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.

Wiki Editing

 I finally took the time to do my first wiki editing at opensuse.org today. With over 1700 pages available to go through, it can be a little overwhelming as to where one should start to help with managing all this information. Since the Artwork group has been my first stop at getting involved with volunteering my time to helping the openSUSE community distribution, I narrowed down the pages to those that are sub-categorized under Artwork.

 As I usually do, I jumped a little ahead of myself by wanting to add images into this particular wiki page and although it seemed like a relatively simple procedure, it turned out to be more. Wiki editing is actually pretty fun for people who enjoy working with documentation or writing articles such as myself. The software in use is called MediaWiki and is really easy to use.

 Follow along and I’ll explain the process I went through to add a screenshot of my desktop to a page where others are sharing their desktops for future development ideas.

Obviously, the first thing a person needs to do is contact the wiki administrator or whoever is “primarily” in charge of maintaining the overall effectiveness of the wiki pages. As a community driven operation, anyone who has a registered account with openSUSE has the potential to be able to edit wiki pages if they should choose to do so. There are guidelines to follow and a list of protocols to go with those guidelines. Obviously, since this is a community effort, we still have to have rules so that we don’t get a bloated mess going on. We want to keep the overall wiki organized and professional otherwise it will not work to be an effective source of information for others to follow.

First, I took a look at the page layout to get an idea of what people were already doing so I could follow suit.

Then I determined I would have to upload an image from my computer into a an image repository location where it could be referenced as a link so it is rendered in the wiki. This is essentially the same logic that goes on with any web page.

Once the image file has been uploaded for use, I personally recommend verifying that the image has in fact been uploaded and is valid in the image repository for access by the wiki. I feel it is always good practice to double check things.

After getting the image uploaded take note of the image name or even better right click and copy the image file name and paste it into a text editor for dropping into the page editor. Now navigate back to the wiki page that will be edited and in the upper left corner click on “edit”.

This will change the page to the editing console which will be an html based editor. Since our goal is to put our image in and retain the same formatting as what others have already established before us, I suggest copying the code previously used by someone else and then edit their image file to the one that was just uploaded for use. Note how the text editor for page editing should be under the tag heading of “Wikitext”.

When editing is all done, of course the next thing to do is to check our editing before we save the file as edited. Back up at the top next to the “Wikitext” tab is the “Preview” tab. Click on this and a temporary version of what the page will look like with the changes will appear.

It took me a few tries to get this right mainly because of having to learn how to work with the image files. If for any reason the editing doesn’t look the way it was intended to, down at the bottom of the page are the options to save, cancel and others. I suggest not worrying too much about going through a couple of times before getting it right but try to be both conscious and courteous when adding or editing anything to a community wiki page. Remember, people from all over the world turn to these pages all day long every day for help managing their system or navigating through for information about the organization.

Last of all is the final addition to the wiki. This is just a small addition to helping to make a good thing better by contributing knowledge, experience or just taking the time to fix or update old data.

I think there is a large misinterpretation of wiki pages. In some cases there may very well be a single moderator or maybe even a small team of maintainers. With a community driven project such as openSUSE, we really appreciate all the help people can apply to maintaining the wiki pages. With each new distribution release the page count continues to grow and as more and more of the community becomes involved, more and more pages continue to pop up throughout the site. There are a few dedicated people who have been working with the pages for a long time and believe it or not, they know just about every page. If maintaining a wiki is something that sounds like fun, don’t be shy to ask questions and get involved! We would love to have all the maintainers and contributors we can get!

“Have a lot of fun!”