Let us take a peek back in time into the first, easier days of the net. A lot of people employed low-powered PCs or dumb thoughts, frequently over slow rhythmic connections. We normally visited webpages utilizing command-line, text-only browsers such as the venerable Lynx.

Jump ahead to these days of internet browsers such as Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. You would believe surfing the internet in the control line could have gone through this tag. You would be wrong. Web browsers which operate at a terminal window have been all alive and kicking. They are market but still get the business finished.

Why browse the web from the command line?

There are numerous motives for surfing the internet in the control line. You may be a command-line junkie who would like to do all out of your terminal, or you may have a slow online connection. You may want to examine a site’s accessibility, prevent monitoring scripts and annoying advertisements. Or, you could only wish to read a report or blog post with no distractions.

With this out of their way, let us look at three plugins for your control line.

Links2

Links2 bills itself because of the graphic form of the venerable Links. It is much like its predecessor since it allows you to operate in a text-only manner or graphical mode.

If you start this by studying links2 in the control line and visit some Site, the result is something like that:

However, when you run links2 -g then see a Website, the result is something like that:

That is only one hint that Links2 can perform. The browser may display tables and frames and supports fundamental JavaScript. It is also possible to use your mouse to trace links in text or graphic mode.

ELinks

Just like Links2, ELinks is a part of the Links browser. And such as Links2, ELinks could exhibit frames and tables. Once it supports a mouse to trace links, ELinks lacks support for Javascript.

One characteristic which produces ELinks stick out from other control line browsers is its menu program. Press ESC on your computer screen a couple of menus that allow you to input and save URLs, insert bookmarks, prepare the browser, plus much more.

ELinks lacks a graphic style. However, it will have a nifty feature that allows you to see pictures on a web page. Either click on the placeholder for the image or highlight it and then press on your computer. ELinks opens the view with a program such as ImageMagick or GraphicsMagick.

w3m

When I fired up w3m, it informed me of a cross between the traditional text-based browser Lynx and the UNIX/Linux text viewer longer. When it may not have as many attributes as many other browsers that I discuss in the following guide, w3m gets the task done.

You’re able to navigate web pages with a mouse, and the browser could automatically leave tables and accept cookies. Just like ELinks2, w3m enables you to see pictures on a webpage with an outside application. The browser does not do JavaScript, however.

So far as the major job of creating web pages, w3m does a much better position compared to Links2 or ELinks despite complicated pages. The rendering is super more both clean and vibrant.

W3m does not use exactly the identical keyboard shortcuts as additional control line browsers, so get prepared to learn a few new ones. You can do this by pressing on H while conducting w3m.