Lynx


[ In English... ] [ Po
 Polsku... ]

Lynx is a powerful text-oriented (at least it doesn't display all those useless gadgets found everywhere) web browser for vt100 compatible terminals, running on any Unix compatible system, as well as on VMS (possibly, there will be a version for Windows NT). MS-DOS version (called DosLynx) is also available (unfortunately, it's no longer developed).

Lynx was developed at University of Kansas by a couple of people (few of them later co-created Netscape). Currently it's maintained by Foteos Macrides.

The present version 2.6 includes the following features:
- Almost complete HTML 3.0 and 3.2 support (no full table support so far)
- Partial support for extensions (eg. frames). Maybe scripts support will be added soon.
- On-the-fly translation of national characters to accomodate your display's capabilities (currently only Japanese, Korean and Chineese fonts, more complete support is still experimental)
- Support for image maps even on text terminals
- Support for external viewers (eg. for images)
- Built-in file management functions
- Color display when linked with Slang library
- Ability to recursively get a tree of HTML documents
- and many more!

More info on Lynx can be found on "Lynx Enhanced Pages" - the official Lynx homepage (this includes a list of publicly accessible accounts with lynx and LynxView services - allowing Web authors without Lynx to check how will their pages look on this browser).


Downloading Lynx

Lynx is available on many anonymous FTP sites. The distribution includes precompiled versions for various platforms, as well as the source code that compiles on many others. The installation instructions are also available. The below list lists some of the locations you can download Lynx 2.6 from (it will be constantly updated).

- FTP server of University of Kansas (ftp://ftp2.cc.ukans.edu/pub/lynx/) - this is the official site (but it doesn't contain development versions)
- FTP server at More.Net (ftp://ftp.more.net/pub/mirrors/lynx/) - contains also development versions (Lynx 2.5 FM) with extended capabilities
- Some mirror in Danmark (ftp://ftp.hhs.dk/fote_mirror/) - contains also development versions (Lynx 2.5 FM) with extended capabilities
- WWW server of Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Research (http://www.wfbr.edu/dir/lynx/) - it's the best place to download development versions. Also, transfer can be faster, as it goes through http, not ftp.
- FTP server of Technical University of Wroclaw, Poland (ftp://ftp.pwr.wroc.pl/pub/infosystems/www/lynx/lynx2-6/) - I recommend it for people from Wroclaw

Lynx is also available as a part of various Linux distributions (I recommend Debian GNU/Linux).


Paweł Więcek <coven@vmh.net>
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This page's URL: http://www.coven.vmh.net/tech/lynx.html