This is the best desktop browser to use when you have a bad network connection
Popular desktop browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Chrome won’t be much use when you have an abysmal internet connection. While text browsers like w3m aren’t very visually appealing, they’re your best bet when your internet speed is going back to the dial-up days.
What is w3m?
w3m is a free and open source text browser that allows users to browse the web from a terminal emulator window. Like other text browsers, w3m renders the web as plain text without styles or scripts. However, it stands out from other text browsers with its support for tables, cookies, frames, embedded images, and authentication.
By ignoring CSS and JavaScript, w3m can load pages faster than graphical web browsers, making it suitable for low-bandwidth connections. It offers tabbed browsing and in-depth customization options.
In addition to being the best choice for weak network connections, the w3m browser is ideal for developers who want to keep their workflow entirely in the terminal, and for people who use less powerful hardware such as Raspberry Pis to surf the web.
The original w3m project started in 1995 as a lightweight and fast-loading alternative to Netscape. The developer has since abandoned it, but Tatsuya Kinoshita maintains a branch of the original version. The name “w3m” is short for “WWW-wo-miru” which means to see the WWW.
In addition to being a web browser, w3m also works as a Linux pager for browsing local documents on your computer.
How to install w3m on Windows and Linux
w3m is easy to install and does not take up much storage space (about 3MB). It is compatible with Linux, Windows (with Cygwin) and macOS (with Homebrew).
Installing Windows
To use w3m on Windows, you must first install the Cygwin emulator. Cygwin is a free and open source Unix-like environment and terminal interface for Microsoft Windows.
To install Cygwin and w3m, follow these steps:
- Download the Cygwin installer. Run the installer and select Installation from the Internet choice. Leave other options as default.
- IN Select Packages search using the Search field in the window w3m package. In the New column, select the latest version using the drop-down icon. Click Other continue with the installation. After installation, you can add icons to your desktop and Start menu.
- Once the installation is complete, open a Cygwin terminal and type this w3m check if the browser is installed.
Installing Linux
w3m is preinstalled on some Linux distributions, but can also be installed using apt install. To install w3m on Linux, open a terminal and type:
sudo apt-get install w3m
If prompted, enter your password and enter Y continue. It won’t take long to complete the installation. You should now be able to browse the web using the w3m web browser.
How to use w3m
To open Google.com using the w3m browser, enter the following command in the terminal:
w3m google.com
w3m then opens a basic version of the Google website interface with text and clickable links. You can use the keyboard or mouse to navigate w3m. Googler is another terminal tool that allows you to run Google searches from your Linux terminal.
Pressing Tab and Shift + Tab allows you to navigate between clickable links, buttons, and text boxes on a page. You can also use the cursor to select elements on a web page. Press Enter to open a hyperlink or enter text into a highlighted text field.
i entered makeuseof.com into the text box and click on Google search button next to the text field (Tabthen Enter).
The plain text Google search results page looks unfamiliar and a bit daunting. However, it’s not that difficult once you get down to it. Text snippets from web pages are white, while links are blue by default. At the bottom of the window is a back button (<<) and up and down arrows to scroll through the web pages.
W3m offers two display modes: color and monochrome. Color mode is on by default and you can switch to a monochrome interface in the options. Press O open Options settings panellong list of options you can change to customize your w3m environment.
Most navigation options are available by pressing the right mouse button. Additional w3m key commands can be found using H (Shift + H). When you’re done, use it Shift+Q or Ctrl + Z to end the program.
Alternatives to w3m
w3m is not the only text browser. There are several other alternatives such as Lynx and Elinks. Launched in 1992, Lynx is the oldest browser still maintained and has significantly more documentation than w3m. However, it does not offer tabbed browsing and cannot render images without external software. Elinks is a newer text viewer and supports almost the same features as w3m, but may be slower to load.
The w3m browser won’t stream YouTube videos or open X (Twitter) to name a few. So it is not a complete replacement for a modern desktop browser with a graphical user interface. However, it works very well when searching for a document or reading a blog post with a weak network connection.