gay marriage, Leftist/progressive ideology, and donates exorbitant amounts of money to Democrat and Socialist initiatives, THEN we boycott. Until then, this is just a fart in the breeze, IMO.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

I wrote a python script to do same using the python URLlib2 and Beautiful Soup libaries.

[re_nortex]

Your mention of Python reminded me of the Grail browser. And of course, there was the HotJava browser from Sun. Someday when I have nothing but time on my hand, I'll dig out the sources for Mosaic and see if it has any chance of compiling on a current platform.

[familyop]

You can see images and better formatting with links 2.

[familyop]

AKA links2.

[familyop]

There might be a package for it in the repository for your OS. Looks like the homepage for it is here.

http://links.twibright.com/

[buridan]

Re_nortex, thanks for the nice reply. Dillo is even usable on a dial-up connection. It doesn’t do the flash stuff, I believe, but I usually don’t need that. If you go to “tools,” you can check or uncheck “remote CSS.” Sometimes that makes a big difference. Dillo loads FreeRepublic almost instantly.

[re_nortex]

Re_nortex, thanks for the nice reply. Dillo is even usable on a dial-up connection.

I appreciate it very much. The Dillo-3.0.3 configure/build/install process was fault-free and it absolutely flies!

I've pinged the boss since, as a tech pioneer, he may be interested in this thread. And, as I've mentioned before, Free Republic is in the top 1% of well-written web sites. The code is clean, passes every validation test I've thrown at it and is free from bloat like JavaScript, Flash, Ajax and the rest. That's why simple, straightforward browsers like Dillo, Lynx, Links and others are ideal for FR. Hope he mentions this to John! :)

[familyop]

There are also netsurf, midori, arora and hv3. I’ll try those out now.

[familyop]

Netsurf is very fast and has lots of features (including images)—looks much like Firefox at first glance here but much faster.

Arora is very fast and also has lots of features.

Midori, too—fast with features.

Hv3, greased lightening and featured, like the other three.

All show images and more features. I like and use text-only browsers myself when running from a console during custom installs. Most of the rest of the time, browsers that show images and have a few more features are nice. Of the four above, at first glance, netsurf and hv3 seemed to be the fastest. Will play with them a little more in time while checking security considerations for each.

[re_nortex]

There are also netsurf, midori, arora and hv3. I’ll try those out now.

Choice is part of liberty and, as this thread has shown, there are plenty of browsers available, both gooey and character-based. Since midori (now at 0.5.8) is webkit-based, it does everything well including HTML5. Not to be forgotten is Konqueror, part of KDE.

[9YearLurker]

I had already ditched Firefox on my Windows laptops, where I’ve gone back to Chrome, but I’ve been using it on my Android phone.

It would be nice to use the same browser on both, with a free password app, such as Password Box, available on both of them.

[GeronL]

if all Firefox users switched their default search engine to Scroogle or Duck Duck Go - would their money dry up?

[GeronL]

Chromium seems okay

[Scooter100]

My sentiments exactly. Conservatives who support anti-free speech efforts are free to do so, but they aren't conservatives in my book......

Make a list! Get their names, round them up, send them by box-car to the nearest FEMA camp. They must not be allowed to pollute our culture and our great nation! /sarc-irony(well, sort of)

[buridan]

Here’s a link to a Windows version of Dillo:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/dplus-browser/files/Releases/dplus-0.5b/