From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lynx
Lynx Wikipedia Article displayed in Lynx
Maintainer:	Thomas Dickey
Stable release:	2.8.6  (October 11, 2006) [+/-]
Preview release:	none  (n/a) [+/-]
OS:	Cross-platform
Use:	web browser
License:	GPL
Website:	lynx.isc.org

Lynx is a text-only Web browser and Gopher client for use on cursor-addressable, character cell terminals.

Browsing in Lynx consists of highlighting the chosen link using cursor keys, or having all links on a page numbered and entering the chosen link's number. Current versions support SSL and many HTML features. Tables are linearized (scrunched together one cell after another without tabular structure), while frames are identified by name and can be explored as if they were separate pages. Lynx cannot inherently display various types of non-text content on the web, such as images and video, but it can launch external programs to handle it, like an image viewer or video player.

Because of its text-to-speech-friendly interface, Lynx was once popular with visually-impaired users, but better screen readers have reduced the appeal of this application. Lynx is also used to check for usability of websites in older browsers. It is still included in a number of Linux distributions, and is particularly useful for reading documentation when only a text-based environment is available. Despite its text-only nature and age, it can still be used to effectively browse much of the modern web, including performing interactive tasks like editing Wikipedia. Speed benefits of text-only browsing become more apparent when using low bandwidth internet connections, or older computer hardware that may be slow to render image heavy content.

Lynx is a product of the Distributed Computing Group within Academic Computing Services of the University of Kansas, and was initially developed in 1992 by a team of students at the university (Lou Montulli, Michael Grobe and Charles Rezac) as a hypertext browser used solely to distribute campus information as part of a Campus-Wide Information Server. In 1993 Montulli added an Internet interface and released a new version (2.0) of the browser [1] [2] [3].

Garrett Blythe created DosLynx and later joined the Lynx effort as well. Foteos Macrides ported much of Lynx to VMS and maintained it for a time. In 1995, Lynx was released under the GNU General Public License, and is now maintained by a group of volunteers led by Thomas Dickey.

Screenshot of Lynx on Mac OS X

Lynx was originally designed for Unix and VMS and remains the most popular console browser on Linux. Versions are also available for DOS, and recent versions run on all Microsoft Windows releases. Versions for Mac OS X are provided by OSXGNU. There is also a "Classic" Macintosh version called MacLynx "for System 7 and later", but it is not regularly updated. Ports to BeOS, MINIX, QNX, AmigaOS and OS/2 are also available.

Its primary competitors are the web browsers Links (with variants Links2 and ELinks) and w3m.

Free software Portal

• Computer accessibility
• List of web browsers
• Comparison of web browsers

• Lynx.

• Lynx homepage (old but still cited: doslynx, Lynx links and original)
• Michael Grobe's personal recollections of Lynx development
• Extremely Lynx resource page
• MacLynx
• Lynx for Mac OS X 2.8.6u
• Lynx for Windows 2.8.5rel1 installer
• Lynx on OS/2
• Lynx output for any site on the web
• Using Lynx to Analyze Website Searchability