Make text-browsing a snap with 20 keyboard shortcuts for Lynx

by Contributor Melonfire | May 01, 2007 6:46:00 PM

Tags: Keyboards, OPEN SOURCE, Contributor Melonfire, Lynx, keyboard shortcut, keyboard, HTML

Takeaway: Lynx is a GNU-licensed text-mode browser and is installed on most Linux distributions. We look under the hood to introduce you to 20 of the most useful Lynx keyboard shortcuts.

This article is also available as a TechRepublic download.

Lynx is a full-featured text-mode browser, licensed as open source under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It is installed by default on most Linux systems and it is fairly popular among both Web developers and power users, mostly because of its speed and its ability to render even the most complex HTML pages in a readable form. It's also extremely keyboard-friendly -- almost everything in it can be controlled using keyboard shortcuts, many of which are undocumented and can be discovered only through experience.

We look under the hood to introduce you to 20 of the most useful Lynx keyboard shortcuts. The key combinations discussed (Table A) apply to Lynx v2.8.5, freely available from Lynx.org.

Table A

Keyboard Shortcut	What It Does
/	Searches the page for a user-defined search string
Ctrl-R	Reloads current page
*	Re-renders the page, this time including a link for each image
\	Toggles between HTML source code and output
P	Prints or saves a file or page to disk
X	Requests uncached copy of page
A	Adds a new bookmark
L	Lists all URLs in the current document
Ctrl-A	Jumps to the beginning of the current page
Ctrl-E	Jumps to the end of the current page
j	Jumps to URLs using previously defined shortcuts
m	Jumps to home page
!	Spawns a command shell
=	Provides detailed information about the current URL and current link, including the owner, size, last modification date, and server type
Ctrl-T	Toggles trace mode for diagnosing HTML errors
Backspace	Displays browser history
V	Displays sequential list of previously visited pages, excluding forms and bookmarks
Ctrl-K	Displays list of currently set cookies
e	Launches editor to modify local files
?	Displays help topics