There is to "top" to the World Wide Web
September 27, 2013 6:37 AM   Subscribe

Line Mode Browser 2013: An emulator of the first cross-platform web browser. (Previously)
posted by Cash4Lead (22 comments total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
Awesome!

It wasn’t always this way. The line-mode browser could only display text. You couldn’t even use a mouse to click on links—you had to type in everything using a keyboard …even if you just wanted to follow a link!

Ha, I wouldn't expect mouse support; the key here is that line-mode means no terminal control, everything is actually just drawn character by character. So no cursoring around to different links like in Lynx/w3m/etc.
posted by kmz at 6:45 AM on September 27, 2013


Having links embedded within the document's text is nice, but since they have to be enumerated, it ends up being too confusing. Why not just extract all of them into a single numbered menu that I can easily select from?

GOPHER FOREVER
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:51 AM on September 27, 2013 [8 favorites]


Gopher should be the next trendy retro thing, like LPs, knitting, fixies, 1970s era instant photography, or cell phone ringtones that sound like phones circa 1980.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 6:55 AM on September 27, 2013 [3 favorites]


Thirdiggity seconds is all it to for me to be utterly bored. This is probably a good way to cure my Internet addiction. The font sure is nice, though.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 6:55 AM on September 27, 2013 [1 favorite]


Gopher should be the next trendy retro thing, like LPs, knitting, fixies, 1970s era instant photography, or cell phone ringtones that sound like phones circa 1980.

Personally I want .plan files back.
posted by brennen at 7:35 AM on September 27, 2013 [3 favorites]


Anybody else having this problem in Chrome?
posted by jason_steakums at 7:36 AM on September 27, 2013 [1 favorite]


> finger brennen
posted by the jam at 7:36 AM on September 27, 2013 [1 favorite]


@Foci hah yeah I went straight for the font too - doesn't seem to be available anywhere though.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 8:02 AM on September 27, 2013


Haha... yeah. Bring back finger!

It is funny to think about, though: had the right set of circumstances been in place, we could be looking at this in Gopher right now.
posted by ph00dz at 8:04 AM on September 27, 2013


Thirdiggity seconds is all it to for me to be utterly bored.

I was an admin at the time for a system with 1000s of users and installed 'www' and wrote instructions how to use it. This was early 1993. It was not very popular, nobody really used it. Not obvious that "www" would be anything.
posted by stbalbach at 8:38 AM on September 27, 2013 [1 favorite]


Line mode. No cursor control. This browser runs on a TTY.

Imagine that... a typewriter that types by itself like some kind of terrible player piano. You read what it's writing while it chatters away. And then once in a while it stops and you press a key that tells it what to type next. There's fanfold of dead trees a thousand feet long under the desk, slowly being transferred into the trash bin behind it. And that's you browsing the web.
posted by rlk at 9:13 AM on September 27, 2013 [2 favorites]


It is funny to think about, though: had the right set of circumstances been in place, we could be looking at this in Gopher right now.

But then again, had the wrong set of circumstances been in place, we could be looking at this in an AOL, Prodigy, or Compuserv client right now.

The Darkest Timeline is still stuck in a walled garden that charges by the hour.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 9:19 AM on September 27, 2013 [2 favorites]


GallonOfAlan, the .ttf is at the location indicated in the css file. If you really want it. (If the URI wasn't included in the font file, your browser couldn't download and use it.)

Of course, this doesn't mean the font is free. But it is available. Which, thanks to the Internet, equates to about the same thing, legal issues aside.
posted by caution live frogs at 10:58 AM on September 27, 2013


I ALSO CAME IN HERE TO COMMENT ON THE FONT
posted by nathancaswell at 11:23 AM on September 27, 2013 [1 favorite]


cell phone ringtones that sound like phones circa 1980

you can pry my NHL 94 for sega genesis theme song ringtone from my cold dead hands
posted by nathancaswell at 11:28 AM on September 27, 2013 [1 favorite]


In fact, it should be called Gophr.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 11:31 AM on September 27, 2013


Numbered links are great. I wonder if there's any way to make Lynx or other text browsers do that now, instead of all this arrow-key nonsense
posted by bonaldi at 11:54 AM on September 27, 2013 [1 favorite]


So, this is Lynx?
posted by JHarris at 2:17 PM on September 27, 2013


In case anybody needs a free alternative to the delicious raster line glass tty font used here, try this.

It certainly improves my personal terminal experience.
posted by Betafae at 2:51 PM on September 27, 2013


Why yes, bonaldi, you can.

Here's Lynx's manual
http://lynx.isc.org/lynx2.8.6/lynx2-8-6/lynx_help/Lynx_users_guide.html
(handy URL, yes?)

Invoke the "Visited Links Page" with uppercase V
http://lynx.isc.org/lynx2.8.6/lynx2-8-6/lynx_help/keystrokes/visited_help.html
and you'll see a numbered list of your history. Tap the number to get there.
posted by Jesse the K at 3:03 PM on September 27, 2013


Thanks Jesse the K! It's not quite that one (that just gives me history, not numbered links on pages), but it turns out in options (press "o"), you can turn on "form fields and links are numbered" under "keyboard input".

This is actually brilliant. Doesn't seem to support logging in on MeFi, which is a pity. But for other text-heavy sites it's a charm.
posted by bonaldi at 3:38 PM on September 27, 2013 [1 favorite]


Here's what Metafilter looks like in lynx:

# MetaFilter | Community Weblog (p1 of 29)

#MeFi Site Search MetaFilter Posts Popular Posts Popular Comments

skip to main content

MetaFilter

* MetaFilter
* AskMeFi
* Projects
* Music
* Jobs
* Podcast
* IRL
* Chat
* MetaTalk

* Home
* FAQ
* About
-- press space for next page --
Arrow keys: Up and Down to move. Right to follow a link; Left to go back.
H)elp O)ptions P)rint G)o M)ain screen Q)uit /=search [delete]=history list
posted by Obscure Reference at 9:49 AM on September 28, 2013


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