Browsh is a modern text based web browser that lets us browse the web from a terminal.
It’s different from traditional CLI browsers like Lynx or w3m because it supports modern website features (HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, videos, WebGL, etc.).
At its core, Browsh uses a real browser engine (Firefox in headless mode) to fetch and parse webpages, then converts the visual output into a text/terminal-friendly format that we can view in a terminal or simple browser.
We run Browsh in our terminal (on a local computer or a remote server we SSH into).
It renders webpages using text characters and simple colored blocks to approximate graphical elements.
We can scroll, click links, watch videos in a text-like form, and interact in real time.
Works especially well over low bandwidth connections or remote shells.
Keyboard navigation similar to a graphical browser (Ctrl+L for URL bar, Ctrl+T for new tab, etc.)
Mouse clicks can work in terminals that support it.
Browsh can run as a simple HTTP server. Browsers can connect to it and see a text-optimized version of pages.
There are public demos like html.brow.sh/
This mode uses very little bandwidth because it delivers almost only text instead of full graphical web pages.
Useful for:
* Have slow or expensive internet, but still need to access websites.
* Working on a remote server via SSH/Mosh with no graphical environment.
* To reduce bandwidth or speed up browsing by only transferring text representations of pages.
It’s sort of like a modern replacement for classic terminal browsers (Lynx), but capable of handling complex, modern websites because it leverages Firefox underneath.
Browsh depends on Firefox (headless or hidden) to do the real webpage fetching and rendering.
It’s not as fast or simple as Lynx for plain text sites, but it can show very complex sites too.
Some interactive elements (login forms, dynamic content) may be trickier in terminal mode.
Browser client modes (like HTML service) are less fully featured than the terminal client as of now.
Software here: https://www.brow.sh/
Enjoy #linux
Well, that was exciting. See you in the next one!