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After reading this article, I decided to try reading the verge in a more "limited" browser which doesn't support endless Javascript and too may advanced feature

After reading this article, I decided to try reading the verge in a more "limited" browser which doesn't support endless Javascript and too may advanced features: Emacs built in web-browser, or "eww" (that's its name). It's sort of like Lynx or w3m, except you can click things and it shows actual images! You can see it here: http://imgur.com/FqJVB0U http://imgur.com/FqJVB0U You know what? The site and all content loads instantly. It may not be beautiful, but it works a hell of a lot better and is just so feather light it feels surreal. Maybe I'll seriously start using eww for more stuff. This was surprisingly nice.

Tiksi 11y ago
Links actually has a graphical mode too: http://paste.click/DdkwUx http://paste.click/DdkwUx There's even a driver to draw straight to a framebuffer. It can be useful if you're on a box without X or break X and need a browser (which is how I found out about it). I don't actually use it unless I have to, but interesting to know.
- josteink 11y ago
  Wow. Nice. Almost completely related to the discussion at hand: Interesting how much presentation and familiarity affects the cognitive load our mind has to deal with when seeing things. It took me quite some time to realize that the screenshot you posted was of my own eww image-paste on imgur loaded inside a graphical links-session. Have an up-vote good sir :)
- sp332 11y ago
  A note under Ubuntu: you'll have to install links2 (instead of links), and you may have to change permissions on the fb device to allow your user to write to it, if you don't want to run a browser as root.
eitally 11y ago
Hehe ... I had a similar experience but my solution was to just read it (as well as many other tech blogs) use feed readers. I almost never go to the actual website (The Verge, Mashable, Re/Code, RWW, Anandtech, Android Police, ...).
arm 11y ago
That’s pretty cool. I’d love to try using a browser like this for a while, but to be honest, I’d probably feel too naked to be browsing the web with no tracking-blocking extensions. No JavaScript makes a huge difference of course, but I doubt that that is good enough to completely prevent all tracking methods advertisers use (I’m thinking of things like third-party elements on a page, although maybe most of those are also loaded through JavaScript).
- wtbob 11y ago
  > I’d love to try using a browser like this for a while, but to be honest, I’d probably feel too naked to be browsing the web with no tracking-blocking extensions. ewww is emacs, so it's all elisp; it'd be easy enough to write your own tracking-blocker. As a first hack, just build a hash table of domains and add a little function which blocks fetching from any domain which is found in the hash table.
tempodox 11y ago
Integrating all those ad networks is unreasonably hard to do well, so it's done badly to save time. All ad-financed web sites have that problem to varying degrees.
j_s 11y ago
There are some pretty esoteric options available for just about every operating system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_lightweight_web_browsers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_lightweight_web_...

Tiksi 11y ago

Links actually has a graphical mode too: http://paste.click/DdkwUx http://paste.click/DdkwUx There's even a driver to draw straight to a framebuffer. It can be useful if you're on a box without X or break X and need a browser (which is how I found out about it). I don't actually use it unless I have to, but interesting to know.

josteink 11y ago
Wow. Nice. Almost completely related to the discussion at hand: Interesting how much presentation and familiarity affects the cognitive load our mind has to deal with when seeing things. It took me quite some time to realize that the screenshot you posted was of my own eww image-paste on imgur loaded inside a graphical links-session. Have an up-vote good sir :)
sp332 11y ago
A note under Ubuntu: you'll have to install links2 (instead of links), and you may have to change permissions on the fb device to allow your user to write to it, if you don't want to run a browser as root.

eitally 11y ago

Hehe ... I had a similar experience but my solution was to just read it (as well as many other tech blogs) use feed readers. I almost never go to the actual website (The Verge, Mashable, Re/Code, RWW, Anandtech, Android Police, ...).

arm 11y ago

That’s pretty cool. I’d love to try using a browser like this for a while, but to be honest, I’d probably feel too naked to be browsing the web with no tracking-blocking extensions. No JavaScript makes a huge difference of course, but I doubt that that is good enough to completely prevent all tracking methods advertisers use (I’m thinking of things like third-party elements on a page, although maybe most of those are also loaded through JavaScript).

wtbob 11y ago
> I’d love to try using a browser like this for a while, but to be honest, I’d probably feel too naked to be browsing the web with no tracking-blocking extensions. ewww is emacs, so it's all elisp; it'd be easy enough to write your own tracking-blocker. As a first hack, just build a hash table of domains and add a little function which blocks fetching from any domain which is found in the hash table.

tempodox 11y ago

Integrating all those ad networks is unreasonably hard to do well, so it's done badly to save time. All ad-financed web sites have that problem to varying degrees.

j_s 11y ago

There are some pretty esoteric options available for just about every operating system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_lightweight_web_browsers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_lightweight_web_...