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Comment by fsiefken | Hacker News Reader

i thought w3m was the go to text-based browser... i already felt like i was missing out when using elinks (which in a sense is better then lynx). Lynx has the nice feature that it can dump out the ascii version of a html page.

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I still use w3m, for basically an easier, less cluttered text based version of a page. Cuts the cpu goblins found in adverts too. Some sites just won't work for me in a modern browser without at least some blocking.

Personally I find w3m easier on my eyes. I have tried to run with it as my primary, but oddly enough some of the full baked browsers still feel faster. That I can't really figure out! It could be pre-fetching or pre-renders, or some other trick.

I tend to have at least one JS disabled browser, with my own stylesheet to ape something akin to the console browsers.

I've found a few other interesting uses for w3m over the years:

* Render HTML email in mutt.

I put the following in ~/.mutt/mutrc:

    set mailcap_path=~/.mutt/mailcap
    auto_view text/html

Then in ~/.mutt/mailcap:

    text/html; w3m -T text/html -dump %s; copiousoutput

* Reading Markdown files:

    markdown README.md | w3m -T text/html

AFAIU w3m downloads the full page before it begins rendering. This can take time on complex sites.

Most GUI browsers will begin rendering before the download is complete. Advantage: faster render. Downside: display changes as additional elements are retrieved / sized / rendered (for JS/dynamic elements).

I agree. I love the `-dump` flag (and use it to provide html rendering in my gopher/gemini/finger/file client).

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