Text Browsing

As many people are aware there are a number of different browsers a person can use to surf the web. Everyone has their own testes of what to expect from a browser or one or two that seems to work best for them that produces the results or provides the type of functionality they require. When the average user thinks of a web browser they might think Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera, SeaMonkey, Konqueror, Chromium, Canary, or Arora. What many will not think of are text-only based browsers as this opens a whole new world of browsing many may not consider; enter the command line based browser Elinks.

Command line browsers or “text-based” browsers are just as one would expect; no images to get in the way. The following is the man (manual) page from the Elinks text based browser.

ELinks is a text mode WWW browser, supporting colors, table rendering, background downloading, menu driven configuration interface, tabbed browsing and slim code. Frames are supported. You can have different file formats associated with external viewers. mailto: and telnet: are supported via external clients.

While sifting through the man page is all fine and good, lets take a look at what working with a text-based browser looks like. Obviously this is not the type of entertainment for everyone as the majority of people would most prefer their standard graphics rendering, full function browser. However, for those who spend a lot of time working in the command line or are curious enough to want to learn how to get the most work done from inside a terminal without leaving as possible, text-based browsers are a neat way to surf without all the added distractions that come from graphical browsers.

When starting Elinks, this is the first screen everyone will see. A person can start here by typing in any web address which of course will take them directly to that site or, cancel this action and go directly to the browsers built in navigation to perform other actions.

For this demonstration, I wanted to use something that most people will immediately recognize even in text mode with no graphics rendering. It’s the same page as one would view from any other browser, but rendered with text only inside a CLI (command line interface).

Welcome to the all familiar Google search page!

Selected fields can be navigated using the arrow keys then learning to click enter to select a field, type in text then click enter again to submit that text to the web server. Elinks will produce pop-ups that ask for confirmation that the following action is really what a person wants to do.

Typing in “text based browsers” into the Google search field produces results that look like the screenshot below.

This probably looks familiar from a layout perspective, however missing all the added “bells and whistles’ that most people are accustomed to looking at. Working with a text based browser is really great for data mining though as it removes all the “distractions” commonly associated with graphical browsers.

In the upper left are the standard options provided by Google search pages but click on [Esc] and the Elinks menu is produced that allows us to utilize all the typical browser functions a person would expect. Below is just a sample from the first dropdown.

While some may think of a text browser as “stripped down” the functionality built in is by no means lacking in capabilities one can perform similar to any other graphics style browser.

Obviously text browsing is not for everyone. For those who take an interest in working solely from the command line interface or are simply curious as to all the command line has to offer, a text browser is a must have in any arsenal and being able to use and navigate through one is not a bad skill to have.