Update on Lynx Browser for Windows

Getting the latest and greatest Lynx browser for Windows is possible.
I’m working with Thomas Dickey to get his latest iteration of Lynx for Windows working properly. My focus is on the PDcurses color version with all the latest patches. If you would like to test it with me, there are some external support packages you’ll need to install first.
1. Get the C++ Redistributable libraries from MS. Just install it; you aren’t likely to see any conflicts with anything.
2. You’ll need OpenSSL for Windows. I recommend the Light version for 32-bit, since all the stuff here is 32-bit. During the installation I elect to put them in the standard Windows DLL folder.
3. You’ll also need Gzip and Bzip2. This will require a bit more work than any other part. These packages come from GnuWin32, of which I’ve written in previous posts here. For each package you want to install, click the “Setup” link off to the right of the list to download. These all install in C:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin\ and you’ll need to make sure that goes into your system’s PATH statement. It’s not for the faint of heart.
Proceed with caution!
I’m using Windows 7 for this, so the link is “Computer” instead of the older “My Computer.” Right click on the link and select “Properties” from the context menu. Select “Advanced system settings” — a window will open with several tabs at the top. Select “Advanced” and hit the button at the bottom marked “Environment Variables…” This opens yet another window with two panes and buttons for each one. In the bottom pane, scroll down to the word “Path” and click the “Edit” button. You will see a very small window with an edit field. The whole thing will come up highlighted, so be careful what keys you hit, because typing will replace what’s there. It will really ruin your day, and your computer. I hit the END key to remove the highlight and place the cursor at the end of the line. Make sure you know where that “Cancel” button is in case you fat-finger things.
Add a semicolon. Then add this — C:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin\. Be sure you get it exact, either by typing carefully, or copy and paste carefully. Once you have it, start hitting the “OK” buttons until it’s all closed. You’ll have to reboot the computer for this to take effect. Once the GnuWin32 packages are in your system path, they’ll be found automatically when anything needs them. This includes Lynx asking for Gzip or Bzip, which does happen on some webpages.
Then, download and install your choice from among the various Lynx packages at Invisible Island. The installer should place an icon on your desktop. Depending on your habits, the thing should work well enough as is. Making changes requires you dig into the configuration file and variables for Lynx. You can change the color scheme of the display, what it loads as the start page, etc. Also, if the window which opens when you double-click the icon is not suitable, you can right-click on the top bar of the window frame and set the options for fonts and window shape/size, and Windows 7 remembers them automatically. I recall XP asks if you want to save them by modifying the icon settings.
As noted, the current packages as of this writing are still a work in progress. Mr. Dickey is aware of some display problems and, in the midst of several other projects on his hands, he’s trying to fix this. In my testing, I find any site which requires Lynx to process a webpage through Bzip or Gzip causes ghost text to display from background processing, which makes things hard to read. Not many sites I visit use either of those libraries, so you may not have a problem with this.
For those of you not familiar with text-mode web surfing, it can take quite some time to adjust to the vertical display layout. All web pages are shown in a single vertical column. Most web pages with multiple columns display starting with the left column, stacking the other columns below in whatever order the page codes them, usually left to right. Quite a few elements are simply not displayed; the whole point is to get the text and little else. Lots of spacing is lost; some pages render the paragraphs without any blank lines between them. Tables (data in columns and rows) are unstacked, too, and it makes them hard to read. Keep your eye on the status bar at the bottom of the screen in case you need to make some input from the keyboard.
Links are a different color from regular text, and the “cursor” selecting them moves by changing that color. It always starts at the top of the page. Moving from one link to the next is the UP or DOWN arrows. The RIGHT arrow always selects the current link and loads whatever is at the other end. The LEFT arrow takes you back to the previous page. Moving up and down responds to the usual PGDN and PGUP. There is a hard-coded limit on short movement, two lines at a time. The DEL key shifts the display down two lines, INS up two lines. If you want to capture any text displayed on the screen, first right-click and select “Mark”, then highlight in the usual fashion with your mouse. Right-click again and it’s on the clipboard. There are dozens of other tricks you can learn by trial and error. Explore.
The colors of the text are controlled by a configuration file which ends in “lss”. The default color scheme is opaque.lss. You can learn to edit the file itself or choose one of the other files bundled in the package by editing the lynx.cfg, way down at the bottom. We don’t have room to explore all that here, so you’ll have to learn how to parse those files which are kept in the same folder as the Lynx executable at which the desktop icon is pointing. If nothing else, you can examine the LSS file and discern what elements get which color.
Plain text web browsing is much faster, so it’s really useful for slow connections. It’s also a good way to filter out distractions when text is what you seek. Finally, since it’s about as secure as it gets, because it won’t automatically download or render anything likely to harm your computer. By default, cookies are not persistent, so you can accept the all when when the status bar offers the option. I just hit “A” every time, because for sites like the New York Times, it gets the article without any hassle. When you close the browser (hit “Q”) the cookies are erased and you can do it all again. The only drawback is some servers won’t allow Lynx because at one time crackers used it for mucking around in websites. I typically protest to the Webmaster if I can identify an address for the site in question.
Enjoy!
Update: Mr. Dickey informs me you can turn off the encoding feature which tells websites you can’t accept any compression. Most sites will likely honor this. In your lynx.cfg hunt down a reference to “PREFERRED_ENCODING”. Remove the hash mark (#) in front it, then change the “all” to “none”. This is a temporary fix until he has a chance to trace the source of the problem using Bzip2.