[HN Gopher] How and why I attempt to use Links as main browser
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How and why I attempt to use Links as main browser
Author : lich-tex
Score : 129 points
Date : 2020-07-21 19:48 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dataswamp.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (dataswamp.org)
| fierarul wrote:
| We like ascetics going in the wilderness to live in caves. So,
| without kidding, go you! But some screenshots of that would have
| helped the article.
|
| I wonder if the Stallman setup of getting emails wouldn't be
| about the same given the amount of proxies used.
|
| I actually had an intern implement something like this long ago.
| We had a web crawler and what better way to test it than to hook
| it up to email then rewrite links so it emails them too. It was
| OK for a few days.
| mkl wrote:
| The Links site they link to has screenshots under Features [1].
| It looks like something from the mid to late 90s.
|
| [1] http://links.twibright.com/features.php
| horsawlarway wrote:
| Do we like them, or do we use them as helpful reminders to not
| take the luxuries of our modern times for granted? (with a heap
| of respect for forgoing them thrown on top)
|
| I also find this comment deeply ironic given that the post
| argues against images on the web, but screenshots would have
| helped.
| necovek wrote:
| The post argues against images on the web which are
| "advertisements of content" and "made to take over your
| attention and again". A screenshot of how a popular page is
| experienced (eg. HN: I wouldn't expect that to be bad at all)
| here would be _content_ , I think.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| The post argues for turning images off. Period. Because
| they are not useful and break the author's ideal "uniform"
| web page. He then mentions he _might_ turn them on for
| sites that are useful (like wikipedia). He even explicitly
| states that he thinks that his view will be a giant
| controversy.
|
| How would you possibly know if the images on this page
| would be informative content, or advertising attention
| grabbers, when they're all turned off?
| necovek wrote:
| I see people have proposed either Safari's or Firefox' Reader
| modes as a stop-gap.
|
| I know at some point Firefox offered an ability to define custom
| CSS to use for all the pages, but I guess that's hidden
| underneath some about:config options today -- I can only see the
| option to disallow use of custom fonts by a web page. I would
| like to see someone implement a bare-bones CSS for the modern web
| that's easy to customize using these browser features.
|
| It seems what I am thinking about is userContent.css:
| http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.php?title=UserContent.css&pr...
| _jal wrote:
| I wish someone would write the "missing preferences panel" for
| Firefox.
| solumos wrote:
| I'd love to use a browser like this if I could download an
| installer. This download page brings back a lot of memories:
| http://links.twibright.com/download.php
|
| I swear I spent most of my foray into undergrad CS trying to get
| third-party software to compile on my machine (i.e. wasting a lot
| of time).
| smabie wrote:
| I mean, what's wrong with downloading it with your distros
| package manager?
| auiya wrote:
| A friend used to work for a porn hosting company doing account
| maintenance and general sysadmin. He said that's how he learned
| how to use Lynx.
| shanemhansen wrote:
| Ah, good old links2 -g
| qayxc wrote:
| Nice story, but Lynx != Links :)
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Unless of course he's got Lynx confused with ELinks, which I
| feel like is bundled with most RHEL/CentOS deployments. I
| became acquainted with it on a previous job that included the
| nightmare of trying to help remote customers setup printers
| via the CUPS interface when I only had SSH access to their
| box.
| fluential wrote:
| You could do port forwarding...
| pantaloony wrote:
| Or X forwarding to use a nice(?) GUI printer config tool
| (or run Firefox or Surf or whatever) if those are already
| on the remote machine.
| julianeon wrote:
| The 95% as good version of this, for most people, is just to
| disable JavaScript, then set the same colors & font for every
| website.
| kbrosnan wrote:
| No mention of Browsh yet. It is a neat hack bringing the
| capabilities of modern browsers to command line browsers.
| https://www.brow.sh/docs/introduction/
|
| > Browsh is a purely text-based browser that can run in most TTY
| terminal environments and in any browser. The terminal client is
| currently more advanced than the browser client.
|
| > The browser client, somewhat confusingly, renders simple HTML
| or plain text that itself was parsed by Browsh running inside
| another browser. The point being that the HTML or text that
| Browsh outputs is extremely lightweight. As of writing in 2018,
| the average website requires downloading around 3MB and making
| over 100 individual HTTP requests. Browsh will turn this into
| around 15kb and 2 HTTP requests - 1 for the HTML/text and the
| other for the favicon.
