Dan Butler's
TNPC Newsletter

More Lynx Tips and Tricks

by Lee Hudspeth

In TNPC 1.1 we covered Lynx at length. Here are a few additional things you'll want to know as you begin using this text-only Web browser. For documentation on Lynx command line switches, start at the main help page, go to the Lynx Help Menu, follow the "Lynx Users Guide" link, from the Table of Contents follow the link entitled "The Lynx command line." Some quickies...

To quickly see just the body text and link URLs of a Web page:

lynx -dump http://www.yourdomain.com > test.txt

Of course substitute your favorite URL. This command strips the HTML tags, leaving just the page's textual content, and puts a list of URLs at the end of the listing.

You can even browse your hard drive using Lynx; type "lynx c:" and navigate from there.

We've received some reader comments that while Lynx is fast, it's not all that much faster than Internet Explorer or Navigator with graphics turned off. What's missing in this equation is that Lynx loads almost instantly, and Lynx does not have to deal with Cascading Style Sheets, Dynamic HTML, JavaScript, VBScript, or Java applets, among other technologies, as does a graphical browser. When you add in Lynx's small footprint (especially for road warriors using laptops and modems over hotel phone lines), Lynx is as handy as a pocket on a shirt, pen optional.