[HN Gopher] Lynx Browser: The Land That Time Revived (2022)
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Lynx Browser: The Land That Time Revived (2022)
Author : leonry
Score : 75 points
Date : 2025-02-20 19:46 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (popzazzle.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (popzazzle.blogspot.com)
| aadhavans wrote:
| > It doesn't need a blocker for third-party scripting, service
| workers ... because the browser's technology simply doesn't
| recognise these page components
|
| I'd never thought about it like that, but it's a nice side-
| effect. You don't have to worry about obtrusive JS, if your
| browser doesn't know what JS is. :D
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > if your browser doesn't know what JS is
|
| It's worse than that[0] - Lynx statically renders the page at
| load time which means any "dynamic" updates just can't happen.
| I did have a bash at integrating the Mozilla JS engine but gave
| up after realising that anything more than just
| `document.write("flange")` handled at load time would need the
| entire inner engine rewriting and that was/is far beyond me[1].
|
| [0] This is based off my memories of the Lynx source back in
| the Olden Times, ~1995-2000ish.
|
| [1] But I did do the original cookie jar and colour styles (as
| seen in the screenshots) work (`lynx.lss` is all my fault,
| sorry)
| spudlyo wrote:
| This how I used to read HN at work, nobody bats an eye at text in
| the terminal. I'm sure I could have gotten away with sipping my
| coffee in the morning with the orange website plastered all over
| my screen, but I felt like it was important to keep up
| appearances--call it productivity theater.
| bitbasher wrote:
| That's why I play dungeon crawl stone soup in the terminal. I'm
| defending myself against fire dragons and dodging iron shots,
| but it looks like I'm aggressively debugging something.
| w4rh4wk5 wrote:
| While the article mentions alternatives like links and w3m, I'd
| like to hear HN's opinion on links vs w3m vs lynx.
| synergy20 wrote:
| i use w3m, last time checked it's more updated than lynx. w3m
| is also utf8 ready,lynx not. w3m-img can display images in
| terminal,lynx can't
| inopinatus wrote:
| some web pages are best read using curl
|
| or nc <hostname> 80
| jmclnx wrote:
| Last I heard, RMS does something similar to this.
| artiliran wrote:
| I always found links the most pleasant. A big factor was how
| often lynx asked about cookies, but now I know from the article
| I can set it to reject all I might revisit lynx. w3m seemed to
| set itself apart with the ability to show graphics which I
| didn't care about so never really gave it a chance.
| every wrote:
| I have my lynx set to accept all cookies (makes for far less
| bother) but somehow seem to have forgotten to tell lynx where
| to store them. Logout of the browser and "poof" they all
| disappear...
| dcassett wrote:
| Linux user here.
|
| I use links in graphical mode (links -g) quite a bit. It's easy
| to turn image display on and off with the '*' key. Image sizes
| can be scaled with the menu and they take effect immediately.
| If one hovers over an image link and types "i", the image
| itself is displayed, and there's an option to scale the image
| to fit the window. Getting a new links window is easy (Alt-F
| n). One gripe is that hitting Ctrl-C will close the window (the
| 'Q' key does this already)
|
| I use lynx as a second line of defense when some sites refuse
| to work with links, because lynx is sometimes able to display
| them (different user agent?). I also have been recently using
| lynx within xterm (disabling the alternate screen) for forums
| where posted URLs are not clickable (text only) in combination
| with xterm's dabbrev-expand() function to quickly copy such
| URLs in lynx's goto prompt. As an aside: in xterm's misc.c
| there's a a macro (IS_WORD_CONSTITUENT) that can be easily
| expanded to exclude characters that are not part of a URL, such
| as braces.
|
| I do worry that more and more websites will simply show
| "Suspicious Activity Detected" for these browsers. As mentioned
| so many times on HN, text browser users are a minority and text
| browsers are obsolete. I did once send a message to a website
| owner and later saw that I could access the site, but didn't
| get an acknowledgement by email, so I can't be sure if it was
| in response to my request. There still are some websites that
| degrade gracefully, and, despite complaints by the server,
| allow text input windows and submit buttons to still work.
| ylee wrote:
| I use two of the mentioned browsers.
|
| I have elinks as a default `tmux` pseudoterminal. I don't use it
| often, but it's always there.
|
| My emacs setup uses w3m as the parser for HTML mail in VM, my
| email client. It works really well.