| nojito wrote:
| Switching to using exclusively reader mode on sites made surfing
| the web a much more consistent experience for me.
| Yuioup wrote:
| Noscript and pi-hole do a good job of providing me with a
| distraction free browsing experience.
| deeblering4 wrote:
| All the more focus for posting to the most distracting site of
| them all, HN :)
| ablanco wrote:
| A little offtopic, but interesting nontheless
|
| _Surfraw (Shell Users Revolutionary Front Rage Against the Web)
| is a free public domain POSIX-compliant (i.e. meant for Linux,
| FreeBSD etc.) command-line shell program for interfacing with a
| number of web-based search engines. It was created in July 2000
| by Julian Assange_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfraw
| indymike wrote:
| The web browser was originally was hyperlinked documents glued
| together with URLs. The browser has turned into a platform for
| apps that use a document paradigm for the UI... complete with
| built in database, graphics, and deep os integration. It's been
| huge leap in reducing cost to build, distribute, learn and use
| apps. The original use case of just documents is probably
| approaching being just and edge case.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I don't think so, I see most people reading documents. Now
| those documents might have lots of spyware, adware, scroll
| highjacks etc. embedded in them using JS, but at heart they are
| documents. For example a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc, page
| is more like a doc than an app for the most part. The internet
| is people consuming content. Even web "apps" served using Rails
| can happily work like this for the most part, with the
| occasional form post, for example Hacker News, Banking, Email.
| I am finding old school web apps much nicer to use honestly.
| They run work fast on modern connections and hardware.
| minerjoe wrote:
| FWIW, Facebook works great in Links. https://m.facebook.com
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| What is deep OS integration in browsers?
| todd3834 wrote:
| First few things that come to mind: - Access
| to Camera & Microphone - Access to USB devices -
| Push Notifications - Geolocation - Bluetooth
|
| "deep" is probably the subjective term here.
| methodsignature wrote:
| Printer dialogs in browser [_we hates it_].
| dijit wrote:
| Access to raw USB devices is a good example I suppose.
| secondcoming wrote:
| Oh sweet. What could possibly go wrong?
| jtvjan wrote:
| Not much, really. Unless the device has been created to
| work with WebUSB, you first need to manually add a udev
| rule (on Linux) or replace the driver with WinUSB (on
| Windows) before you can access it through a browser. Even
| then, the user needs to select the device from a list,
| like you would when giving a site access to your camera.
| zomglings wrote:
| Does Chrome OS qualify?
| feanaro wrote:
| I disagree it could ever be just an edge case because the use
| case hasn't disappeared and will likely never disappear. Blog
| posts come to mind as an obvious example, but also
| encyclopedias, research... Anything that simply needs to
| transfer nearly pure information instead of providing
| interaction.
|
| Of course the app use case has grown tremendously and is
| probably the more important one for casual users which are
| growing in number in relative terms, so I understand where the
| sentiment comes from.
| afiori wrote:
| One could say that even in many of those cases the original
| concept of document does not really apply. Blogs have comment
| section, wikipedia allows you to modify the document itself,
| and so on.
|
| Not to say that these are less of a document, just to say
| that most usecases are still moving toward using the web as
| an application delivery platform, even if that application
| purpose is to show documents.
| Ecco wrote:
| That page loaded _instantly_ on my PC, even though it was served
| from the other side of the planet. And it actually looked pretty
| good. So much for the "modern" web...
| pantaloony wrote:
| Whole page is around 5KB with three requests, one of which is
| the favicon. Browsers are fast when you just give them (mostly)
| regular ol' HTML. The network, rendering nutty CSS with
| animations and gradients everywhere, rendering SVG, "hero"
| videos, giant PNGs, putting JavaScript between the browser and
| rendering HTML--those are slow.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| I have used links-x11 as my main mobile browser back around
| 2009-2012 when I used it on Openmoko Neo Freerunner :) It was
| surprisingly usable back then!
| Ijumfs wrote:
| I use eww in emacs for a lot of browsing. It copes extremely well
| with the modern web.
| mrspeaker wrote:
| Same here. If Emacs is your operating system, then it's such a
| natural extension. And if a site doesn't work in Eww, then I
| consider it shoddy craftsmanship and refuse to open it in
| Firefox - so it's an excellent tool to stop procrastination!
