Graphics capability

Graphics aren’t vital but remain of interest when using a terminal browser.

Graphics capability covers several angles, such as how frames align text and if images are displayed correctly. You won’t see it done perfectly in terminal browsers because since they aren’t designed for it in the first place. You may also want to have hints and help on display.

Modern web sites usually use CSS to create order on the page. This means that without it, the site will need to be scrolled through when it’s supposed to be organised into columns. Stackexchange is an example where you need to scroll over two screens to get to the answer you’re looking for. You’ll find the conversation after some effort, but it will not look as intended.

Browsh’s designer has made a conscious decision to handle this in an unconventional way. It renders CSS using Firefox and sends an estimated rendering to your terminal. For this to work really well, the terminal must be TrueColor. This method makes it possible to watch an approximation of video in your terminal. It looks awful because it renders it using a custom font to represent the different pixels. W3m handles graphics well, but it doesn’t do anything about organising the tables, frames and columns. This makes it a little messy on many pages. Its user interface is sparse.

Elinks looks great at startup. The status bar has nothing on show, but hit F10 to access help files. Elinks doesn’t display images, but you can define an external viewer. You can also do this for video. Links is the same in this regard – not surprise, as the two browsers are forks of the same code so many things are similar. You can also set up a viewer separately. Lynx ignores this issue. All browsers except browsh hands video over to other programs.