WWW Line Mode Browser
The line mode browser is a simple W3 browser which runs on any
character-oriented terminal. It was written in C by Nicola Pellow and
first released in 1991, so that W3 could be used from the many
terminals at CERN which had no mouse and no graphics.
The browser prints a document a screen at a time. Each link is followed
by a number in square brackets, like this [n]. At the bottom of the
screen you see a prompt such as
1-12, Back, <RETURN> for more, Quit, or Help:
Type the number of a link to follow it. Commands may be abbreviated to
their first letter:
- <RETURN>
- Show the next screen of the document.
- Back
- Go back to the previous document.
- Recall
- List the documents you have seen; "Recall 3" goes to the
third.
- Home
- Go to the first document you saw.
- Top
- Back to the top of this document.
- Go address
- Open the document with the given address.
- Find keywords
- Search an index for the keywords (only in indexes).
- Help
- Display a list of commands.
- Quit
- Leave the browser.
The browser can also be used without a terminal at all, as a filter:
"www -n address" prints a document to standard output. In this way W3
documents may be piped into other programs, or fetched by mail.
The code is available by anonymous FTP .
See also the list of W3 software and the
W3 project page .