| Pity HN works fine.
| oehtXRwMkIs wrote:
| That mentality is so funny to me. I felt the same regret with
| Steam Proton suddenly allowing me to procrastinate with games
| I hadn't been able to play before.
| dcassett wrote:
| I find eww to be slow on my netbook (20 or 30 sec to return
| ddg.gg search results vs. 1 second for links).
| tonyarkles wrote:
| Well then! I just fired up eww for the very first time, and I'm
| apparently having a little bit of trouble with posting this
| comment. The text field seems to be struggling a little bit,
| but otherwise I'm quite impressed with how well it seems to
| handle HN.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Obligatory mention: Lynxlet is Links for Mac OS. Terminal-based,
| pretty cool little packaging that does just his job.
|
| [0]: https://habilis.net/lynxlet/
|
| Edit: ah, my comment and my appreciation for the
| simple/straightforward design is very much in line with Lynxlet's
| mantainers, see their webpage for more [1].
|
| [1]: https://habilis.net/
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > Lynxlet is Links for Mac OS.
|
| It seems to be Lynx, not Links (an entirely different browser.)
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| Why wouldn't you use lynx instead of Links?
| chaoticmass wrote:
| Why don't people use elinks?
| catalogia wrote:
| I did before switching to eww. Elinks is pretty nice.
| mkl wrote:
| Links has a GUI mode, so it can show images, colours, etc. I
| don't really get the point, though; Firefox with uBlock Origin
| seems much more practical.
| every wrote:
| I've used lynx for almost 30 years but it is simply no longer
| capable of rendering the modern web in a useable fashion. It is
| however highly useful as a file manager and for stripping and
| importing web text via -dump. Also the best available gopher
| browser...
| pantaloony wrote:
| Links had a much better UI, last I checked. Or at least more-
| discoverable. IIRC it rendered pages a little better, too.
| forgotmypwbctbi wrote:
| links also supports mouse pointer.
| minerjoe wrote:
| I'm a computer programmer, lisper, emacser, vier, etc and I
| desire every program that I use daily to be compiled from source
| so that I can dig in whenever I need to fix bugs, add features,
| or just curious how something is done.
|
| I also highly desire the ability to change the keybindings of any
| program I use to be what I want, generally following the VI
| model.
|
| I also do e-waste collection and pride myself on being as fast or
| faster than others using 10+ year old computers (writing this on
| my main laptop - a Thinkpad T60).
|
| So with that lead-in, a few months ago I switched to this laptop
| and had a glitch getting X to start so I decided to push the
| envelope as far as I can running on the framebuffer, hence "links
| -driver fb".
|
| The web has gotten slower and slower over the years and while
| there are some new kids on the block such as the next browser [1]
| that should give me what I need on X, links has been a win over
| and over, so far.
|
| No code to share yet, but I finally got (for %95) of website, the
| browser of my dreams.
|
| Lightning fast. It will fetch and render almost any page in less
| than a second, but one thing it was missing was some
| customability and expandability, hence the natural move to embed
| guile. So I now have a lisp that is my browser and I am in the
| process of exploring what that means. Full keyboard control, for
| everything. VI bindings. A cache from heaven that remembers
| everywhere I've been and never reloads unless I tell it. I can
| fly around history like you've never seen.
|
| Anyhoe, happy hacking!
|
| [1] https://nyxt.atlas.engineer
| nsl73 wrote:
| > A cache from heaven that remembers everywhere I've been and
| never reloads unless I tell it. I can fly around history like
| you've never seen.
|
| This would be a killer feature for me, especially if the cache
| was fully searchable.
| avmich wrote:
| Back in 2001 there was a startup called IonKey which used
| early Lucene to search over all desktop documents - emails,
| Word docs, PDFs, browser cache... Didn't survive harsh post-
| dotcom crash.
| phre4k wrote:
| I just installed https://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/
| today and it's exactly that. Super extensible and super
| fast once you built an index.
|
| I only had to add a global file exclusion rule .* which
| prevents the indexer from scanning dotfiles. (The
| 'interesting' dotfiles are in a repo anyway)
| jorbas wrote:
| In a similar vein, Lynx is probably my most used browser. I use
| Newsboat[1] as an RSS reader, set to use Lynx custom keybindings
| (to make it more VI-like than the VI setting) when opening links.
