We (the *NIX users) live in a Firefox-dominated world. Firefox is our Internet Explorer in terms of popularity (actually this would be better compared to Internet Explorer's popularity in 2005) and speed. While most of users are just happy with this state of things, there are those who don't like it much.
In my previous post I wrote about surf web browser. This time I'll try to review another member of the same family — Uzbl.
Constructor
The Uzbl actually shares its goals and concepts with surf, but it still strives to be more of constructor then of bare bones browsers.
Basicly the Uzbl project produces a set of WebKit-based widgets (Uzbl-core) one can use to build a web browser. It also offers an implementation of such browser and a tabbed version of this implementation.
Uzbl is supposed to be expandable with scripts. In fact, the reference implementation distributed officially from the Uzbl's site is in fact a set of python scripts, that manage Uzbl-core.
Uzbl vs. surf
Basicly, there are three user-visible differences between the projets:
- Configuration happens at run time. All the scripts and configuration options are supposed to be configured after compilation. While it is much handier and quicker for "write-run-debug" cycle, it brings more complexity.
- A hint mode, when all the links are numbered and can be followed by keyboard command, so that the mouse is absolutely optional.
- vi-mode can be configured!!!
Conclusion
Uzbl is very handy. It might be the best ever browser for geeks who devote a lot of time to web browsing and who want their browser to be configured exactly as they want (as opposed to closer to their needs).
If You are not sure whethe You should use it or not, here's a quick test:
-
Is Your
~/.vimrclarger then 1 Kb? - Is You prefered text editor in X11 the vim in xterm/urxvt?
If both answers are Yes, You shouldn't hesitate — or may be You already are viewing this page with Uzbl?
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