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Lynx is the oldest web browser still being maintained

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Lynx is the oldest web browser still being maintained

#51

Post by crazygringo »

susam wrote: post #38

It is unfortunate that modern web development has led to websites so complex that they either break entirely or look terrible in text-based browsers like Lynx. Take Mastodon, for example: $ lynx https://mastodon.social/ […] To use the Mastodon web application, please enable JavaScript. Alternatively, try one of the native apps for Mastodon for your platform. The C2 Wiki does not load either: $ lynx https://wiki.c2.co…

Is it really so bad?

Unlike computer interfaces, the web was never text-first. It was graphical from the start. The first browser was in a GUI, not a terminal.

Sites have been hobbled/broken on Lynx since the very beginning. It's neat and can be convenient to have a browser that works in your terminal for simple stuff, but the web was never designed for that. It's natural and to be expected that many sites will break. The burden is really on Lynx to do what it can to support sites as they are, rather than sites to try to build compatibility with Lynx.

It's kind of like, there are programs to "view" a PDF in the terminal, or at least its text content. But PDF authors shouldn't be expected to optimize the order text is presented for those programs. That's not what PDF was ever meant for, even if you can get it work sometimes.

Re: Lynx is the oldest web browser still being maintained

#52

Post by XzetaU8 »

anthk wrote: post #35

I still use it with: gopher://hngopher.com (for actual HN I use Links) gopher://magical.fish (Huge portal) gopher://tilde.pink/1/~bencollver/ia (Internet Archive) gopher://sdf.org (Tech blogs and code mainly) https://neuters.de (news) https://m.xkcd.com and a external viewer

Or you can use Dillo browser with the gopher plugin

https://github.com/dillo-browser/dillo-plugin-gopher

Re: Lynx is the oldest web browser still being maintained

#53

Post by ta1243 »

susam wrote: post #38

It is unfortunate that modern web development has led to websites so complex that they either break entirely or look terrible in text-based browsers like Lynx. Take Mastodon, for example: $ lynx https://mastodon.social/ […] To use the Mastodon web application, please enable JavaScript. Alternatively, try one of the native apps for Mastodon for your platform. The C2 Wiki does not load either: $ lynx https://wiki.c2.co…

And of course https://news.ycombinator.com/

Which works perfectly, including navigation (next/prev/parent). The perfect way to use javascript to enhance a site (collapsing threads etc) but not require it.

HN is hosted on a single machine in a colo somewhere (with a backup elsewhere), yet has far more value than the majority of sites 100 times as complex.

Re: Lynx is the oldest web browser still being maintained

#54

Post by wantless »

mrweasel wrote: post #13
rich_sasha wrote: post #3

How usable is Lynx for modern Internet? I would love a browser I can operate within tmux, but how does it stack against the modern javascript-laden ecosystem?

The problem, for the sites I'm interested in, typically isn't the lack of JavaScript, but how the sites layout. Take Wikipedia, the content is perfectly fine in Lynx and Links, but the menus are defined at the top of the page, meaning that you'll need to scroll multiple pages to get to the actual article. If you have website, which have actual content (text), it's pretty easy to ensure that it looks good and works in…

Site layout can definately be an annoyance browsing in text. More accessible sites will offer a Jump to Content link near the top, which is the case with Wikipedia. In Lynx, hitting the ">" to move down a row of links then right arrow (or corresponding vim motion if configured) brings you adjacent to the article TOC and significantly closer to the article text.

Re: Lynx is the oldest web browser still being maintained

#55

Post by mongol »

crazygringo wrote: post #51
susam wrote: post #38

It is unfortunate that modern web development has led to websites so complex that they either break entirely or look terrible in text-based browsers like Lynx. Take Mastodon, for example: $ lynx https://mastodon.social/ […] To use the Mastodon web application, please enable JavaScript. Alternatively, try one of the native apps for Mastodon for your platform. The C2 Wiki does not load either: $ lynx https://wiki.c2.co…

Is it really so bad? Unlike computer interfaces, the web was never text-first. It was graphical from the start. The first browser was in a GUI, not a terminal. Sites have been hobbled/broken on Lynx since the very beginning. It's neat and can be convenient to have a browser that works in your terminal for simple stuff, but the web was never designed for that. It's natural and to be expected that many sites will break…

No it wasn't. The img element was not added to the standard until HTML 2.0

Re: Lynx is the oldest web browser still being maintained

#56

Post by eviks »

bdw5204 wrote: post #47
eviks wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean unreadable on mobile due to tiny text?

It's perfectly readable on Brave for Android. The text even wraps to the screen size so you don't have to scroll. Which phone browser renders it in an unreadable manner?

Any phone browser that rendered the page before they added a simple fix

Re: Lynx is the oldest web browser still being maintained

#57

Post by cedilla »

susam wrote: post #38

It is unfortunate that modern web development has led to websites so complex that they either break entirely or look terrible in text-based browsers like Lynx. Take Mastodon, for example: $ lynx https://mastodon.social/ […] To use the Mastodon web application, please enable JavaScript. Alternatively, try one of the native apps for Mastodon for your platform. The C2 Wiki does not load either: $ lynx https://wiki.c2.co…

> The number of text-based web users may be shrinking

I wouldn't be surprised if it's growing in absolute numbers, in relative numbers it stays at essentially 0% where it always was.

Re: Lynx is the oldest web browser still being maintained

#58

Post by crazygringo »

mongol wrote: post #55
crazygringo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really so bad? Unlike computer interfaces, the web was never text-first. It was graphical from the start. The first browser was in a GUI, not a terminal. Sites have been hobbled/broken on Lynx since the very beginning. It's neat and can be convenient to have a browser that works in your terminal for simple stuff, but the web was never designed for that. It's natural and to be expected that many sites will break…

No it wasn't. The img element was not added to the standard until HTML 2.0

Images and other media were supported from the start, they just opened in separate windows instead of being inline.

The first browser ran on NeXT, graphically. It did not grow out of the terminal. And the very first publicly formalized definition of HTML in 1993 did already include the img tag:

https://www.w3.org/MarkUp/draft-ietf-iiir-html-01.txt

Re: Lynx is the oldest web browser still being maintained

#59

Post by udev4096 »

anthk wrote: post #35

I still use it with: gopher://hngopher.com (for actual HN I use Links) gopher://magical.fish (Huge portal) gopher://tilde.pink/1/~bencollver/ia (Internet Archive) gopher://sdf.org (Tech blogs and code mainly) https://neuters.de (news) https://m.xkcd.com and a external viewer

I don't get the appeal of using gopher. Is it just a nostalgic way of looking at the early days of the web or do you really think gopher was better than web? Might wanna read this if it's the latter: https://ils.unc.edu/callee/gopherpaper.htm

Re: Lynx is the oldest web browser still being maintained

#60

Post by c-linkage »

crazygringo wrote: post #58
mongol wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it wasn't. The img element was not added to the standard until HTML 2.0

Images and other media were supported from the start, they just opened in separate windows instead of being inline. The first browser ran on NeXT, graphically. It did not grow out of the terminal. And the very first publicly formalized definition of HTML in 1993 did already include the img tag: https://www.w3.org/MarkUp/draft-ietf-iiir-html-01.txt

OP never said that the web was terminal based. He said it was text-based. Text should render fine either in a terminal or on a graphical canvas.
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