LibriumArcana.Games

Last year, I downloaded elinks, a text mode browser, but didn't put any serious use into it until today.

Some features that got my attention was

• It is text mode, meaning I can run it when X won't start up, over a low bandwidth SSH link, or when I just don't feel like looking at graphics.
• More control over how pages are displayed. I very often don't like the colour schemes that webmasters think are great, and in elinks, ignoring their choices is as simple as pressing %. But if I do like the color, it lets me use it!
• ECMAScript and CSS support. Pretty minimal support, but enough to be useful, but both also easily ignored. Future versions should improve its support.
• Being text mode, it ignores webmaster's font selections. I also configured Firefox and Konqueror to do this, but it is much easier when it is a non issue in the first place.
• Low system resource requirements. When started, it eats only about 6 megobytes of memory, and it remains low as you browse. The highest I got it in initial testing was 12 MiB. Compared to Firefox's greedy 100 MiB when started, this is very nice!
• It seems stable. All graphical browsers I have used have given my stability problems. The text mode browsers haven't, but I've not yet left it running for days on end, so this might be premature.
• Tables and frame support. Often taken for granted, but this is one thing that lynx doesn't have.
• Fast. No waiting on slow graphical renders, just looking at the text.
• HIGHLY configurable. All the keypresses can be remapped for maximum customizability. I set mine to mimic vi, and it easily flowed right along with this, working nicefully.
• Mouse support, including scroll wheel. With the excellent custom keys, I will rarely need the mouse, but it is there and works great for when I do want to use it.
• External editor for textareas. I can just punch up vi or vim to edit textareas on webpages, using all their power. I love it. If I went insane one day, I could even use emacs! (I like emacs, just not as much as vi :-) )
• Tabs. Tabs are one of the thing that I can't seem to live without any more. Wether in my browser, text editor, or anything else, I love tabs. elinks support them, and they are easy to use, especially with custom keybindings.
• Easy piping of information to external commands. At the press of a key, I can pump information about my page to grep or firefox, or whatever I want. It is the *nix way, and I like it. Lets me reuse my other tools more efficintly.
• Programmable completion of URLs and forms. Not played with this too much yet, but from what I see, it rivals or maybe exceeds things like search toolbars and autocomplete (like Konqueror and Opera have).
• Easy bookmarks. Again, right at the press of a single key. Doesn't get easier than that.
• Simple downloading. Just select a link, press d, boom, it begins in the background for me. This is something neither IE nor Konqueror seem to get right.
• Options editor is comprehensive and simple. Offering many options that even powerhouses like Opera don't have.
• Built in bit torrent client. Not something I use often, but since it is there, I felt I should mention it.

The downside of text mode is, obviously, no images. But if I want images, it is easy to press a key and have the page punch up in one of my many other graphical browsers. Very happy with it so far, and am actually contemplating using it as my default browser. It is nice not having to be pressing alt and ctrl to get things done. Custom single key mappings is one of the best things in the world.

One other down side is that on a page with many links, it takes some time to scroll through them all with the arrow keys. Luckily, the mouse support makes that a very small issue, but still, I'll want to look into what I can do to adjust that.

Text mode browsers aren't for everyone, but you should give it a try. You never know, you might get addicted. ;-)