Lynx (browser)

Lynx is a text-mode web browser and gopher client.

Features

Lynx is used in addressable cursor terminals and character cells, or terminal emulators (including VT100 terminals and desktop software packages that emulate VT100 terminals, such as Kermit or Procomm). It was originally developed for UNIX and VMS and is still distributed with various Linux distributions today. Officially there are versions for Microsoft Windows (Windows 95 and later), DOS, OS/2 and FreeBSD, AmigaOS, Atari TOS, BeOS among many others. The versions for Mac OS X are provided by OSXGNU.

Its simplicity makes it easy for a screen reader to work on top of this browser, which made it a choice for visually impaired users. Lynx is also used to check the usability of a website in older web browsers.

To navigate with Lynx you can select a hyperlink with the arrow keys or, activating an option to number the links, entering the number of each link. Current versions have support for various HTML features. Includes support for bookmarks, cookies. The content of the tables is displayed in several lines of text, where the end of each table row is represented by a line break. The frames are identified by a name and are navigated as if they were independent pages. Lynx can display local files and includes support for the Gopher, FTP, WAIS, NNTP, Finger, or cso/ph/qi server protocols, and services accessible via telnet, TN3270, or rlogin account connections.

History

Lynx development began between July and October 1992 by Michael Grobe, Charles Rezac, and Lou Montulli, at the Distributed Computing Group, within Academic Computing Services of the University of Kansas. Lynx's original purpose was to be a browser for distributing campus information, as part of the Campus-Wide Information Server. Lou Montulli modified the program so that it could connect to the Internet and released version 2.0 in March 1993. Gareth Blythe, developer of DosLynx, later joined the Lynx project. In 1994, Lou Montulli and Gareth Blythe left the project to take up positions at Netscape Communications Corporation.

The University of Kansas handled the development and distribution of Lynx up to version 2.4.2.

Due to difficulties encountered in the development of the program, Lynx was released under the GNU GPL around 1996, with the University of Kansas retaining the copyright. Lynx is currently maintained by independent developers coordinated on a mailing list by Thomas Dickey (who joined the project in 1998 with the release of version 2.8).