[mmsmatt]

Elinks could render to SVGAlib well enough to browse sites that weren’t loaded with JS, no X11 needed

[anthk]

Elinks? I think it's links+, which support{s,ed} SVGALIB and Framebuffer.

But back in the day you could browse without images perfectly fine, as the important ones where under galleries with custom links and downloading them was really slow.