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Use the hidden powers of the w3m textmode webbrowser

w3m is a very usefull textmode webbrowser

Why a textmode webbrowser

Most people will use graphical browsers like Firefox, Vimprobable or even Google Chrome. Textmode webbrowsers seem to be old fashioned, however they do have many advantages.

The most important advantages of textmode webbrowsers are:

  • very fast
  • very high readability
  • focussed on what really matters (no distracting flashing images, no distracting google-ads)
  • clean display (no unnessairy elements on your screen, every pixel counts)
  • works in a text only environment too (so can be run from within Gnu Screen or on a remote box from a ssh connection)

There are many good textmode webbrowsers. Elinks had been my favorite browser for many years.

Why w3m

The reason I switched from elinks to w3m is that w3m has superior vi-like key-bindings. w3m offers tabbed browsing, just like elinks.

Unleash the hidden powers of w3m

Here follows some nice functions with their default key:

Hyperlink operations

  • U: go to URL
    Enter the URL you whish to visit.
  • Esc-u: go to relative URL
    Enter the relative URL you whish to visit.
  • c: peek current URL
    See what the URL of the current document is.
  • u: peek link URL
    Place cursor on a link and hit "u" to see what URL it links to.
  • i: peek image URL
    Place cursor on a image and hit "i" to see what the URL of the image is.
  • L: Show all links and images
    Hit "L" to get a list of all links, anchors and images of the current page.
  • Esc-l: Popup linkslist
    Hit "Esc-l" (small L) to get a popup menu filled with all the links of the current page.
  • Esc-M: open in external browser
    Place cursor on a link and hit "Esc-M" (shift-M) to open the link in an external browser.

Navigation operations

  • B: Back
  • s: Show history in popup selection menu and go to selected page
  • R: Reload the current document
  • Esc-a: Add current page to bookmarks
  • Esc-b: Open a bookmarked page
  • Cltr-h: View history

Tab operations

  • T: open new tab
  • Ctrl-q: close current tab
  • {: move to previous tab
  • }: move to next tab
  • Esc-t: open popup tab selection menu and move to seleced tab
  • Ctrl-t: open current link in a new tab

Document operations

  • v: toggle view html-source / normal view
  • S: save the rendered output of the current document to a file
  • Esc-s: save the current document to a file
  • E: edit current document
    open the current document in an editor if the current document is a local document
  • Esc-e: edit rendered document
    open the rendered output of the current document in an editor

Image operations

  • I: view image
    Place cursor on a image and hit "I" to view the image in an external image viewer.
  • i: peek image URL
    Place cursor on a image and hit "i" to see what the URL of the image is.
  • Esc-I: save image
    Place cursor on a image and hit "Esc-I" to save the image.

Pager operations

  • <space>: scroll one screen down
  • +: scroll one screen down
  • Ctrl-v: scroll one screen down
  • b: scroll one screen up
  • -: scroll one screen up
  • Esc-v: scroll one screen up
  • k: move cursor up one line
  • j: move cursor down one line
  • K: scroll down one line
  • J: scroll up one line
  • <: shift screen left
  • >: shift screen right
  • Z: move to center line
  • [: go to first link
  • ]: go to last link
  • <tab>: move to the next link
  • Esc-m: get a popup menu filled with all the links of the current page and move to the selected link.
  • Ctrl-l: redraw screen

Miscalanious operations

  • Ctrl-k: view cookies
  • m: toggle mouse operations (handy to select with the mouse pointer without having to pres shift)

w3m can do more

The above is not a complete list of w3m commands. See the man-page or open help in w3m for more...

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