Functions and features
These browsers are designed to be agile – you add your own features.
At first glance, these browsers will just show text from web pages – and badly at that. Yet you can use these browsers for many small tasks, although many sites will not work properly.
Lynx’s deliberate effort to remain lean has paid off. It does support local editing, so you can change what you see. You can define execution links and set your personal Mail Address so you can use that to send email and fill in forms. It even has a feature that shows transfer rate. If you’re still using Usenet, you’re in luck. The Gopher protocol is making a comeback in some circles, and
Lynx has got you covered.
Links and Elinks are related, so they work in similar ways. They both support a mouse (using gpm) and Mime-type calls function, where you can call other programs according to the MIME type.
Links is the only browser that has a cache for formatted pages.
Elinks also supports tabbed browsing. The menu system is the same as Links. The support tables and frames aids rendering, and you can use BitTorrent if you can compile the protocol yourself.
W3m works well with simple web pages but it’s also a surprisingly good pager and directory browser. Use it on local files and email and you have a solution for many tasks. This includes image viewing, but for more advanced jobs you’ll need to hand over to other programs. Video is a great example. You can also compile w3m with mouse support.
Finally, browsh supports tabbed browsing, and thanks to its connection with Firefox also supports all modern JavaScript and CSS by not doing it on its own.