

Uzbl: a browser that adheres to the Unix philosophy - 3ds
http://tuxtraining.com/2009/09/05/uzbl-and-uzbl_tabbed-py-a-browser-that-adheres-to-the-unix-philosophy

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astine
I use this browser. It's put together mainly by a bunch of Arch Linux users.
It's little more than a thin wrapper around webkit providing pipes and things.
It requires a _lot_ of work to configure, (unless you copy the default) but
it's very lightweight and integrates with some systems and styles of work
better.

Edit: : A few more thoughts,

If you like the stuff that the suckless people (<http://suckless.org/>) put
out, you will like uzbl. Otherwise it might be a bit of a culture shock. I
still haven't been able to let completely go of firefox yet.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I don't want to install just to check this point - from the keybinding info it
appears you can do a google search but you can't simply enter a url?? Is that
right or did I miss something.

~~~
astine
There are no keybinding by default. You have to bind them all yourself using
the config file. The example config shipped with it contains usable defaults
though.

    
    
      o<space><url><enter>
    

will do what you are expecting.

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3ds
Just noticed that there've already been interesting discussions about Uzbl on
HN:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=626281>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=578618>

What I wonder the most about is why they don't try to bring a command line
interface to firefox, kind of like how you can call safari and its content
from applescript.

I think firefox can already be used with keyboard shortcuts only and they have
a hard time getting their browser to be half as fast.

What configurability is concerned, I think that mozillas choice of saving all
the user configs etc in a sqlite database is easy enough to access by script.

Still interesting and probably good fun to fool around with!

~~~
psyklic
>> What I wonder the most about is why they don't try to bring a command line
interface to firefox

See <http://labs.mozilla.com/ubiquity/>

~~~
3ds
yes that is really cool too but no, i meant an actual shell interface to
communicate with the browser

~~~
mordero
Something like this: <http://wiki.github.com/bard/mozrepl> ?

~~~
s2r2
or like this: <http://surfraw.alioth.debian.org/> (works fine with
"minimalist" browsers)

------
ramanujan
It's worth mentioning conkeror as well -- it's basically Firefox with emacs
keybindings. You can use the mouse if you want (as training wheels) and a lot
of FF plugins still work.

Moreover, the .conkerorrc is in javascript rather than emacs lisp. Very cool.

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truebosko
Just downloaded this and gave it for a whirl. Running Ubuntu (Jaunty), it
definitely felt buggy. (Which is ok, considering it's stage in development)

For starters, the window maximized height-wise past my screen and I couldn't
resize it so I had trouble seeing everything (all I did was copy the default
config)

Additionally, loading up YouTube.com in it made it grind to a crawl. Video
loaded, but the front page took a good 10 second pause before it was fully
loaded.

I like the idea though and I plan to tinker with it more in hopes that it is
more ... uzbl :)

~~~
astine
The chief performance issue is that the default cookies handler has to spin
off a new process for every cookies handled and that can make things _really
slow_. That might be the problem you are having now. There are better scripts
available, but I can't tell you much about configuring them.

~~~
judofyr
> the default cookies handler has to spin off a new process for every cookies
> handled

What? Why?

~~~
astine
The default handler is a python script. Part of the design philosophy is to
keep it separate from the browser itself.

There is an alternative: <http://www.uzbl.org/news.php?id=14>

------
unignorant
I am running it now (just got it through arch linux package management), and
it has made a good first impression. I liked the transparency of all settings
within the config file, customizable keybindings, ect. The defaults seem
pretty usable; probably the most apparent problem that I can see is its speed
-- for instance, loading hulu took quite some time.

------
jcw
Here I am thinking that it's a required nowadays that browsers are huge,
hulking monsters because of the multitude of things that need to be parsed and
rendered on a web page. A minimal and unix-y browser sounds wonderful.

I've been enjoying Arora lately because of how small and lightweight it is, it
runs blazingly fast on my old 64mb/333mhz: <http://code.google.com/p/arora/>

How does Uzbl match up to it in terms of memory usage? I'm (probably
wrongfully) assuming it runs slowly because it's written in python.

~~~
astine
Uzbl is actually written in C. Many of it's companion scripts (for cookies,
etc...) are written in python however and can be slow.

~~~
dflock
True, however the scripts aren't compulsory - you can have uzbl call anything
in response to actions, so you could call scripts in python, bash, whatever -
or other native compiled apps, or tool your own stuff in assembler if you like
- it's agnostic about the external apps it uses.

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edu
Unix philosophy is great for some things, not so great for others. C'mon,
handle my bookmarks through an external script? No, thank you. I'll keep with
Chrome/Firefox/Safari.

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zokier
Isn't XULRunner bit like this

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erlanger
> letter-spacing: -1px;

Please don't do this for copy.

~~~
fnid
yeah, that was horrible. I actually went into firebug and changed the class so
that i could read it.

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hungdaddy
awesome What about flash?

~~~
truebosko
Works fine if you have the right plugins.

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saurabh
Warning: Doesn't work on Windows yet.

~~~
bergeron
Seriously? "Uzbl - a browser that adheres to the Unix philosophy." You expect
this to work on Windows?

~~~
saurabh
Yes of course, its written in Python. I hope with a few tweaking, it might be
able to start; I haven't looked at the code though.

~~~
Dobbs
BTW: It is not written in python. The core is C. The outer control systems
(like cookies) are written in python.

