Working with other programs
When you choose one of these browsers, you end up wondering how to handle edge cases.
When you choose a terminal-based web browser, you probably have an ulterior motive. Speedy downloads is great, but when you need to access data quickly for processing, tools that can download quickly is essential. In most cases, you can use programs such as cURL or wget. However, they usually lack the interactive capabilities.
Some of these browsers can send login data when run as a script. Sometimes, you just need one graphical tool for a very specific need.
Lynx can’t do much with other programs, but it’s an excellent tool for fetching data from web pages. You can call it with many switches, controlling what comes out and adding user names. This level of control can help you filter the data before you receive it. The dump command outputs pure text, not HTML.
While running Lynx, local execution of programs is normally off the table. However, you can use lynxexec and lynxprog to launch other software.
You can also define an external editor for forms. Links uses the same command to dump formatted content. You can call other programs using the MIME-type and file extension, a capability shared by Elinks. w3m enables you to choose the format of the output, giving you a file in formatted, HTML or HEAD data. You can also combine the two. When you run w3m, you can also call external programs using MIME and extension. It can also post when called by a script, enabling blogging using the command line. Since it works as a pager, you can even use it for comparing files. browsh shows web pages to the best of its ability, by interacting with Firefox.
In this month’s Roundup, you can see that your choice will depend on what you want your text-based browser for. They all work well for speeding up downloads and reducing distractions. They don’t all provide the tools for scraping sites. Granted, there are software libraries for that, but when you have a quick task to do, some of these browsers work really well.