Calmar on Elinks, the browser for fast people, focusing the important

• Elinks's Homepage, the Guerilla Text Web Browser :) (Manual)
• Thomas Adam's Elinks Page

The best tips for Elinks I discovered to far

• Searching - URI rewriting

  Elinks features 'Smart Prefixes' und 'Dump Prefixes':
  
  They are used for rewriting your input in the 'Go to URL' textbox. You can enter 'g elinks text browser' and you get the google search for 'elinks text browser'. That's a 'Smart Prefix'. When you just enter 'g', it gets replaced with http://www.google.com - and there you go. That's a 'Dump Prefix'.
  
  See also 'man elinks.conf' (may search: /smart).
  
  You can setup your own 'Prefixes' in the Option Menu -> Protocols -> URI Rewriting -> '{Dump/Smart} Prefixes',
  or you may directly write it into your elinks.conf if you like - I have there e.g.:
  

  set protocol.rewrite.smart.r = "http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%s" (google group search)
  set protocol.rewrite.smart.s = "http://www.search.ch/search?q=%s" (swiss search machine)
  set protocol.rewrite.dumb.v = "http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=%c" (validate Page)
  

• Changing Color Mode

  Remember, you can change the colors with the 'toggle-ducument-colors' (Toggle usage of ducument specific colors) keybinding. Here it's put on %. That is something quite important, when the colors don't provide a really good readability.

• Colors and Xterm-256color or so

  Download this color-printer. Run it to see what colors you have. On a xterm with TERM=xterm-256color (e.g. in ~/.bashrc) you may get something like that. Then setup elinks with that: Setup -> Options Manager -> Terminals -> xterm-256colors -> Color Mode -> 3 (is 256 color mode)

• Numbered Links for really fast browsing

  I think for really fast browsing, the option:

  set document.browse.links.numbering = 1
  

  needs to be toggled on. Once you're used to type the numbers, you might be able to access any links withing an eye-blink. You can toggle that in the menu:

  View -> Toggle link numbering
  

• Switching Elinks -> Opera / Firefox

  Since there are some Webpages, where you absolutely just need somekind of a graphical browser, you can setup a key that directly passes the actual URL to it.
  
  I use/start Firefox with that little script (for opera nothing special is needed):

  #!/bin/sh
  <path-to-binary>/firefox -a firefox -remote "openURL("$@",new-tab)" >/dev/null ||
  exec <path-to-binary>/firefox "$@";
  

  I named that startup script 'ffox' and put it into the $PATH.
  
  To setup the URI Passing,
  • Option I: Select

    Elinks-Menu -> Setup -> Option Manager -> Document -> URI Passing
    

    There click on 'ADD', select a name for that item (e.g. opera resp. ffox), then press 'EDIT' on that new created item and fill the value box with e.g: 'opera %c 2>/dev/null' respectively 'ffox %c 2>/dev/null'.
    
    Now may setup a proper Key for that action, select

    Elinks-Menu -> Setup -> keybinding Manager -> Main Mapping
    -> Pass URI of current tab to external command (tab-external-command)
    

    There click on 'ADD', and fill the Edit-Box with whatever keybinding you prefer (in my case it's a 'e').
    
    Finally in the Elinks-'Setup' Menu select 'Save Options' to store the changes.
    
    
  • Option II: just add these lines to your ~/.elinks/elinks.conf
    

    set document.uri_passing.opera = "opera %c 2>/dev/null"
    set document.uri_passing.ffox = "ffox %c 2>/dev/null"
    bind "main" "e" = "tab-external-command"
    

  Switching Opera > Elinks

  When you want to pass an link from opera to elinks may create an elinks startup script like that

  #!/bin/sh
  if pgrep "^elinks$"; then
      exec urxvt -fg yellow -bg black -g 113x51 -e elinks -remote "openURL($*, new-tab)";
  else
      exec urxvt -fg yellow -bg black -g 113x51 -e elinks "$*";
  fi
  

  May call that elinks-start, make it executable (e.g. chmod a+x elinks-start) and put it anywhere into your $PATH.
  
  To create a new keybinding/shortcut on opera, click on your

  tools -> preferences -> shortcuts -> key-setup-name
  

  open the 'Application' group, click on 'New', define a suitable keybinding/shortcut - in my case it's an 'e'. As 'action' may write there:

  Execute program, "elinks-start","%u" 
  

  Switching Firefox > Elinks

  For passing an URL from firefox to elinks, I have this setup:
  • I installed the 'launchy' extension
  • I created this 'start elinks in the background script'. I call it 'mk_elinks_open_url':
    

    #!/bin/bash
    /usr/local/bin/rxvt -e /usr/local/bin/elinks $1 &
    

  • Then I added this launchy.xml (only elinks related part here) file in my ~/.mozilla/firefox/z6kgxiwv.default/chrome/ directory:
    

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <configurations xmlns="http://launchy.mozdev.org/configurations">
            <application>
                    <label>Elinks</label>
                    <type>1</type>
                    <command>/home/calmar/bin/mk_elinks_open_url</command>
                    <arguments></arguments>
            </application>
    </configurations>
    

  So you can now pass an URL to elinks over the newly available Launchy Symbol in the Navigation Bar (may add that symbol first (view - toolbar - customize - drag&drop)
  
  

May send comments to: mac@calmar.ws, thanks!