Emacs-w3m is tied with lynx as my favorite browser (with telnet and wget both in second place).
Using emacspeak with it allows me to keep my eyes on the lab table (in case something goes exothermic too quickly) while still having the ability to pull up references. Same about reading [hearing] HN while in sketchy areas.
The other post about invoking w3m from lynx is worth investigating if You are not familiar with such. Look for "EXTERNAL" in your .lynxrc. I especially like having it "git clone" the page or link I'm on. Reality is that I heavily abuse the EXTERNAL stuff.
I've been noodling about the implementation of adding functionality to w3m and lynx so there is a separate fetch-page func but report a different User-Agent header (eg, "Mozilla"). I've encountered many pages that don't allow access until I change the "lynx-*" header (bastards).
Semi-OT: I'm addicted to lynx's multi-bookmarks feature (26 different bookmark files for easing the organization of your links), and about 15 years ago I wrote some elisp so emacs-w3m has the same functionality (and same bookmarks files).
> I've been noodling about the implementation of adding functionality to w3m and lynx so there is a separate fetch-page func but report a different User-Agent header (eg, "Mozilla"). I've encountered many pages that don't allow access until I change the "lynx-*" header (bastards).
I have the ability to pop into w3m from lynx[0] to view tables when necessary. I also have the option to call the x-www-browser script from lynx for the full graphical/js/css treatment, such as posting this comment from my account. But most of the time, lynx is more than adequate for my modest needs...
Something like Plan 9's Mothra browser for the Unix console would be great. Support for images, mousing, a small command language and good shell integration.
I like and use w3m a lot (I found the link and posted it here :), but maybe it already has a little too many settings to mess with. Then again, the lynx browser has more than 100, so YMMV.
It has a little too many settings/features for my taste. Unfortunately removing things doesn't attract user - adding things does.
I never used mothra, but heard a lot of good things about the plan 9 tools. They got the advantage, that they could start afresh. I'm curious how much work it would be to port it to a *nix system.
Yes, the defaults are a bit strange. Might be a little late to change them now.
IMHO, the most important thing to improve the user experience is to enable link numbers. With link numbers enabled you can[0] jump to a link by typing the number and then LINK_BEGIN (default '[').
[0]: Technically you can do this without enabling link numbers, but you need count the links yourself.
How does this do with sites that won't render without JavaScript? I browse with noscript and everything block by default. I'm constantly having to turn on JavaScript for sites that are blank until you do.
It's a nice sentiment, but these days it's almost impossible to conduct business with JavaScript disabled. At least business in the parts of the economy I work in.
The moment somebody sends me a Google Drive link (about three times a week), w3m goes back on the shelf and I have to pick up a modern standard-compliant browser.
Getting docs into an efficient "IDE" is still nice. Just yesterday, I was using nov.el to occasionally reference Blandy et al.'s Rust book in Emacs, faster than I could the PDF or in a dedicated ebook reader program.
One example: When I open this page here, in eww all comments have the same left margin and I have no idea what is a reply to what, but with emacs-w3m the nesting structure is visible.
What I really want is something inbetween this and a full fledged browser. Something that will basically allow me to browse the web in Reader mode, with support for images and native video, but without any JS involved.
I want a graphics terminal (as opposed to a text terminal) and a browser that opens in that terminal. The terminal should not run a windowing system. But the terminal itself should be able to run inside a windowing system.
I have been thinking of using a full headless chrome or firefox (so all pages work) and then share that with a commandline / lite browser. So we render and then re-render the page. The browser would run in a remote computer somewhere and the lite browser connects there. So a chrome/firefox proxy basically .
I like this idea. How do you know what to render, though? Do you simply copy-paste the page source (but then what’s the point?) or do you filter the source (but then how do you know what to filter out?)
I'd recomend qutebrowser. It's not exactly what you're looking for out of the box, but it is very customisable. There's a learning curve but once you're used to it, no need to ever reach out for the mouse.
uMatrix on Firefox gets one pretty close to that ideal, and makes it easy enough to enable JavaScript (and similar stuff) selectively until webapps and broken-by-design websites work.
I strongly recommend it to the technically-inclined.
Just trying this out for the first time.. Posted from vim inside w3m. Just took an 'apt install w3m' and 'w3m news.ycombinator.com'. Many of the default key bindings are vim like, took me a while to realise i had to use 'enter' to edit a form field rather than 'i' though.
Only disadvantage I can tell for HN is lack of comment indentation beyond one level... which might be a deal breaker.
