3 ms·

... so which one is it, if not Lynx? Links, elinks, links2, netrik, w3m, ..?

by dleslie 4y ago

metadat 4y ago
Do any of these support JS?
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
  At least one of them used to support JS. Below is from a changelog. Honestly I wonder though why anyone would want JS for a text-only browser. Maybe I have just been using one too long to remember what it is like to think the (text-only) web requires Javascript. IME, if the goal is to read text/plain or text/html, then JS is never needed. Generally, I can always retrieve the text/html of a website without ever using JS. Many times times I do not use a browser for the retrieval step. Sometimes websites might make gratuitous use of Javascript to make requests the www user never specified. For example, the www user types example.com, but the content of the website is actually found at example.cdn-123.com. The web developer may use Javascript to make HTTP requests to example.cdn-123.com. In such cases, I will retreive the content from example.cdn-123.com, making the requests myself, without using Javascript. Often JSON is returned instead of text/html. This is ideal. Because there is no need to read text enclosed in HTML tags there is no need for a browser. For example, I search YouTube by retrieving JSON not HTML.^1 I use netcat plus a localhost forward proxy instead of a browser to make HTTP requests. Then I transform the needed data from the JSON into a TSV table using a custom single purpose program. Optionally, I then load the table into a database using sqlite3. 1. The initial search returns HTML with embedded JSON that I extract. The continuation search returns only JSON. === RELEASE 2.1pre29 === Mon Apr 16 01:49:07 MET DST 2007 mikulas: Javascript was removed. The reason is that it is very buggy, Martin Pergel doesn't have time to develop it and code is so messy that no one else can understand it. If you use links for special purposes (embedded devices, etc.), you can bring javascript back by copying javascript files from previous release, removing "dnl javascript" lines from configure.in, adding *.c and *.h files to Makefile.am and re-running automake and autoconf. Javascript hooks from main code were not removed --- they just won't be maintained. === RELEASE 2.1pre28 === Wed Apr 11 01:39:36 cet 2007 mikulas: Fixed a bug in decompression and javascript document.write introduced in previous release (compressed data were displayed after document.write) (BTW. because the javascript interpreter has bugs, Martin Pergel has not time for it and the code is so messy that it couldn't be understand by anyone else, javascript will likely be removed in next release)

... so which one is it, if not Lynx? Links, elinks, links2, netrik, w3m, ..?

metadat 4y ago

Do any of these support JS?

1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
At least one of them used to support JS. Below is from a changelog. Honestly I wonder though why anyone would want JS for a text-only browser. Maybe I have just been using one too long to remember what it is like to think the (text-only) web requires Javascript. IME, if the goal is to read text/plain or text/html, then JS is never needed. Generally, I can always retrieve the text/html of a website without ever using JS. Many times times I do not use a browser for the retrieval step. Sometimes websites might make gratuitous use of Javascript to make requests the www user never specified. For example, the www user types example.com, but the content of the website is actually found at example.cdn-123.com. The web developer may use Javascript to make HTTP requests to example.cdn-123.com. In such cases, I will retreive the content from example.cdn-123.com, making the requests myself, without using Javascript. Often JSON is returned instead of text/html. This is ideal. Because there is no need to read text enclosed in HTML tags there is no need for a browser. For example, I search YouTube by retrieving JSON not HTML.^1 I use netcat plus a localhost forward proxy instead of a browser to make HTTP requests. Then I transform the needed data from the JSON into a TSV table using a custom single purpose program. Optionally, I then load the table into a database using sqlite3. 1. The initial search returns HTML with embedded JSON that I extract. The continuation search returns only JSON. === RELEASE 2.1pre29 === Mon Apr 16 01:49:07 MET DST 2007 mikulas: Javascript was removed. The reason is that it is very buggy, Martin Pergel doesn't have time to develop it and code is so messy that no one else can understand it. If you use links for special purposes (embedded devices, etc.), you can bring javascript back by copying javascript files from previous release, removing "dnl javascript" lines from configure.in, adding *.c and *.h files to Makefile.am and re-running automake and autoconf. Javascript hooks from main code were not removed --- they just won't be maintained. === RELEASE 2.1pre28 === Wed Apr 11 01:39:36 cet 2007 mikulas: Fixed a bug in decompression and javascript document.write introduced in previous release (compressed data were displayed after document.write) (BTW. because the javascript interpreter has bugs, Martin Pergel has not time for it and the code is so messy that it couldn't be understand by anyone else, javascript will likely be removed in next release)