HTML Renderers

:: browser, emacs

By: Maciej Barć

How it should be?

I imagine that a web browser should have been a "window" to the Internet world that provides easy and efficient way to graphically access resources exposed by multiple protocols: HTTP(S), (S)FTP, Gopher, Gemini, etc…

How it is?

Only few protocols are supported!

Recently FTP support got "deprecated" in Firefox. It can still be enabled in by setting network.ftp.enabled to true.

FTP support is announced to be completely gone in FF 90.

Chrome dropped FTP some time ago.

BUT!

Luckily we have Emacs!

GNU Emacs has packages to support all kinds of protocols.

  • eww which is a simple HTTP(S) browser like w3m (also renders images)
  • tramp allows you to access files by SSH
  • elpher allows you to access Gemini and Gopher sites (graphically)
  • ange-ftp allows you to connect to FTP servers
  • and finally net-utils which wraps around system utilities to provide interactive mode for many protocols, ie.: gopher, irc, ntp, pop3, www