| "going back to gopher or text-only browsers feels like admitting defeat tbh." Interesting perspective I have been using text-only browsers continually since the mid 90s (no lynx after 1999) As such, I never "went back" to using the text-only browser as I have always used one, but as graphical browsers became worse I used them less The customised text-only browsers I use today are 1.3 and 2.0 MB. I can compile them in seconds on underpowered computers The so-called "modern" browser is [rapidly-expanding size] MB, not was easy to customise via editing the source code and takes substantial resources plus time to compile Today, most www use for me is text-only. I am consuming information not graphics. I prefer textmode to X11 or the like I avoid making HTTP requests to remote servers with graphical, Javascript-enabled browsers I prefer using TCP clients and TLS forward proxies for making HTTP requests (at least one forward proxy now even has its own TCP client) I use the text-only browser to read HTML files For example, yc.htm is a file I create each day that contains all HN submissions where discussion is still open Today yc.htm is 12 MB and there are 7268 stories Using tiny command line utilities I wrote, the HTML in yc.htm is processed to CSV and added to an SQLite database. The unique domain names, today about 3704 of them, are extracted from all item URLs in yc.htm and DNS data is obtained via 1-3 pipelined lookups, each over a single TCP connection. The DNS data is then processed and inserted into an SQLite database The TLS forward proxy stores the DNS data in memory so that I do not have to make any remote DNS when accessing the www The yc.htm file can be opened in a text-only browser but I would not attempt it in a graphical one. The text-only browser feels more robust, less likely to stall or crash. I prefer the text-only formatting By not using a graphical browser I would not say I am "admitting defeat". I have full control over HTTP headers, I only retrieve the data I want, I never see any ads, I do not send data to trackers or telemetry collection points On the other hand, using a graphical browser does feel like "admitting defeat" as by doing so I allow "web developers" to destroy all preferences I have for how and when I want data retrieved and presented. If I allow the graphical browser unfettered access to the internet, and allow it to run unreviewed Javascripts, I lose all control over DNS and HTTP requests. For me, the experience of using a graphical browser where I have no such control is slow and painful, a horrible "user experience" I do not see using "old" software as "nostalgia". I see it as being practical. "New" software generally sucks The loss of "user agency" as some call it only occurs if one uses a so-called "modern" browser and runs Javascript. The seizure of user agency is accomplished by getting people to use a particular "user agent" that is controlled by online advertising companies (e.g., Google) or their business partners (e.g., Mozilla). If we called this a "choice" perhaps some readers might disagree. But so-called "Big Tech" have consistently argued that people "choose" Big Tech's "user agents" that, via their design and "default settings", effectively remove user agency for the majority of people who use them |
Gopher and Gemini are simple scripts, so is the actions plugin, but I have my own written in 'rc', a shell borrowed from Plan9 and a bit improved (readline keys, history).
For audio/video I just spawn mpv+yt-dlp in the spot.
https://dillo-browser.github.io/