w3m /web browser in terminal/

It does not understand elements introduced in HTML5. It does not understand Java. It shows a web page only after the whole contents are downloaded. It does not maintain a cache of visited web pages. It can be used as a pager for local files, but no advantage over vifm + less.

It is only good for browsing simple web sites full with text, or for html files saved locally. It does a good job to display tables and frames. It displays many languages correctly.

Youtube

Set the second external browser to

cvlc $(youtube-dl -g %s) &

and press ‘2M’ to launch vlc.

Print web page

The following command can be used in w3m for preview:

wkhtmltopdf %s - | zathura - &

In zathura, one can print the pdf file by:

:print <TAB> 1-5 -o media=a4 <ENTER>

Press “TAB”, the printer name will be automatically completed.

Keyword bookmarking

In firefox, one can type a keyword in the address bar to get access to a bookmark. It can also be done in w3m by means of uri handling. A uniform resource identifier (URI) is a string of characters used to identify a name of a web resource. A string with at least 3 characters and the last one be “:” will be recognized by w3m as a uri. w3m provide a way to handle unknown uri, that is, the user specify a script to handle the unknown uri in a config file ~/.w3m/urimethodmap, for example:

ar:      file:/cgi-bin/arxiv.cgi?%s

“ar:” will be recognized by w3m as an unknown uri. w3m will call file:/cgi-bin/arxiv.cgi to handle this uri. “?%s” is optional. It is used to pass the whole uri string (including what is behind the “:”) to the script:

#!/bin/sh
arXiv="http://arxiv.org/abs/"
query=${QUERY_STRING#*:}
cat <<_END_
Content-type: text/plain
W3m-control: GOTO $arXiv$query
W3m-control: DELETE_PREVBUF
W3m-control: SEARCH PDF
_END_

If a link instead of a script is provided, this file can be used to map a uri like keyword to a link:

fa: www.your.favorite.web.site.com

Type C-U fa: ENTER in w3m, and your favorite site will be served by w3m. Unfortunately, the keyword must be at least 3 letters long.

C-W will run the dict search script. One can customize it to enable a single character keyword bookmark.

Function list