
Lynx is dead – Long live Browsh for text-based internet browsing - benaadams
https://www.hanselman.com/blog/LynxIsDeadLongLiveBrowshForTextbasedInternetBrowsing.aspx
======
throwaway5752
This was discussed in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17487552](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17487552)

A number of people made this point, but this doesn't address one of the key
advantages of Lynx at all: what if I need to use it while ssh'ed to a server
that doesn't have X, doesn't have a browser (headless or otherwise) and I
cannot or do not want to install those on it? And I have to trust your package
integrity, quality of your secure coding practices, and judgement/diligence in
your use of dependencies and tracking CVEs.

This barely has any advantages for me over port-forwarding to the x server and
using a local client, functionally, and it introduces a large potential
liability.

It's a cool project and you have my admiration, but making grandiose claims
like this is counterproductive for (at least a good part of your target
demographic) increasing Browsh adoption.

~~~
tombh
Author of the software here, not the author of the article. Browsh is
primarily aimed at those without fast and/or cheap bandwidth, yet still want
access to the modern web. There are vast swathes of the world where
downloading a 10Mb website is non-trivial. There are traditionally 2 solutions
to such a problem, lynx et al or VNC. Lynx et al do not support the modern web
and VNC is not a text-native application. Browsh somewhat ironically also has
a browser client (although not yet at feature parity with the TTY client),
that further improves accessibility to the modern web for those aforementioned
citizens of the slow and expensive web.

Edit: Why do you think my coding standards are under any more suspicion than
anyone elses? Just because Browsh is new?

~~~
logfromblammo
For some, "not supporting the modern web" is a feature.

In electing to engage with it, we are substituting our mistrust of .JS and
.CSS files out on the web with whatever engine you use to chew those up and
re-render the output as text-mode approximations.

It's fewer people to trust, to be certain, but the trust-by-default model has
long been broken. Trust is earned, and easily lost.

So absolutely yes, because it is new.

~~~
tombh
I totally sympathise with those that are suspicious of the modern web. But
Browsh is fundamentally not for them. It is for all those that don't have the
luxury of cheap and fast internet, I want them to access the same information
everyone else does.

OK well I'm glad that the scrutiny upon me is the same as every other
newcomer.

------
tombh
Author of the software here, not the article. I never intended Browsh to
replace Lynx et al! Browsh is firstly for people with slow and/or expensive
networks and secondly a cool terminal gimmick.

Sorry for stepping on any toes.

~~~
antirez
Oh you should not be sorry at all :-) Text only browsers have very few users,
any project that will bring more attention to the field is only going to
benefit everybody. I bet that a number of people tested again Lynx after like
10+ years after reading all the posts about Browsh.

~~~
tombh
Thanks. That's a good point about reinvigorating interest in Lynx, I'd also
consider that a success.

------
craftyguy
Long live elinks!

Seriously though, browsh is a neat toy, but having to depend on X and firefox
is a nonstarter for many use cases. For example, I use a mailcap that sends
html emails to elinks for rendering in mutt. Or, I am frequently on systems
with no X server running, and/or no firefox installation.

~~~
tombh
Browsh and Lynx having quite different remits. Also, Browsh depends on X libs
not a running X server.

~~~
craftyguy
Ah, but even X libs take up a non-trivial amount of space on a system. AND you
need a whole different browser installed to even use it, since Browsh is
basically just a wrapper for firefox.

~~~
tombh
Exactly. This is the price we pay to access the modern web.

~~~
craftyguy
I consider it a feature to not be able to 'access the modern web' when the
'modern web' requires tens of MB of JS crap trying to track me. Very, very few
sites I use are completely broken with JS disabled, so the default policy is
to disable it. Having a cli browser that doesn't support it doesn't seem like
a bad thing. If a new site doesn't load, tough luck for them.

~~~
tombh
Indeed! I never intended for Browsh to replace lynx et al. They serve similar
but distinct purposes.

~~~
craftyguy
The article title, at least, seems to imply that this is a
replacement/successor to lynx..

