10 Oddly Useful Specialty Web Browsers
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Peter Wayner looks beyond Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, and IE to uncover 10 alternative browsers that offer specialized advantages for 3-D searching, social networking, easy scriptability, powerful page manipulation, and the like. Each provides a targeted browsing environment, enabling users to browse Web tables into spreadsheets, browse leaner, browser in text, browse socially, browse musically, or browse smarter on the Mac. 'A purist might object that these hybrids are not much different from a standard browser with extra plug-ins. There's some truth to this, but not always — some of the unique capabilities can only be done deep inside the software. In any case, the job of parsing the terms and creating an exact definition of the Web browser isn't as much fun as embracing the idea that there are dozens of alternatives.'"
http://getpivot.com/
You've always been able to load a URL into a spreadsheet...
All on one page.
A browser that is specifically set up to completely firewall websites from each other?
I use CSSEdit all the time. Its core is a Webkit browser that shows a live preview of CSS changes you make. It's great for AJAX-y, DHTML-y dynamically driven sites that don't always have HTML "pages" to debug.
It's a bit like the Web Developer toolbar for Firefox, but a standalone browser / app for OS X focused solely on CSS and, IMHO, a bit easier to use.
No connection to the company. Just a very satisfied user.
Even though it lacks crucial features like JavaScript and plugins, one should try Dillo just to experience how extremely fast a graphical browser can be.
A browser that will detect repeating structures in the DOM and parse them into segments. Then be able to select on elements with the possibility of export. Often people have to look through long lists of things where only a few are of interest. For example (a) detect the 'comment' structure in a slashdot page (without being told the template) (b) parse into title, who, text (c) offer (in this case) three search fields to select on and then (d) copy a selected one into the clipboard in XLM or append to a clippings file.
I recommend Mozilla seaMonkey. It has the same core engine as Firefox 4, but with the functionality/appearance of classic Mozilla Netscape, and only half the memory usage of FF (~150,000 vs ~300,000 kilobytes).
Another browser Ive tried is Mozilla Songbird, which is really more of a music player than a browser but it's good for those of us who like noise in our ears all day long.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
For text mode browsing i would go use elinks, with good (text mode) rendering of pages, ssl support and a lot of other features, but not sure in which state are the latest version of lynx, links or w3m by now. There are plenty of text mode browsers, and speed is just one of the advantages.
w3 (emacs native) and w3m (interface to w3m) are both available in emacs so that it is not necessary to leave emacs to perform web browsing.
They do that already. It is called RSS. Look into it.
In addition, xHTML is valid XML. It is simply XML with certain predefined elements for common uses (such as tables, headings, etc.) of a website. You don't really gain that much by trying to use XML and XSLT instead of xHTML (=XML) and CSS. Especially when the XSLT would simply - in most cases - convert the data to xHTML! And the content would need to be seriously restructured (believe it or not, the way that humans handle information is not 100% compatible with the DOM model of XML. You would need to pay a lot of thought to organizing the content in XML to get some more meaningful tags than "content" or such) You would be simply making your life harder by adding another layer of complexity in order to do... what, exactly? For 99% or so of websites, nobody would need the XML for anything, anyways. People only want their browser to display the content and xHTML does the trick fine.
Summa summarum: I think that you should leave such decisions to people more familiar with the concepts involved here (Markup languages, content management, webdesign...). ;)
vimprobable ftw!
HTMLayout (http://terrainformatica.com/htmlayout/main.whtm) is not strictly a browser, but rather a toolkit to create UI in HTML+CSS.
FYI: Ubuntu has a dark background, light text Lynx setup by default.
If you prefer black text on white background (as do I), do this:
Copy the lynx.lss file somewhere (like a ~/.lynx dir) /etc/lynx-cur/* .lynx/
cp
Edit the lynx.lss file to comment out the 8th and 9th lines:
normal: normal: lightgray:black
default: normal: white:black
Then run lynx with "lynx -lss lynx.lss" or set LYNX_LSS to your personal lynx.lss file.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
K-Meleon
it uses mozilla's gecko engine, even more bare bones than firefox, a little rough around the edges but overall an ok browser. (windows only)
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
What could be more odd or special than a text browser?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I've had occasion to need a text mode browser, and I think I used lynx, but I saw that there are a number of them. I recall looking for a good comparison of the different options, but I couldn't find one. What are they, and what are their strengths and weaknesses?
Notepad is my favorite specialty browser. You name the file (url).txt, and it instantly renders the website as a blank page- think of all the clutter you don't have to deal with! Plus, you can add in whatever text you want- ever wanted to make microsoft.com say "Linux rules!"? Well now you can! I can't imagine how anyone could want anything else.
My webcomic
No mention of Uzbl, the command line operated browser?
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
"The main reason people use Lynx is to download software while logged in remotely to a computer. People maintaining servers remotely swear by it."
Why wouldn't you just copy the link and wget?
I don't know why elinks doesn't get more recognition. It's an ncurses-based (console) web browser with tabs and support for basic javascript. It's easy to compile, even on windows, and even has support for the mouse. As soon as I found out about it, I stopped using lynx and links.
How about Google Earth as a browser?
http://www.uzbl.org/
Does Zinc count as an alternative browser?
Off By One by Homepage Software.
Browsing today's internet at a great speed on 80MHz seems like a specialty in the world of so-called "fast browsers" these days.
I rarely see anyone mention conkeror, my favourite browser: http://conkeror.org/
It is the only browser I have tried I can comfortably use without a mouse. Once you learn the emacs-like keybindings, browsing with keyboard is really fast.
vis/space (http://vis.hfbk.net/) is a different approach to a browser in 3D.