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baby

> A built-in web browser (M-x eww)

What ! Anyone has screenshots of that?

Is there a windows release somewhere?

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http://larsmagne23.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/eww.png

It's from an early version though (over a year old)

This is where I generally pick up Windows releases (though I don't use Windows much anymore):

http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/

24.4 is not yet there though.

Does anybody have an idea of how much time is the windows version release usually delayed? I´m finding myself checking the page frequently, but there's no related info (that I can find, at least)

Emacs has had an add-on web browser called Emacs/W3 for 20 years. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs/W3

Is it me or is that browser (after looking at the screenshot) really "eww"?

Okay for technical docs, an occasional Wikipedia article, etc. It's not a replacement for Firefox or Chrome.

Well it is limited by Emacs' display engine. It is obviously not supposed to replace your default browser. But it is usually good enough to view html documentation. Which is really something you want inside your editor.

I don't really see this, but perhaps it's because I've been spoiled by the light of tiling windows managers

I haven't used eww but I use emacs-w3m from time to time and even though I use a tiling WM as well it's convenient to have regular editor commands work in the html buffer to copy/paste code snippets. Also stuff like hippie-expand will be able to complete symbols present in the html buffer which is pretty nice.

Actually - it would be cool if there was something that allowed you to render markdown atleast.

Also, is this display limitation a function of the OS? In which case, shouldn't Cocoa/GTK or other versions not have this issue and be able to actually embed nicer rendering in there with nice fonts?

It isn't a limitation of the OS, or of Emacs really. There is a build where you can embed GTK widgets inside of Emacs. It just isn't at all standard or, last I checked, well supported (on the level that the usual Emacs distribution is).

This web browser in Emacs is usable inside a terminal, and it displays HTML really nice. Much better than something like elink. Other GUI web browser is not.

> But it is usually good enough to view html documentation. Which is really something you want inside your editor.

Is it? I'd much rather have proper HTML rendering in another window than a kludge "in my editor".

Emacs (and eww) can look much better than that.

On my Mac for example, the text in Emacs is just as good looking (and in fact is indistinguishable from) the text in a native Apple application like TextEdit or Terminal.app.

Either the resolution of this screenshot has been scaled down in a way that makes diagonal lines jagged, or this particular Emacs has been configured not to use anti-aliasing of text.

Some Linux users prefer or at least are used to it that way.

On X, anti-aliasing (in the form of XFT) did not become available in an Emacs release till the relatively late date of Jul 2009. (It became available in pre-release versions of Emacs about 15 months before then.)

I've been thinking about using a simpler browser for reading simple documents. The motivation is to have a sort of "minimalism", as in using simpler programs to do simple things, and not get easily distracted by all the bells and whistles in a more complex application (like for example Firefox). This, I think, would be aided by using a simpler browser that could for example be run in a virtual terminal for reading things like documentation, in the context of developing where I will need a terminal (and maybe also a graphical text editor), anyway. So then there is less context-switching, presumably.

I am not someone who tries to do everything within Emacs[0] (yet?), but this seems like something that might be able to fit nicely with this kind of style, since I can restrict myself to only using Emacs and terminals for developing and reading online documentation. Does anyone enjoy working/developing like this?

[0] Yes, I see the slight contradiction in wanting to do things in simpler software, and then suggesting doing those simpler things within Emacs. :P

I think that there are plenty of people who do what you describe in the terminal.

The Eww browser is fully compatible with terminal if you run Emacs non-window mode (-nw option). It supports both HTML and CSS, and render quite nicely. Much better than any terminal web browser I used.

The browser is for looking up online documentation not available in your local machine. For example, sometime a man page is not available in my local machine. I can invoke a google query right inside Emacs and open it immediately without involving heavy weight browsers.

It is really nice to read online book like Practical Common Lisp: http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/, and directly copy the code and paste to your REPL without ever leaving Emacs.

Check out w3m: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W3m

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