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"HTTPS won't work directly, but has anybody ever written a rudimentary, less/more-like front-end to actualy browse the web while relying on netcat?" https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bonzini/netcat/master/scri... http://raw.githubusercontent.com/blmayer/astro/main/astro http://raw.githubusercontent.com/radare/ired/master/vired The second two are included only as examples of how some people write "interactive" shell scripts. I prefer non-interactive scripts myself. I write programs to help me use the web _non-interactively_. "Tech" companies and graphical browser authors are always advocating for "interactive" web use (eyeballs) because that is what is most suitable for selling advertising services. As _Hobbit wrote in 1995, "The web sucks." Graphical browsers are to aid those seeking to make money from the "dismal kludge". From one text-only web user to another, what do you think about Links' single key shortcuts, e.g., backslash to view source or asterisk to show image links. While I think Links' menus are somewhat cumbersome and slow, not to mention they can change from version to version, these single key shortcuts are very fast. By staying on the command line, the web (and computer use in general) IMO can indeed be a more focused experience and it is easy to avoid aimless browsing. However I think that this can involve slowing down in a sense. If I were to share a tyepscript of me using the web _interactvely_ through the command line, without a mouse, without using a graphics layer (no X11, etc.), or even a framebuffer, without a terminal emulator (e.g., no cut/paste), let alone a graphical web browser, IMO it could not compare in speed to someone using all those conveniences. Like you, I am using underpowered computers with limited resources. People doing "screencasts" always seem to have very fast computers, for lack of a better term. Graphical browsers and the web look very snappy in those videos. Alas, this has not been my experience with graphical browsers over the last 25 years, at least not the popular ones we are forced to use. Thankfully I am not trying to the same things as one does with a graphical web browser. I do not have to compete with those videos. I am not working on a different way to "browse", I am working on an alternative to "web browsing". I am using the web in ways that do not require a web browser, e.g., using a sitemap to HTTP/1.1 pipeline all of a website's pages over a single TCP connection to a single text file that can be split into chunks and read/searched with less/more (or Links). AFAIK, this cannot be done with a graphical web browser, no matter how "modern". And it is unlikely a "modern" web browser will ever facilitate it. Because it allows the www user to read www content offline, safely out of reach from "programmatic advertising". |
I would probably be really happy with an internet that only consists of FTP and email, so I'm definitely in the "non-interactive" boat, too. But, due to shallow knowledge (curiosity, but no CS education), the "outside the browser" experience has mostly been ssh, ftp, and wget'ing things with some simple scripts. The code you've posted in your comments is a huge inspiration to me, really.
It is also interesting how we (or, I) tend to consider a web browser the beginning point of internet use. Downloading PDFs, etc -- everything starts from a HTML page that is rendered to us by the browser. In your examples, it is the exact opposite: the text browser or pager appears to be the ending point of an internet session. Because of your tiny, modular tools, you can decide "on the run" what to do with the data during the next step. This is simply following old, time tested Unix principles, but it is fascinating to really see something like this in action, in such a streamlined way, when it comes to web browsing.
Perhaps it is even more precise to say that, by definition, the Unix pipes have neither an end point nor a starting point? It's all just stream of data (text), directed to where you want in each turn with your helper scripts. Utilizing this with day-to-day web usage is something people rarely do in 2022, I guess. So, yeah, I confess being somewhat blown away by your stuff.
Re: (E)Links' shortcut keys: funny you bring this up. I took a fresh look at ELinks over some years, and I did think that * and \ are really nice just yesterday. ELinks does render some things better than w3m, and my distro (Tiny Core Linux) has a build with zero dependencies (0.3 MB, just bare minimum of features, no TLS/SSL etc). With this setup, I'm really tempted to try out the "outside the browser" internet experience you've described. And that I've been thinking about for years.
As for the UI, I think I'm really only annoyed by the way URLs are entered in ELinks, into the curses dialog box in the middle of the screen. In this regard, w3m's command line feels more natural. I might try the :ex mode command line again, and the lua scripting, even though I don't want to have a big build with nonessential options.
Then again, configuring ELinks via the menus is actually a fairly pleasant experience IMO. In w3m, I'm always afraid of pressing some key I didn't remember. In Elinks, I can always bring up the menu and fix things when I messed something up by accident. So it's actually fine. Also, the minimal ELinks build in my distro keeps the menus clean and simple, there's no "feature creep".
And, obviously, a browsing experience that doesn't include the (though only barely irritating) lag caused by "accepting cookies" is extremely nice.