Browse The Web Faster, Use Text Mode Browsers

Browse The Web Faster, Use Text Mode Browsers: Did you know that you can surf the Internet in text mode using a shell console or Linux terminal emulators? This is made possible by utilizing Free and Open Source text-based web browsers.

But why surf the web in plain text or geeky way while there are plenty of easy-to-use graphical browsers available?

To answer that question, I have here a list of some of the advantages in using a text-based Internet browser:

* Text-based web browser needs very few system resources, since displaying text needs much less processor time and memory than graphical pages.

* Text-based web browser runs almost everywhere, even in environments without a graphical mode. Especially the possibility to use them through Telnet can be very useful.

* Text-based web browsers have very quick start-up times. Thus they can be used to take a quick glance at a page without having to start a "big" graphical browser, and also without having to start the graphical environment if you do not have one running all the time.

* Information retrieval is much more efficient in a text-based web browser particularly when surfing graphically overloaded pages.


So if you are now convinced or have become curious enough to use an Internet browser in text mode, why not try the following:

Links is text WWW browser with tables and frames. It runs on Linux, Unix, OS/2 and Windows. Current version is 0.99. Visit its project website HERE for more details and to download.

Lynx is a text browser for the World Wide Web.Lynx 2.8.5 runs on Unix, VMS, Windows 95/98/NT, DOS386+ but not 3.1, 3.11, or OS/2 EMX. The current developmental version is also available for testing. Ports to Mac are in beta test. Visit its project website HERE for more details and to download.

Netrik is the ANTRIK Internet Viewer/Browser/Explorer/Navigator/whatever. Netrik is Free Source Software published under the GNU GPL, which essentially states that you can do anything with the programm and its source code, as long as it remains free. Visit its project website HERE for more details and to download.

W3m is a text-based web browser as well as a pager like `more' or `less'. With w3m you can browse web pages through a terminal emulator window (xterm, rxvt or something like that). Moreover, w3m can be used as a text formatting tool which typesets HTML into plain text. Visit its project website HERE for more details and to download.

W3mmee is a variant of w3m with support for multiple character encodings. Visit its project website HERE for more details and to download.

Emacs/W3 used to be known as the most popular WEB browser on Emacs, but it worked so slowly that we wanted a simple and speedy alternative. Visit its project website HERE for more details and to download.

W3m is a pager with WWW capability, developed by Akinori ITO. Although it is a pager, it can be used as a text-mode WWW browser. Then we developed a simple Emacs interface to w3m. Visit its project website HERE for more details and to download.

Debris is a free (see GPL) text mode HTML browser package. It provides:
• support for tables
• support for forms
• secure environment, suited for public terminals
• it is small (only 25% of the size of lynx) and fast
Visit its project website HERE for more details and to download.