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 w3m - Default branch
Section: Unix

 

Added: Wed, Jun 9th 1999 13:57 PDT (8 years, 11 months ago) Updated: Mon, Jun 4th 2007 05:32 PDT (11 months, 17 days ago)


Screenshot About:
w3m is a pager/text-based WWW browser. It is similar to Lynx, but handles some things like page navigation differently. It can render tables and frames (by converting frames into tables) or display a document given from standard input. It can also be used with mouse in an xterm or in a gpm-driven console, and it is small.

Author:
Akinori Ito [contact developer]

Rating:
8.63/10.00 (28 votes)

Homepage:
http://w3m.sourceforge.net/
Tar/GZ:
http://sourceforge.net/[..]39518&package_id=31682&release_id=512477
Changelog:
http://w3m.cvs.sourceforge.net/*checkout*/w3m/w3m/NEWS?revision=1.79
Debian package:
http://packages.debian.org/w3m
Mailing list archive:
http://www.sic.med.tohoku.ac.jp/~satodai/w3m-dev-en/

Trove categories: [change]
[Environment]  Console (Text Based)
[Intended Audience]  End Users/Desktop
[License]  OSI Approved
[Topic]  Internet :: WWW/HTTP :: Browsers

Dependencies: [change]
No dependencies filed

 
Project admins: [change]
» Akinori Ito (Owner)

» Rating: 8.63/10.00 (Rank 201)
» Vitality: 0.02% (Rank 2246)
» Popularity: 5.19% (Rank 645)

project statsdownload stats
(click to enlarge graphs)
   Record hits: 59,342
   URL hits: 39,092
   Subscribers: 102

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 Branches

Branch Version Last release License URLs
Default 0.5.2 04-Jun-2007 OSI Approved Homepage Tar/GZ Changelog Hosted on SourceForge.net

 Articles referencing this project

 Comments

[»] Misleading comment in release notes
by T.E.Dickey - Oct 5th 2003 10:32:07

Lynx can read a document from standard input, and (for several years) has had mouse support. Those items should be removed from the boilerplate description of w3m's differences from lynx.

[reply] [top]


[»] Convert webpages to PDF Documents
by Charles - May 6th 2003 14:59:32

I'm offering my webpage to pdf convrsion utility to all of the browser projects. I've built a online file conversion engine which takes public webpages, changes them to pdf docuiments and then e-mails the pdf document to the end user. A running copy can be found at www.2convert.com.

If you want it, let me know.

Charles

--
Charles Barr www.2convert.com

[reply] [top]


[»] Re: W3M vs. links
by Frédéric L. W. Meunier - Oct 30th 2000 15:00:28

Lynx supports SSL.

[reply] [top]


    [»] Re: W3M vs. links
    by T.E.Dickey - Jan 21st 2003 18:24:18


    > Lynx supports SSL.
    True. It also supports mouse navigation, reading from stdin, etc.
    w3m makes a nice auxiliary browser from lynx.

    [reply] [top]


[»] Re: W3M vs. links
by KarimH - Oct 30th 2000 13:17:23

Last I checked w3m was the only text based browser to support ssl. That fact alone puts it in a class all its own.

[reply] [top]


    [»] Re: W3M vs. links
    by Michael Vogel - Feb 3rd 2002 03:44:04


    > Last I checked w3m was the only text
    > based browser to support ssl.

    You're not right. Links supports SSL as well.

    Bye!

    Michael

    [reply] [top]


[»] Sweet!
by WindozeSux - Jun 11th 2000 19:59:20

Now THIS is a cool browser. It's got lots of nice little touches, like allowing you to use the text editor of your choice for multi-line text fields. I also like the frames support, and tables are handled surprisingly well. I still think Lynx is a good browser, but w3m is definitely more capable from my use of it so far. My only gripe is that some of the key settings are a bit weird.

[reply] [top]


[»] xterm mouse bug in 0.1.9
by Moritz Barsnick - May 18th 2000 09:10:32

I have encountered a bug in mouse usage in xterms in version 0.1.9. (The mouse doesn't work at all, at least on Solaris 2.6.) Using the files term.c and term.h from 0.1.8 solves the problem (sorry, can't trace it down closer). The author is informed.

