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Brow.sh: a modern text-based browser

brow.sh

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Re: Brow.sh: a modern text-based browser

#2

Post by geoffeg »

This is really interesting, I'll have to play around it. I've been browsing news sites with "links" a lot more lately as it usually just gets me the content I want and it does so very fast. No ads, no popups, no JS - just the content. I could achieve the same thing with noscript and a few other extensions but those generally still aren't as fast and simple as links.

Re: Brow.sh: a modern text-based browser

#3

Post by trollied »

It’s good to see terminal-based browsers are still being developed.

I used to use w3m and lynx back in the day, and found them to be very useful at times (such as only having a GPRS signal available - makes browsing on a “full fat” browser impossible). Paired with screen (though I guess mosh would be a good option these days) to enable a resumable session in case the network dropped, of course.

Re: Brow.sh: a modern text-based browser

#4

Post by nchase »

last time I tried this it was great on my laptop, but because it uses Firefox in the background for rendering, it brought my t2 small instance to its knees.

I wonder if they've done anything clever to make it more efficient since then?

Re: Brow.sh: a modern text-based browser

#5

Post by timdorr »

trollied wrote: post #3

It’s good to see terminal-based browsers are still being developed. I used to use w3m and lynx back in the day, and found them to be very useful at times (such as only having a GPRS signal available - makes browsing on a “full fat” browser impossible). Paired with screen (though I guess mosh would be a good option these days) to enable a resumable session in case the network dropped, of course.

Note that this isn't a "true" terminal-based browser. It's built on a WebExtension running in Firefox that renders out the DOM as text to a Go-based CLI client. It's not a browser engine running in your terminal, it's more of a VNC over TTY.

Re: Brow.sh: a modern text-based browser

#6

Post by trollied »

timdorr wrote: post #5
trollied wrote: post #3

It’s good to see terminal-based browsers are still being developed. I used to use w3m and lynx back in the day, and found them to be very useful at times (such as only having a GPRS signal available - makes browsing on a “full fat” browser impossible). Paired with screen (though I guess mosh would be a good option these days) to enable a resumable session in case the network dropped, of course.

Note that this isn't a "true" terminal-based browser. It's built on a WebExtension running in Firefox that renders out the DOM as text to a Go-based CLI client. It's not a browser engine running in your terminal, it's more of a VNC over TTY.

Ah, noted.

Must check and see if w3m and lynx have evolved to cope with the modern JavaScript web!

Re: Brow.sh: a modern text-based browser

#7

Post by soheil »

It seems to be incredibly slow which kind of defeats the purpose of having a text-based browser to begin with. I'm not sure, but it looks like it's taking the output of a headless Firefox and turning it into ascii. If that's the case I'd rather stick with something like Lynx, etc.

Re: Brow.sh: a modern text-based browser

#8

Post by fathead_glacier »

soheil wrote: post #7

It seems to be incredibly slow which kind of defeats the purpose of having a text-based browser to begin with. I'm not sure, but it looks like it's taking the output of a headless Firefox and turning it into ascii. If that's the case I'd rather stick with something like Lynx, etc.

The point is when you have a connection with limited bandwidth. In such cases you can host browsh in the cloud and connect to it with ssh/mosh. You get a much better experience than text based browsers at a limited bandwidth.

It's great for such cases - I use it when hiking / working away from good internet.

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