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39793342>
| wrycoder wrote:
| IMO, a most useful thing is Lynx in DIRED mode. A great read-only
| directory browser - just enter a local url when you start it. For
| example, <lynx .> or <lynx /> .
| 2mlWQbCK wrote:
| I have not used Lynx interactively in ages, but when I want to
| save some pages of text from somewhere (typically an old web
| forum thread or blog) I often call lynx -dump (followed by gzip)
| from a script. It is an easy way to get nicely formatted text
| with all the HTML nonsense removed, and it also includes a list
| of all links from the page. Not exactly what a real archivist
| would do, but it works for hoarding text.
| atiedebee wrote:
| I did not know that it had that feature, and having just tried
| it out it does work really well. Its output kind of reminds me
| of the gemini protocol and its markup format[0],
|
| [0]: https://geminiprotocol.net/
| aghilmort wrote:
| that is very useful information -- does it work with sites that
| need logins?
| lynx97 wrote:
| Lynx (in tmux) is still my default browser. I only go for Firefox
| if I really have to. Its darn _FAST_ , has no remote code
| execution, and is typically all you need to read text on the web.
| Its also a good test if the web dev is full of shit :-)
| jmclnx wrote:
| lynx is my goto browser these days.
|
| It also supports gopher and I heard rumors it will add Gemini
| (protocol, the real Gemini). If so, that would be awesome.
| rsync wrote:
| From the article:
|
| "You can say goodbye to uBlock Origin, which is now virtually
| useless with default settings anyway."
|
| Are they referring to difficulties running uBO on chrome or ...
| that uBO is losing the arms race against advertising infra
| generally ?
| ziddoap wrote:
| I have to assume it's a chrome-specific comment, because I have
| not noticed anything different with it (or my browsing
| experience) on firefox (nor heard anyone else complain about
| differences).
| fffrantz wrote:
| Second that. I do see the difference at work where it's
| impossible to install Firefox and/or extensions; it's god
| awful to browse the web without it.
|
| I even installed it on my parents laptop and they never
| complained that ads suddenly started appearing.
| toprerules wrote:
| It seems like out of Lynx, Links, and w3m, Lynx is the only one
| still under active development with a recent-ish release. w3m
| seems to be completely dead.
| enriquto wrote:
| Elinks is alive, and with better support for many modern sites
| (no js, though).
|
| https://github.com/rkd77/elinks
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| Am I the only one who uses eww? Thats the w3m replacement.
|
| Strong shoutout to nyxt, it's not terminal based but it is fast
| and I've liked it so far.
| InMice wrote:
| Firefox (with all the foundation's junk turned off) with noscript
| and ublock origin is a compromise that works for me. Lynx feels
| too impractical in today's world but it's fun to use every now
| and then. Just trying hn on it now it doesnt render it cleanly
| terminaltrove wrote:
| Related to lynx, (with images)
|
| https://terminaltrove.com/w3m/
|
| https://terminaltrove.com/links/
|
| https://terminaltrove.com/reader/
|
| https://terminaltrove.com/elinks/
|
| We are so glad that these tools exist for the terminal, we even
| still use w3m and lynx from time to time.
|
| https://terminaltrove.com/lynx/
|
| If you do use the terminal for your browsing I recommend ddgr as
| it integrates with all of the above browsers, except reader.
|
| https://terminaltrove.com/ddgr/
| jlarocco wrote:
| There's also "eww" that comes with Emacs.
|
| IME it's usually good enough for reading docs and stuff like
| that.
| aadhavans wrote:
| "eww" is also my reaction to Emacs users (sent with vimium on
| firefox)
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| I have bad memories associated with lynx due to an earlier tech
| job. We'd help clients install their network printers so that the
| applications running on the RHEL/Centos box could see them. We
| did not have RDP or VNC access, but we did have on-demand SSH
| access to their server. So we'd end up having to SSH into the box
| and doing something like `elinks http://localhost:631` to bring
| up the CUPS interface over the terminal, and fill out all of the
| forms in the browser, tabbing to jump between lines and whatnot.
| It was a massive PITA.
|
| Not lynx's fault, of course. But memories are memories.
| badc0ffee wrote:
| This sounds like a good use case for ssh port forwarding, or if
| port forwarding was restricted, SLiRP[1]!
|
| [1] https://slirp.sourceforge.net
| Telemakhos wrote:
| I have better memories of lynx from the 90s: without internet
| access at home over university breaks, I'd walk to the local
| community college library, which had available, internet
| connected computers that could only browse the library
| catalogue or open a terminal. From the terminal I could telnet
| to my home university's unix server and use lynx from there to
| browse the internet.
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| I haven't tested many search engines but duckduckgo is very
| usable in lynx, it redirects you to a subdomain made for browsers
| that don't use js etc.
| lizknope wrote:
| In the 1990's my university had a lot of dialup modem lines but
| only a small amount of them had PPP support. You would just get 1
| terminal session. So I would dial in and then browse the web
| through lynx. It worked fine and was quicker because it wouldn't
| waste time loading images.
|
| I recently tried Usenet for the first time in 20 years. I
| installed slrn the text based newsreader I used in the 1990's. It
| has very useful color support. I wish Usenet was more active
| instead of 90% spam. Having threads go for years and being able
| to go to the next post by hitting "n" instead of clicking around
| is a lot quicker.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slrn
| xenodium wrote:
| Self-promo: I launched https://LMNO.lol blogs recently. They are
| powered by markdown and render just fine on lynx. You can try my
| blog https://LMNO.lol/alvaro or https://xenodium.com.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| There are also options like Carbonyl[1] and Browsh[2] which do
| images and js in the terminal.
|
| 1: https://github.com/fathyb/carbonyl
|
| 2: https://github.com/browsh-org/browsh
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(page generated 2025-02-20 23:00 UTC)