~~~
tombh
I know. I didn't write the article.

------
mattl
> Run it right now with: docker run --rm -it nbrown/lynx lynx
> [http://hanselman.com/](http://hanselman.com/)

Or run it right now with:

lynx

If your use case for trying an established browser involves docker, we might
want different things from a browser. I like the idea of browsh too, but it is
not a browser.

~~~
roryisok
You can download a binary and run it that way, it doesn't _need_ docker

~~~
tombh
Or even just `ssh brow.sh`

------
antirez
Maybe browsh is just kinda of an hack (well, much more given that it works in
a quite impressive way) in order to reach the creator's goal of low bandwidth
usage, and is not a lynx replacement because of the way it works. But... at
the same time it shows that text-only browsers, I mean _proper_ browsers
implementing the text-only rendering in a stand alone way, should get an
opportunity to copy from browsh, and realize that today terminals can do more.

~~~
tombh
Thanks, yes I'd love to see some sort of formal support for pure text-based
browsing, beyond things like "Reader Mode" that only make articles more
accessible not UIs.

------
codeafin
I'm curious as to how it displays the images without first downloading the
full size first (and thus not saving bandwidth), is anyone able to explain
this?

~~~
lkbm
It goes through Browsh's proxy.

While I think Browsh is very interesting, you can immediately see a couple
issues with this. When I tried it last week, it worked pretty well for a bit,
and then I got an error that all the servers were busy.

~~~
tombh
That sounds like you were trying the SSH demo. I've currently got that limited
to 20 instances. Each one has 2Gb of RAM and a CPU, so it's not cheap. And I'm
currently funding it off a modicum of donations.

~~~
lkbm
Yeah, I was using the web demo, and it was fine, but more limited, so I tried
the ssh version to check YouTube (my coworker said that was working) and got
the error.

Obviously, I don't expect a free service like this to let me stream unlimited
video. At first glance, I saw the demo server as the actual service, rather
than seeing this as a tool to set up on your vpn. That eliminates the scaling
issue and the privacy issues.

------
adamrezich
I haven't tried the browsh binary yet but trying both web versions completely
mangles the text in my extremely simple text-only personal website
([http://rezich.com](http://rezich.com)), which lynx has no problem rendering
at all. Is this a deficiency of the web versions or does the binary version
have this problem as well?

------
hartator
Do I have specific terminal for this, or default Mac terminal is enough?
(Asking because I've some weird bugs here.)

~~~
tombh
I think the default Mac terminal doesn't support true colour, which causes
some rendering problems like long black lines. Either switch to monochrome
move with Alt+m or install iTerm.

------
hagreet
I like this but the html.brow.sh/... service needs some sort of MitM warning.

~~~
tombh
What about a little note in the footer? What could it say without implying a
distrust in the service?

------
msla
Browsh killed Lynx the same way the Cadillac killed the Ford.

~~~
jhare
[citation missing]

~~~
msla
I was being sarcastic.

So I suppose this makes your comment sarcastic as well, if only retroactively.

------
shmerl
Is there any way to make full text Linux tty use true color? Would be neat to
have such browser when GUI session fails.

~~~
tombh
That's a very good question. I don't know the answer, although I suspect the
answer is no, the Linux VT doesn't support true colour. However you can at
least toggle Browsh's monochrome mode with Alt+m

~~~
shmerl
I found this:

[https://github.com/dvdhrm/kmscon](https://github.com/dvdhrm/kmscon)

[https://github.com/dvdhrm/kmscon/issues/94](https://github.com/dvdhrm/kmscon/issues/94)

[https://github.com/dvdhrm/kmscon/issues/111](https://github.com/dvdhrm/kmscon/issues/111)

But the project looks abandoned which is a pity.

------
jhare
Except the part that lynx is still fine.

Except the part that brow.sh requires X11

Except the part that Scott doesn't even know the difference because he's a M$
shill