[reply] [top]


[»] Lynx URL preview
by StarFace - Mar 20th 2000 13:00:32

There is a different way to preview a URL. I use advanced mode most of the time so I don't need it, but if you prefer one of the other modes you can still use the 'details' feature to access the URL of the link and much more. Just press the '=' key and it will present you with all the info you'll need. I havn't tried w3m yet, I have tried Links and I wasn't impressed with the lack of numbered keypad mapped links. That is a feature that really makes Lynx shine, the ability to leap from link to link with the number pad. Scrolling to a link that is two tables over and 20 links down in Links is painful.

--
.:.

[reply] [top]


[»] Exceptional
by Lynx@HongKong - Feb 13th 2000 01:21:20

Never thought a text-mode browser could work so well. Kudos to the author!

[reply] [top]


[»] W3M vs. links
by pasky - Jan 15th 2000 15:55:44

I downloaded the W3M, yes, it is very good text browser (LYNX is __totally__ obsolete ;). But why, when i'm on the link, i cannot see the link's target? It's feature which i didn't see in Lynx, so i hoped i'll see it here :(. And one more question - can anybody tell me, in which things W3M is better than Links? Yes, Links hasn't support of Cookies, but exists anything more? Thanks...

[reply] [top]


    [»] Re: W3M vs. links
    by Alejandro Forero Cuervo - Mar 23rd 2001 18:34:00


    > But why, when i'm on the
    > link, i cannot see the link's target?

    To see the link's target, you can hit `u'. It will display it. Furthermore, you can go to the option setting pannel (hit `o') and set `Automatic display of link URL'.

    Hope it works.

    Alejo.

    [reply] [top]


[»] re: wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.
by jeff covey - Jan 3rd 2000 11:50:39

[further proof that we need better browsers: netscape crashed with a bus error after i typed in my username and password when i tried to start this post. just for fun, i decided to keep restarting netscape to see how many times it would take before it would stop crashing. i didn't get here until the seventh time.]

dan writes:

It's not true that w3m has no pop-up windows. If you right-click your mouse in w3m, then a pop-up window of appears.

hmmm... doesn't do anything for me.

w3m also has perfectly good cookie support.

doesn't work with yahoo!. i'd like to check my calendar with w3m, but it just says, "accepting cookie..." then brings me to a page saying there was an error encountered when setting my cookie.

--
vs lbh pna ernq guvf, lbh'er n trrx.

[reply] [top]


[»] re: wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.
by Daniel Pearson - Jan 2nd 2000 00:03:17

It's not true that w3m has no pop-up windows. If you right-click your mouse in w3m, then a pop-up window of appears. However, I'll admit that it's not as nice as the pervasive pop-up dialogs in links.

w3m also has perfectly good cookie support.

--
.signature: No such file or directory

[reply] [top]


[»] wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.
by jeff covey - Dec 26th 1999 14:41:19

w3m is currently my favorite browser. for part of my freshmeat work, dragging and dropping urls between netscape windows is easier, but for anything involving editing text and spellchecking, i run two xterms, one with w3m and one with "emacs -nw -e server-start". i also use it in combination with vm (the super-duper cool emacs mail client) when i get html mail; the mail is passed to "w3m -dump" for parsing, and the output inserted into its place in the message. i even use this in combination with mswordview to convert .doc files to html, parse the result, and display it. no need to fire up x and run abiword just because someone was silly enough to send you a word document.

the table and frame rendering are simply outstanding.

all that said, w3m could stand to borrow an interface idea or two from the other browsers i've used recently, emacs w3 mode and links. (i would probably use links, but it doesn't handle authentication, so i can't log on to fm to work.)

w3 mode has the nicest handling of forms that i've ever seen. the best part, and the one any keyboard-based browser should emulate, is that when you have to choose an item from a select list, you hit enter on the field in question, and you're given a prompt in the minibuffer. hit tab, and you'll get a list of all the options. find the one you want, and you can just type it in (with auto-completion, of course). this is a fantastic time saver when opposed to scrolling up and down through a list, especially when the list has several pages of items in it.

from links, w3m could learn two things:

  1. an ncurses interface with pop-up windows for choices is just *nice*. do it. please. :) better yet, use something really cool and attractive like dialog or s-lang .
  2. being able to background downloads is just darn convenient.

oh, and i need cookie support. :)

thanks to akinori for this wonderful and long-desired program.

--
vs lbh pna ernq guvf, lbh'er n trrx.

[reply] [top]


[»] How does this compare to
by abo - Dec 12th 1999 18:08:27

I've seen a lot of praise for this one in comparison to lynx. There is another console based browser with table support called links

Fom the authors comments, links looks like it has a smarter underlying implementation, but I'd be interested in end user comments on how they compare.

