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# Frequently Asked Questions

This is an attempt to capture some of the questions that appear once in a while on the mailing list.

- I rebuilt/upgraded/reconfigured my ELinks, restarted it, but it looks nothing has changed!
- Why doesn't the W3.org validater work or sites that require to get the `true' referrer?
- How does cutting and pasting work?
- How does the "Move" button on the bookmark manager work?
- What's up with the navigation in the various managers?
- Why are there so many Links flavors?
- Which one to use?
- What are the Ki (kibi) and Mi (mebi) units?
- Why are stable releases made at Christmas?
- How can I get 256 colours?
- What User-Agent header does ELinks send?

## I rebuilt/upgraded/reconfigured my ELinks, restarted it, but it looks nothing has changed!

ELinks instances connect together so that they share the cache, bookmarks, cookies, configuration, etc. Only the "master" ELinks instance does any real work and any other ELinkses you run will only connect to this instance. So when you want to restart ELinks, make sure you have no other ELinks instances running at the time.

Alternatively, you can use the `-no-connect` parameter to make the ELinks always run standalone, or create a parallel group of ELinks instances by the `-session-ring N` parameter (where `N` is a number larger than zero); however, be aware of the fact that in those cases ELinks won't touch any configuration, bookmark, cookies, etc files - you can force that by the `-touch-files` parameter, however beware - this can result in a data loss! (E.g., when two master ELinks instances will try to save their bookmarks and you add a bookmark to each of those, only one of the bookmarks survives.)

## Why doesn't the W3.org validater work or sites that require to get the `true' referrer?

By default options are set to give as high security and privacy as possible. Since giving away information such as the web page you last visited can be seen as compromising your privacy the default policy for the HTTP referrer is to send the current URL as referrer.

## How does cutting and pasting work?

The reason why normal cut and pasting does not work is that ELinks requests to receive any mouse event info even if it is compiled without GPM. Therefore it is necessary to also hold down the Shift key when cutting or pasting text. If you do not need to use the mouse for navigation you can disable mouse support by passing --disable-mouse to configure.

## How does the "Move" button on the bookmark manager work?

First you need to mark all the bookmarks (or even folders) you want to move. This can be done with the Insert key if you're using the default keybindings. Asterisk will appear near of all marked bookmarks. Next move to where you want to have the stuff moved to, and press the "Move" button.

## What's up with the navigation in the various managers?

The managers use list boxes. To navigate (assuming you're using a default keybinding configuration) use Space to open and close the folders.

## Why are there so many Links flavors?

Please refer to the history page to read about the various flavors and the differences between them.

## Which one to use?

If you want a fast, stable, and feature-thin text browser, use Links-0.99. Main drawbacks include: No HTTP-auth support and no persistent cookies (i.e. they die when all instances of Links are closed).

If you want additional features, including HTTP-auth, persistent cookies, and on-the-fly compression, try ELinks. (Note: links-0.9x and ELinks versions > 0.3 do not share executable name or configuration files so you can safely run these on the same machine.)

If you want the option of graphics mode, use Links2 or Hacked Links. Be aware that some people have reported the latter as hard to configure/compile. You cannot run either of these with Links-0.9x on the same system without hacking the compile-time configuration.

## What are the Ki (kibi) and Mi (mebi) units?

They are binary units defined by the International System of Units. Examples:

One kibibit
  1 Kibit = 210 bit = 1024 bit
One mebibyte
  1 MiB = 220 B = 1 048 576 B

## Why are stable releases made at christmas?

This yearly present has become a tradition suspectedly because pasky worships the christmas spirit. ;-)

## How can I get 256 colours?

First, you must enable it in the feature.conf file before compiling.

Second, you must run ELinks on a terminal that supports 256 colours:

- Thomas Dickey's XTerm, version 179 or later (check which version you have with `xterm -version`). (Why version 179? XTerm's change log indicates no relevant changes in that revision but rather that initial 256-colour support was added in revision 111. -- Miciah) XTerm must be compiled with --enable-256-color.
- Recent versions of PuTTY. (Is this just a rumour? -- Miciah)

Third, you must set the TERM environmental variable to xterm-256color before running ELinks.

Note that, altho the Linux framebuffer supports 256 (or more) colours, the Linux console driver does not; therefore, console applications are still limited to 16 colours on the Linux console, framebuffer or not.

## What User-Agent header does ELinks send?

The older ELinks versions (up to 0.4.3) send:

`ELinks ($version; $osinfo; $textmode_dimensions)`

The new ELinks versions (from 0.9.0 on) send:

`ELinks/$version (textmode; $osinfo; $textmode_dimensions)`

You should therefore check against something like /^ELinks[\/ ]/, since more fields can be added inside the parenthesis in the next versions. Note that users can change their User-Agent through the options system.

Last Modified: $Date: 2005/04/05 20:23:41 $. Validate: CSS XHTML.