> Only disadvantage I can tell for HN is lack of comment indentation beyond one level... which might be a deal breaker.
HN indentation works with spacer gifs, so you'll have to enable inline images for that to work. (Press o and tick YES for the Display inline images option.)
EDIT: also if you're using debian you'll also want to install the w3m-img package. Or change the Inline image display method to img2sixel (and install libsixel) if your terminal supports sixels, or to kitty (and install imagemagick) if you're using kitty.
(If your w3m version supports Inline image display method, that is. It's a relatively new feature.)
The option was already enabled but not working, the w3m-img package fixed it... I was only expecting place holders and very surprised to see real images rendered, not sure how it's doing this since i'm using urxvt, which doesn't support images AFAIK... is this layered on top via xorg?
The picture gallery is apparently under construction still. I wonder if it will ultimately contain a notice advising visitors to proceed by using a normal browser.
Readit News
Using emacspeak with it allows me to keep my eyes on the lab table (in case something goes exothermic too quickly) while still having the ability to pull up references. Same about reading [hearing] HN while in sketchy areas.
The other post about invoking w3m from lynx is worth investigating if You are not familiar with such. Look for "EXTERNAL" in your .lynxrc. I especially like having it "git clone" the page or link I'm on. Reality is that I heavily abuse the EXTERNAL stuff.
I've been noodling about the implementation of adding functionality to w3m and lynx so there is a separate fetch-page func but report a different User-Agent header (eg, "Mozilla"). I've encountered many pages that don't allow access until I change the "lynx-*" header (bastards).
Semi-OT: I'm addicted to lynx's multi-bookmarks feature (26 different bookmark files for easing the organization of your links), and about 15 years ago I wrote some elisp so emacs-w3m has the same functionality (and same bookmarks files).
Wouldn't this feature suffice? https://github.com/tats/w3m/blob/master/doc/README.siteconf
Thank You for directing that to me! And that repo (I've been using the .jp one).
I'm an idiot - I don't know how I missed that.
[0] https://lynx.invisible-island.net/
And yes, w3m rocks.
I like and use w3m a lot (I found the link and posted it here :), but maybe it already has a little too many settings to mess with. Then again, the lynx browser has more than 100, so YMMV.
In this light, Mothra is refreshingly simple: http://man.cat-v.org/plan_9_2nd_ed/1/mothra
I never used mothra, but heard a lot of good things about the plan 9 tools. They got the advantage, that they could start afresh. I'm curious how much work it would be to port it to a *nix system.
Might try his to give w3m another shot.
IMHO, the most important thing to improve the user experience is to enable link numbers. With link numbers enabled you can[0] jump to a link by typing the number and then LINK_BEGIN (default '[').
[0]: Technically you can do this without enabling link numbers, but you need count the links yourself.
The moment somebody sends me a Google Drive link (about three times a week), w3m goes back on the shelf and I have to pick up a modern standard-compliant browser.
It is sooo nice to have a web browser well integrated in to an editor as powerful as emacs.
https://www.neilvandyke.org/w3mnav/
https://www.neilvandyke.org/quack/
https://www.neilvandyke.org/linux-thinkpad-560e/
Getting docs into an efficient "IDE" is still nice. Just yesterday, I was using nov.el to occasionally reference Blandy et al.'s Rust book in Emacs, faster than I could the PDF or in a dedicated ebook reader program.
Ideal use case would be running webircgateway. Private self hosted irc chan for remote team. Accessed via emacs shell as we share code ;)
I also don't want javascript, as it opens me up to all sorts of javascript vulnerabilities and tracking.
emacs-w3m is just text, no images, and javascript, which is exactly what I want.
Another casualty in the war on user agency.
I strongly recommend it to the technically-inclined.
Only disadvantage I can tell for HN is lack of comment indentation beyond one level... which might be a deal breaker.
HN indentation works with spacer gifs, so you'll have to enable inline images for that to work. (Press o and tick YES for the Display inline images option.)
EDIT: also if you're using debian you'll also want to install the w3m-img package. Or change the Inline image display method to img2sixel (and install libsixel) if your terminal supports sixels, or to kitty (and install imagemagick) if you're using kitty.
(If your w3m version supports Inline image display method, that is. It's a relatively new feature.)
... holy shit this website is a living fossil
The option was already enabled but not working, the w3m-img package fixed it... I was only expecting place holders and very surprised to see real images rendered, not sure how it's doing this since i'm using urxvt, which doesn't support images AFAIK... is this layered on top via xorg?
> No images (without terminal hacks). Images viewable externally via keystroke.