| It works surprisingly well.
|
| [1] https://newsboat.org
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Someone else achieved a similar effect with readability-cli,
| which uses Firefox's Reader Mode library to pull the content text
| out of an article and output it into your terminal:
|
| https://gitlab.com/gardenappl/readability-cli
| divbzero wrote:
| A different but related approach is to use Safari's Reader by
| default on all sites. You can then disable Reader site by site
| if needed.
| xenonite wrote:
| Does it use JavaScript etc?
| cassepipe wrote:
| I really wish there was a text only browser that would render the
| web similarly to Firefox reading mode. All the lynx, links,
| elinks are not very user friendly and a bit ugly alas. I hear
| some of them have a Vim mode for navigation but I did not manage
| to use it reliably either.
| devindotcom wrote:
| Me too. I thought it could render all the elements, since it
| knows their size and layout, but just not retrieve the actual
| data inside unless clicked or enabled. A few rules would
| probably suffice to keep text content and necessary interactive
| items visible.
| rakoo wrote:
| It's not read-mode-level, but I've always liked Dillo
| (https://www.dillo.org/) for its sheer speed with acceptable
| design. It's only rendering HTML with CSS, and that is enough
| for a vast majority of cases.
| MayeulC wrote:
| I really like Dillo, it's my main browser on an old computer
| I still use. It feels very fast. However, it has some issues
| with SSL. Can you click trough duckduckgo results, for
| instance?
|
| I also miss a slightly more useable interface for bookmarks.
| And touch compatibility (to use it on my PinePhone).
|
| I really like the js-free experience. I've also used elinks
| in the past, zimbra works quite well with it, and pressing F4
| to edit my emails in vim is a breeze :)
| necovek wrote:
| A dozen or so years ago, w3m used to be cream of the crop (as
| far as JS support went, at least). What happened to it?
| smabie wrote:
| Yeah I remember w3m being really good. Looking at the
| sourceforge page, it seems like development stopped in 2012.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| Yes, they are ugly because they don't understand the modern
| web.
|
| Firefox reading mode is pretty because it understands the
| modern web, and is making opinionated choices about what to
| display to you.
|
| They are different design goals.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| For anyone else confused, this is not talking about Lynx[0] which
| is a text mode browser, but Links[1] which is a GUI browser (same
| pronunciation, different spellings).
|
| 0. https://lynx.invisible-island.net/lynx.html
|
| 1. http://links.twibright.com/
| mkl wrote:
| Links has a text mode as well, but it sounds like OP is using
| the GUI mode.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| [0] reminds me that I need to update https://lynx.browser.org/
| for the new version number.
| varbhat wrote:
| Links is unfortunately not enough for modern web. I have
| installed links , dillo browser , w3m , netsurf in my device and
| i ocasionally use them but modern web is moving away from these
| browsers.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| When I was doing web dev I'd always test with Links as one of
| my accessibility checks. Presumably that's common?
| ladberg wrote:
| I can't tell if your serious (about it being common - not
| that you use it), but I've never heard of anyone doing it and
| I'd bet less than 0.1% of web devs do this.
| afiori wrote:
| Many sites are not even tested on firefox
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| It was always hard to gauge for me how much other
| professionals do, presumably all professionals tests on
| Chrome, Edge, IE, Safari, Firefox as a minimum? It's so
| easy nowadays with web services to say least check first
| view?
| totony wrote:
| Most apps are interactive now and are hard to test on
| multiple platforms (ie it takes time). Even youtube has
| some performance issues on different browsers.
| boogies wrote:
| YouTube is made by a browser maker, ie. it has a motive
| to make non-Chrome browsers look worse. Eg. when
| chromium-based Edge came out, YT served it an old version
| of itself for no apparent reason.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Moving away like a meteor escaping the solar system in a
| hyperbolic trajectory.
| forgotmypwbctbi wrote:
| i think of it as almost a feature, because quality of website
| correlates with quality of content.
| jakearmitage wrote:
| I am still looking for a decent CLI experience to replace my
| browser. The only reason I have X11 is Firefox, and of course,
| everything that comes with it: Slack, MS Teams and JIRA.
|
| I dream of not having to deal with X and Gnome ever again.
| forgotmypwbctbi wrote:
| links gui is my default browser for opening url on desktop, as
| much as one can have that on fedora lxde with wine apps mixed in.
| (i actually have at least three "default browsers".)
|
| links gives me a preview of the page in usually under a second,
| opening a fresh process and all, on a 5yo budget thinkpad.
|
| as a bonus, twitter refuses to work with links, so even if i am
| tempted to open a twitter link, it just gives a 403, and i don,t
| have to read whatever mainstream crap is on tv this week.
