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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

#41

Post by wantless »

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?

This response was written from Lynx within a tmux session: Hacker News remains a notable bastion of simplicity, usability, and accessibility. Lynx is my primary browswer, but precisely because I desire a degree of separation from the "modern" internet. This requires curation. Many sites simply do not work. But this practice gives me space to reconsider what I actually want from the web and what the web wants from me.

Re: Lynx is the oldest web browser still being maintained

#42

Post by yaky »

miki123211 wrote: post #39

I wish there was a Lynx-like (or, even better, Edbrowse-like) web browser, but powered by something like headless Chromium underneath. This way, you could have an extremely low-resource user terminal and/or a laptop on an extremely constrained connection, and still be able to use a modern web by connecting to a more powerful server. You could even share such servers between users. Because people aren't all using the…

There is browsh, which uses Firefox underneath: https://github.com/browsh-org/browsh

And looks like Carbonyl uses Chrome: https://github.com/fathyb/carbonyl

Re: Lynx is the oldest web browser still being maintained

#43

Post by zimpenfish »

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…

Brutaldon[0] is a Mastodon UI that (allegedly) works with Lynx. Which is something.

[0] https://brutaldon.org/about

Re: Lynx is the oldest web browser still being maintained

#44

Post by zimpenfish »

Paianni wrote: post #22
febeling wrote: post #10

I miss websites that look like lynx's: https://lynx.browser.org/

That landing page seems unmaintained, I think this is the main home page: https://lynx.invisible-island.net/

> That landing page seems unmaintained.

I maintained it for a while, then delegated the DNS to someone else, but they didn't maintain it either, swapped it back. ~I'll update it when I get a chance.~

edit: Updated with the correct version and some small HTML tweaks

Re: Lynx is the oldest web browser still being maintained

#45

Post by johnisgood »

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…

I made an e-commerce platform that has zero JavaScript. It is PHP only. Additionally, cgit uses JavaScript for updating idle time, but you do not need it, just refresh the page.

But yeah, I wish people were more hesitant over-using JavaScript.

Re: Lynx is the oldest web browser still being maintained

#47

Post by bdw5204 »

eviks wrote: post #14
febeling wrote: post #10

I miss websites that look like lynx's: https://lynx.browser.org/

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?

Re: Lynx is the oldest web browser still being maintained

#48

Post by greggsy »

andai wrote: post #37
febeling wrote: post #10

I miss websites that look like lynx's: https://lynx.browser.org/

The font in the screenshot is Cosmic Sans [sic], https://github.com/gregkh/cosmic-sans-neue which was later renamed Fantasque due to hate mail.

Do you mean the naming similarity to Comic Sans?

Re: Lynx is the oldest web browser still being maintained

#49

Post by johnisgood »

nbenitezl wrote: post #30

Oh, this brings back memories of my first steps with Gentoo linux, when I failed at setting up the display (XFree86 back then) or configure it properly, I remember browsing Gentoo wiki pages with Lynx to bring it back.

Yeah, it was "links" in my case I believe. Not sure.
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