Install and Use Text Based Lynx Browser in Windows

It is very hard to believe for the modern generations that there was a time when the web sites were mostly text based conglomeration of pages. Obviously, you did not need graphical user interface to visit these web sites. The web browsers as well as the operating systems had command line interface. You could fetch the web pages and view at the textual information they had – no images, no animations and no videos. One of the most popular web browsers in those times was the Lynx web browser. Lynx browser allowed you to browse around a web site comfortably and displayed the text based web pages in a command line interface.

If you want to have some of that nostalgic fun of accessing web sites using Lynx once again then you can install Lynx in your Windows machines. Some people have managed to keep the Lynx alive all these years and have been updating it to support the latest server protocols and commands. You can download and install the Lynx browser for Windows and launch it from its desktop shortcut.

If you want to change the startup page or the home page for the Lynx browser, then you have to open the Lynx installation folder, find the lynx.cfg file and edit the STARTFILE: line in this file. By default this entry points to the download webpage.

Lynx for Windows

One thing you would notice that Lynx asks you permission for each and every cookie stored by websites – an old school practice of handling cookies that seems to have disappeared in the modern day web browsers. You can choose to accept or reject the cookies.

If you want to open a URL by typing it in the Lynx interface, then you have to press the G key and then type in the URL followed by the Enter key. Similarly, you can open the options by pressing the O key, print the current web page using the P key or close the browser window using the Q key.

The new age web sites are obviously not designed to work well with the Lynx’s text based interface, but Lynx still manages to do the job just like it used to in the early 90’s.

You can download the Lynx web browser for Windows from http://invisible-island.net/lynx/#installers.