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| Links seems like an odd stopping point. It used to support
| JavaScript, it supports images, but only HTML 4.
| Lammy wrote:
| Serious question, what's new in HTML 5 that would be useful in
| text mode? Even with image support <picture> doesn't seem like
| it would be useful since that's mainly about handling art
| direction and media queries and stuff that seems much less
| applicable there. Gotta say the idea of <video> implemented
| with libcaca does sound really funny though.
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| Links isn't a text mode browser - I think it will display
| videos and pictures.
|
| Form controls would be an obvious example of something
| relevant I think.
| Lammy wrote:
| I guess I was also confusing it with elinks, whoops. Maybe
| we should go back to the days when things were named like
| "Joe's Editor"
| [deleted]
| The_Colonel wrote:
| Links v2 has both text mode and X mode.
|
| Links <= v1 and its forks (elinks) have only text mode.
| yesenadam wrote:
| I was puzzled throughout why "a uniform experience" is something
| desirable. Totally puzzled.
|
| It reminded me of what McDonalds "restaurants" try to offer. I
| put "restaurants" in quotes because noone thinks of them as
| proper restaurants. Something about the uniform experience maybe?
| I guess before that every site had its own unique menu and style,
| that took much longer to serve..
|
| Does the author also prefer talking to people who wear face-
| masks? Do they shun syntax highlighting? Why take all the fun out
| of life? Why live like a Unix tool, taking in a plain text
| stream?
| ex_amazon_sde wrote:
| > I was puzzled throughout why "a uniform experience" is
| something desirable.
|
| Because using a very consistent UI (e.g. everything on
| terminals) takes less cognitive load.
|
| It is known that having to continuously switch your vision
| between different fonts, font size, colors and other visual
| patters across different applications is more tiring.
|
| It's one of the reasons for having an extremely consistent
| style on aircraft dashboards and similar.
|
| I've noticed the difference myself many times when spending a
| long day on a bunch of uncluttered terminals VS a heterogeneous
| mix.
|
| Furthermore, using a mouse requires a continuous feedback loop
| between hand and eye to aim at buttons. You don't need that on
| a terminal.
|
| When doing "change management" ops in Amazon the first step was
| always to unclutter the desktop.
| MayeulC wrote:
| I don't go to most websites to be amazed by their looks and
| usability. If one is better in these regards, then I'd prefer
| every website to enjoy these improvements.
|
| A proper restaurant analogy would be if each and every
| restaurant reinvented the way to put food into your mouth.
| Sure, it might be funny once in a while, but currently, when
| pushing the front door, you have no idea where they'll put your
| fork, if you will have a fork, if you'll be fed modern times-
| style, https://xkcd.com/1293/ style, if you'll have to inhale
| your soup trough the nose or hunt for your food.
|
| You might see it as "the fun of life" if that was common
| practice. But a standard interface (UX) allows one to focus on
| the important stuff (namely, enjoying the food: most Asian
| restaurants I know offer forks as well as chopsticks).
| Important stuff here would be the piece of info you came for.
| Be it an article, a picture, some data, etc.
|
| For instance, do you enjoy the "creativity" with which websites
| design cookie banners instead of having a standard form, or
| better, obeying the DNT bit?
| catalogia wrote:
| Perhaps the "non-uniformity" of the modern web is not the
| source of fun in the author's life.
|
| Isn't that more likely than the author wanting an unfun life?
| totony wrote:
| Having an uniform experience that you can customize is very
| nice. It matches your expectations directly which is core for
| design. No weird scrolling behavior that you didn't expect,
| laggy ajax webpage loading, ctrl+f highjacking.
|
| I'd rather something be more usable than arbitrarily "fun." You
| don't go around making zigzag roads, circle sliding doors,
| etc., which are arguably more "fun."
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(page generated 2020-07-21 23:00 UTC)