[reply] [top]


[»] Very nicely done!
by Hatamoto - Dec 12th 1999 02:36:35

I'm impressed with how clean the frame/table rendering is of relatively complex pages. Freshmeat itself and slashdot both are very readable (and considerably faster than via netscape).

I think I've found my new 'workhorse' browser. Keep up the good work guys!

[reply] [top]


[»] I have a new favorite browser.
by Chandon - Dec 3rd 1999 22:54:49

Wow. I've wanted a browser like this for a while. A charactor-cell browser capible of all the neat HTML formatting stuff. The only problem is not being able to "open link in new window", but that's expected.

[reply] [top]


    [»] How to open a link in new window
    by Alejandro Forero Cuervo - Mar 23rd 2001 18:27:07


    > Wow. I've wanted a browser like this for
    > a while. A charactor-cell browser
    > capible of all the neat HTML formatting
    > stuff. The only problem is not being
    > able to "open link in new window", but
    > that's expected.

    Oh, I used to think that till I came up with a simple hack I'll share with you that adds "open link in new window" capabilities to W3M.

    Copy the following and save it as a `browse' (or whatever) script:

    <pre>
    #!/bin/sh
    if (test "$DISPLAY" != ""); then
    xterm -ls -name w3m -wf -fn 8x13 -bg Black -fg gray -si -T "w3m: $1" -tm start^q -e w3m $1 &
    else
    w3m $1;
    fi
    </pre>

    As you can see, this script first checks if its running under the X Windowing System, executing a terminal or calling W3M directly. This is so you can use this script from inside other scripts and have it work regardless of whether you are under X or not.

    All the `-ls -wf -fn 8x13 -sl 999 -bg Black -fg gray -si -tm start^q' are just my favorite options for xterm, feel free to replace them with whatever you want. Actually, feel free to use gnome-terminal or rxvt or whatever you like.

    There are, however, the following options that you'll want to leave:

    -name w3m: This is so the window manager recognizes this window as one containing W3M. I have specific configuration for W3M windows (specifying, for example, how maximize should work and that all those windows should show in a given virtual console).

    -T "w3m: $1": I have not figured out how to make W3M set the title with the URL it's displaying. I might submit a patch having it print the appropriate string whenever the URL changes. For the moment, my browse script will make the W3M window display the initial URL.

    -e w3m $1: Execute w3m, displaying the first argument to the script.

    Use the script like this: "browse http://bachue.com". That will popup a new window, loading the URL specified, and exit.

    Now, what you need to do is set it as W3M's external browser (or second or third external browser). To do this, hit `o' and look for the `External Browser' option, entering the path to your script. Click the [OK] button. You'll be all set.

    To open a link on a new window, all you need to do is move the cursor over the link and hit ESC M. A new window will popup displaying the linked-to URL.

    This also allows you to download things in the background, which I think somebody posted a message saying they wish they could do (well, kindof, you still need a new process for every download, but in practical terms, it should do it for people under X).

    Hope it works for you as well as it does for me. :)

    Alejandro Forero.

    [reply] [top]


      [»] Re: How to open a link in new window
      by Alejandro Forero Cuervo - Mar 23rd 2001 18:35:53

      Ooops, sorry about those pre tags, I'm using W3M and I just didn't see them.

      Also wanted to post one problem that my hack has and I can't seem to solve: the new instance of W3M will not have the session-cookies that its parent had.

      Hmm, I don't know how to fix that. Perhaps passing them all through environment variables or some kludge like that, but I just can't think of an easy hack to do it.

      Alejo.

      [reply] [top]


[»] Possibility of overwhelming Lynx
by Kang JeongHee - Oct 10th 1999 12:43:30

though early development version, it's status and goal seems to be much decided. good.

[reply] [top]


[»] W3M - Better than lynx!
by Caine - Jun 22nd 1999 13:40:59

Of what I've seen of this browser, it seems to be much better than lynx? Perhaps they should try to coordinate their work into one text-based browser. It might become very good!

[reply] [top]


    [»] Re: W3M - Better than lynx!
    by Ken - Apr 17th 2001 01:13:26


    > Of what I've seen of this browser, it
    > seems
    > to be much better than lynx? Perhaps
    > they
    > should try to coordinate their work
    > into one
    > text-based browser. It might become
    > very good!

    From what I know of the w3m codebase, a code merge would be
    difficult but I'm sure if there are any good features in Lynx,
    w3m can steal them. :-) I'm not even sure Lynx is being
    actively worked on nowadays.

    [reply] [top]




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