Links (web browser)
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| Links | |
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| Stable release: | 0.99 (December 23, 2003) [+/-] |
| Preview release: | 2.1pre26 (28 November 2006) [+/-] |
| OS: | Unix, Linux, Windows |
| Use: | Web browser |
| License: | GPL |
| Website: | links.sourceforge.net |
Links is an open source text and graphic web browser with a pull-down menu system. It renders complex pages (partial HTML 4.0 support including tables and frames, support for multiple character sets), supports color and monochrome terminals and allows horizontal scrolling.
Unlike Lynx and w3m, it is oriented toward visual users who want to retain many typical elements of graphical user interfaces (pop up windows, menus etc.) in a text-only environment. The focus on intuitive usability makes it suitable as a web browser for low-end terminals in libraries, Internet cafes etc.
The original version of Links was developed by Mikuláš Patočka in the Czech Republic. His group, Twibright Labs, later developed version 2 of the Links browser, that displays graphics [links -g], renders fonts in different sizes (with anti-aliasing) and supports JavaScript. The resulting browser is very fast, but it does not display many pages as they were intended. The graphical mode works even on Unix systems without X or any other window environment, using either SVGALib or the framebuffer of the system's graphics card.
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[edit] Elinks
ELinks ("Experimental/Enhanced Links") is a fork led by Petr Baudis. It is based on Links 0.9. It has a more open development and incorporates patches from other Links versions (such as additional extension scripting in Lua) and from Internet users.
[edit] Links Hacked
Links Hacked is another version of the Links browser which has merged Elinks features into Links 2.
Andrey Mirtchovski has ported it to Plan 9. It is considered a good browser on that operating system, though some users have griped about its inability to cut and paste with the Plan 9 snarf buffer.
Evolt has hosted an unsupported version on its archive for 32 bit Windows.
[edit] Programming style
In spite of the criticism of the goto programming element, the Links code contains 965 instances of goto. A difficult to read macro construct is used in dither.c to generate a set of dithering functions, each for a different graphics memory layout. This allows the browser to be one of the fastest in the world despite the fact that all the graphics are processed internally in 48-bit linear photometric resolution and the browser always performs gamma correction and dithering on the output (even in 24 bits per pixel mode) to get maximum display quality available.
