Which Javascript-free Browser?
Which Javascript-free and/or text-based light browser do people prefer? Sometimes it's nice to view the web through a more simple lens, even though it breaks 98% of websites out there.
Are you more of a Dillo-head, or a traditionalist hanging out at the TTY with Links2? Or are you a *true* traditionalist and go all the way back with Mosaic? Maybe something else?
Actually, pruning my daily www usage to websites which work well in these "simple" browsers has improved my experience of the web overall. It's all starting to look a bit more like gemini when I click through my bookmarks!
Poll Results
1. Dillo
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2. Links2
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3. Mosaic
▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁ 0%
4. Other? (Specify below)
████████████▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁ 51%
37 votes were cast.
🗳️
2025-01-22 · 1 year ago · 👍 DocEdelgas, ghost, mitgedanken
29 Comments ↓
🚀 RubyMaelstrom [OP] · 2025-01-22 at 19:31:
For my part, I'm a big supporter of Dillo since they started up development on it again recently.
It's slim and compact and does support a few things like CSS and images, without getting bogged down with...everything else.
But I enjoy the others as well on occasion. :)
🚀 mbays · 2025-01-22 at 19:37:
elinks
🦉 scops · 2025-01-22 at 20:22:
NetSurf :)
just taking a moment to mention 'links2 -g', which is great
🐐 Singletona082 · 2025-01-22 at 22:10:
dillo was my go to backup from twenty years ago. it does enough that it spits out largely useful output and is minimal otherwise. links² is my command line backup for the backup.
🐰 NovaSquirrel · 2025-01-23 at 00:52:
One person I know kept reminding me that one of my websites didn't work in NetSurf until I finally fixed it, and I realized NetSurf was kind of cool for being a pretty minimal browser that still supports a decent amount of CSS. That inspired me to put some fallbacks in my CSS to try and make my stuff still look nice even if they're missing some of the fanciest features that NetSurf lacks. It's cool to me that CSS even has that capability, to check what features are available and make decisions based on that.
🐐 uyasga · 2025-01-23 at 01:05:
Object Icon Browser
🚀 teekay · 2025-01-23 at 07:40:
elinks - I wrote about why I love elinks here: gemini://tobykurien.com/articles/2023-06-25-in-praise-of-elinks.gmi
☕️ tenno-seremel · 2025-01-23 at 16:02:
If it doesn’t work in eww it doesn’t exist.
💎 pista · 2025-01-25 at 03:26:
Just pipe curl output into less
❄ ghost · 2025-01-25 at 11:06:
w3m is nice for reading articles, though its images are questionable. I wish it could parse JavaScript though - it'd be nice to get a web page and pipe it into something else without no-JS breaking everysite.
🐙 norayr · 2025-01-25 at 11:13:
i like that links works in framebuffer and in x11, so though i am not using it, in particularly it has problems with armenian fonts. i use netsurf as a simple browser.
my problem with all simple browsers is that they don't save the state: which window and which tab was on which workspace. firefox and only firefox and its modern clones like librewolf do that. palemoon doesnt.
For reading articles on the web, I use scripts to fetch just the article contents.
If the content is short, the script uses w3m (recently transitioning to using chawan) to display. If it is longer, it uses pandoc and typst to produce a PDF. Rendering PDF this way is both quicker than loading modern web pages in a GUI web browser, and produces a consistent style for reading.
its not a replacement but wanted to mention that i run a nomadnet webpage which feels even cooler than gemini (which is already amazing cool)... but to answer your question: `mobilized-dillo`
🚀 sparcipx · 2025-01-28 at 03:36:
I've been using my older Powerbooks a lot lately, so Classilla, iCab, Netscape 4, and WannaBe have been seeing a lot of use. WannaBe is the only Javascript free one though.
🚀 anthk_out · 2025-01-31 at 12:13:
Mothra and Netsurf under 9front :)
😎 decant · 2025-02-02 at 16:40:
I would use netsurf, but on unix it requires GTK which is a boatload of deps. dillo has buildin uMatrix function that let you block third party elements on a per site basis, and you can change useragent easily. On netsurf, you just can't do that. Is there a netsurf port for OpenBSD that can do these?? Open for suggestions.
😎 decant · 2025-02-02 at 16:43:
more of a uMatrix like function, there is no easily point and click interface, you need to edit /.dillo/domainrc
🙂 Alfika07 · 2025-04-04 at 20:58:
Netsurf is very lightweit and it's used on RISCOS by default
🐙 norayr · 2025-04-05 at 00:50:
i noticed nobody mentioned lynx. i remember it didn't support html frames, unlike links, but it could convert some non unicode language encodings to translit.
dillo for linux when needed, mothra for 9front/plan9, gemini almost everywhere <3
🐙 norayr · 2025-04-05 at 10:35:
actually yes, lagrange or amfora + levior or duckling proxy is more than you need for most websites.
Not sure if that's the answer, but I've simply set `javascript.enabled` to `false` in the `Firefox about:config`
💎 pista · 2025-04-05 at 18:11:
@byte based.
I voted Links2 because it's largely keyboard driven and thus fast to navigate. I'd consider Dillo but I've not used the more recent releases. Linux Mint seems to be stuck on 3.0.5 which dates WAY back. Next clean install I'll probably go LMDE and that may provide 3.2.0
JS-free 'browser' is:
- but API features, such as PAC, still use JavaScript, lol
netsurf?
it has its own small js interpreter, which is easy to turn off, and maybe it is even off by default. anyway it doesn't help with most of the pages.
my only wish is if it would remember which workspace was each window before closing and would restore the state. that is my wish for every browser.
oh apparently i already left comments. (:
gemini://gemi.dev/cgi-bin/waffle.cgi/article?https%3A%2F%2Fdigdeeper.love%2Farticles%2Fmozilla.xhtml%23historyofcontrol