This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz by Weiqi Gao. Original Post: Cool Program: w3m Feed Title: Weiqi Gao's Weblog Feed URL: http://www.weiqigao.com/blog/rss.xml Feed Description: Sharing My Experience... Latest Java Buzz Posts Latest Java Buzz Posts by Weiqi Gao Latest Posts From Weiqi Gao's Weblog

Sometimes you just have to stop and take a look around your file system. If you are like me, you'll have a Linux system or a cygwin system with everything installed.

And one place to look at is /usr/bin. A game I play when I was bored is to try to memorize what each executable there does. Once in a while, a new program comes along and I go "what does that do?"

That's how I discovered w3m a while ago. It comes with the net install of cygwin. It's a text-based web browser in the tradition of Lynx and links. It got my attention when I right clicked on a link in it. A context menu, of course text-based, popped up. And one of the menu items is the "Open in new Tab." "Nice!" I remember saying to myself.

Well, I've been using it ever since. It's especially handy for such things as README.html files, where a

[weiqi@gao] $ w3m README.html

command will open the file right there, just like

[weiqi@gao] $ less README

had the file been a plain ASCII file.

Here it is in action, with four tabs open: