Everything about Lynx Browser totally explained
Lynx is a free
open-source, text-only
Web browser and
Gopher client for use on cursor-addressable, character cell
terminals.
Usage
Browsing in Lynx consists of highlighting the chosen link using cursor keys, or having all links on a page numbered and entering the chosen link's number. Current versions support
SSL and many
HTML features. Tables are linearized (scrunched together one cell after another without tabular structure), while frames are identified by name and can be explored as if they were separate pages. Lynx can't inherently display various types of non-text content on the web, such as images and video, but it can launch external programs to handle it, like an image viewer or video player.
Because of its
text-to-speech-friendly interface, Lynx was once popular with visually-impaired users, but better
screen readers have reduced the appeal of this application. Lynx is also used to check for usability of websites in older browsers. It is still included in a number of Linux distributions, and is particularly useful for reading documentation when only a text-based environment is available. Despite its text-only nature and age, it can still be used to effectively browse much of the modern web, including performing interactive tasks like editing
Wikipedia. The speed benefits of text-only browsing are most apparent when using low bandwidth internet connections, or older computer hardware that may be slow to render image heavy content.
Development history
Lynx was a product of the Distributed Computing Group within Academic Computing Services of the
University of Kansas, and was initially developed in 1992 by a team of students at the university (
Lou Montulli, Michael Grobe and Charles Rezac) as a hypertext browser used solely to distribute campus information as part of a
Campus-Wide Information Server. In 1993 Montulli added an Internet interface and released a new version (2.0) of the browser.
Garrett Blythe created
DosLynx and later joined the Lynx effort as well. Foteos Macrides ported much of Lynx to
VMS and maintained it for a time. In 1995, Lynx was released under the
GNU General Public License, and is now maintained by a group of volunteers led by
Thomas Dickey.
Platforms
Lynx was originally designed for
Unix and VMS and remains the most popular console browser on
Linux. Versions are also available for
DOS, recent versions run on all
Microsoft Windows releases, and
Mac OS X. There was also an early port to
"Classic" Macintosh version called
MacLynx "for System 7 and later". Ports to
BeOS,
MINIX,
QNX,
AmigaOS and
OS/2 are also available.
Its primary competitors are the web browsers
Links (with variants Links2 and
ELinks) and
w3m.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Lynx Browser'.
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