GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable, self-documenting text editor.
Emacs is a highly advanced text editor, providing users with much more than simple insertion and deletion. This large, complex application does everything from editing text to functioning as a complete development environment.
It can control subprocesses, indent programs automatically, show two or more files at once, and edit formatted text. Emacs editing commands operate in terms of characters, words, lines, sentences, paragraphs, and pages, as well as expressions and comments in various programming languages. The software has been in development for approximately 38 years.
Users who want to browse the web in Emacs often use w3m.el (an interface to the external w3m browser), or w3 (a complete web browser written in Emacs Lisp). Whilst both support graphics, tables, frames, and w3 supports stylesheets, w3m.el is faster and has more features overall.
There are a number of reasons why browsing the web within Emacs may be useful. Browsing is fast, and the user can focus on reading. Users also can navigate with the Emacs shortcuts they are accustomed to. If a page does not render well in eww, there is an option to open the page in an external browser. Another reason why eww may appeal is that with a little knowledge of Emacs Lisp, a user can integrate information held on the web into their work. There are no JavaScript pop-ups, and no browser-based malware to contend with.
Key Features
- History – eww remembers URLs that have been visited.
- Bookmark URLs.
- Easily launch website in external browser – useful if the website uses JavaScript.
- List cookies.
Website: www.gnu.org/software/emacs
Support: Manual
Developer: Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
License: GNU General Public License v2.0
Related Software
| Console Web Browsers | |
|---|---|
| eww | Emacs Web Wowser. It's integrated into Emacs, the famous text editor |
| Lynx | Legendary web browser that's still maintained |
| ELinks | Advanced and well-established feature-rich browser. Extend with Lua or Guile |
| w3m | Browser and terminal pager |
| Links | Text and graphic web browser with pull-down menu system |
| Offpunk | Offline-first command-line browser |
| Chawan | TUI web (and (S)FTP, Gopher, Gemini, ...) browser with CSS |
| Brow6el | Terminal web browser with graphics support |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
 Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Discovered a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |