Links!

Ok, I’m even more geeky than I ought to be. Not half an hour after getting Lynx up and running, I found another text based browser that I like better. It’s called Links.

It has two big advantages over Lynx: it handles tables better and it can display frames.

You can get Links for pretty much any platform here:
http://artax.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~mikulas/links/

The people who wrote these assume that if you want to use either of these browsers then you’ve got some level of technical ability. Unfortunately for Unix newbies like me, their assumptions can cause problems.. Just in case you’re having the same sort of problems, here are some quick notes for getting links or lynx up and running.
Installation is a snap with the Mac OS X package system, so there should be no worries there. The big problem comes when you actually try to run the programs. If you open up the terminal and type links www.cnn.com you’re likely to be told links: Command not found. This is because the applications are installed in the /usr/local/bin directory, which isn’t part of your default path. You can run them by typing /usr/local/bin/links in your terminal session if you really want to, but there’s an easier way.

When you open up the terminal, it looks for a file called .tcshrc and runs any commands you’ve put there. If there isn’t a .tcshrc file, you can create one by typing pico .tcshrc. This opens up pico, my favorite visual editor, and creates a new file. Type or paste in the following:

setenv PATH /usr/local/bin:$PATH

Then type control-x to exit. Type y to save the changes to the file. Close the terminal window, open a new one, and you should be all set.