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1 Introduction to the World of ELinks
2 -----------------------------------
4 The goal of this introduction is to explain the basic concepts in ELinks,
5 give an overview of how to get started and serve as an entry point to many
6 of the (undocumented) features of ELinks. It won't tell you all the
7 details, but should hopefully give you an idea of how things work and make
8 it possible for you to even figure out how to go further.
10 Although ELinks is text-based, the user interface has many of interaction
11 methods normally found in graphical environments. There are menus, dialogs
12 with buttons and hierarchic list boxes with folders. Care has been taken to
13 make the interaction between various dialogs consistent, so the controls
14 will quickly become familiar to new users.
16 The user interface can be controlled using both mouse and keyboard, but
17 currently it is only possible to configure keybindings. Looking back, the
18 key-controls have been more advanced than the mouse support, but during the
19 0.10 prereleases the mouse support has been much improved. You will now find
20 find stuff like contextual menus when right-clicking in different document
21 zones.
23 Overview of the User Interface
24 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
26 The main user interface of ELinks consists of the document view and dialog
27 bars displaying the information such as the title of the currently viewed
28 document, all opened tabs and the browsing status. The 3 bars are elaborated
29 further below.
31 The most important dialogs that you will meet include the Main, Link and Tab
32 menus and the different managers. The menus serve as entry points to the
33 actions available from different contexts, while the managers let you check
34 the state and control the various subsystems, such as loaded cookies and the
35 global history. The utility menus and the manager tools are investigated
36 further below.
38 The document viewer in ELinks provides a feature-rich set of ways to browse
39 documents. That is, multiple options exist for navigating, searching and
40 displaying documents and you will hopefully figure in time what works best
41 for you. The basic browsing possibilities are presented below.
43 ELinks is highly configurable, so if there is something that you would like
44 to change, it is most likely possible. The best overview of the many options
45 are given in the `elinks.conf(5)` man page. Keybindings are discussed in the
46 `elinkskeys(5)` man page. It is not always up-to-date, so you should also
47 check the keybinding manager and the overview of all the configured
48 keybindings given in the Help -> Keys dialog. The Keys dialogs serves as a
49 good introduction to the most common keybindings.
51 The Title, Tab and Status bar
52 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
54 The title bars main purpose is to display the title of the current document.
55 Documents bigger than can be displayed with the current screen size are
56 divided into subpages. In this case the current document position is
57 indicated in the far right of the title bar as a suffix to the actual
58 document title. The syntax is: ( current-subpage / total-subpages ), an
59 example is `(4/9)` that indicates the 4th subpage of 9 subpages.
61 The tab bar by default is only visible when 2 or more tabs are open. It is
62 divided into slots containing the trimmed title of the tabs' loaded
63 document. Between each tab is a separator. The current tab is highlighted
64 and all tabs that has not been viewed after being loaded are highlighted as
65 fresh. Tabs are explained in details in the tabs.txt file.
67 The status bar has multiple purposes. Most of the time it will contain the
68 URI (and title) of the currently selected link. If a link is followed,
69 connection information is shown in the status bar. When using cursor
70 routing, the status bar will show the coordinates of the cursor when a link
71 is not followed.
73 The Main, Link and Tab Menus
74 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
76 The Main Menu gives you access to many of the features of ELinks via
77 submenus and serves as a good entry point for performing actions on the
78 different objects of interest, such as links, documents and tabs. The Link
79 menu and Tab menus are more specialized and targeted to a specific context,
80 such as link handling or managing the tab bar. Actually, the Link Menu is
81 accessible from the Main Menu as a submenu.
83 Once you have familiarized yourself with the menus, you will have a good
84 chance at gradually learning the most common keybinding, since all the
85 configured keybindings are shown as right aligned text. Menu entries can
86 also be quickly accessed using hotkeys. Hotkeys appear highlighted in the
87 menu entry text. For example the key-combo "Alt-v i" will open the document
88 info dialog accessible from the View sub menu in the Main menu.
90 The Managers
91 ~~~~~~~~~~~~
93 The managers let you control the state of subsystems, such as cookies and
94 the global history. They are accessible from the Tools or Setup submenu in
95 the Main Menu. The managers consists of an area showing a hierarchic listbox
96 and buttons at the bottom. Below, a view of the cookie manager is shown.
98 +------------------------- Cookie manager -------------------------+
99 | |
100 | [-]- bugzilla.elinks.cz |
101 | | |-- BUGLIST |
102 | | `-- LASTORDER |
103 | [+]- kerneltrap.org |
104 | [+]-*dictionary.reference.com |
105 | [+]-*bjork.com |
106 | [-]- www.google.com |
107 | `-- PREF |
108 | |
109 | |
110 | |
111 | |
112 | [ Info ] [ Add ] [ Edit ] [ Delete ] [ Save ] [ Close ] |
113 +------------------------------------------------------------------+
115 Each item is either a folder or a leaf. A folder is displayed with a `[-]`
116 or `[+]` before the name telling whether the folder is currently open or
117 closed. Nested items are displayed indented compared to the folder they are
118 nested in. In the cookie manager example above "bjork.com" is a folder and
119 "PREF" is a leaf.
121 Items can be "marked", which makes it possible to select a group of items
122 and perform an action on them, such as deleting all marked items. If any
123 item has been marked the currently selected item is ignored when performing
124 the action. Marked items are displayed with an asterisk ('*') prefixing the
125 name.
127 The buttons make it possible to perform actions either on selected or marked
128 items or on all items in the manager. Buttons named 'Clear' and 'Save' are
129 performed on all items; 'Clear' will delete all items and 'Save' will update
130 the runtime state file associated with the manager in the `~/.elinks/`
131 directory. Most buttons presses will query you before completing the
132 action.
134 At any time, both the currently selected item and button are highlighted.
135 The same goes for marked items. Most manager dialogs also maintains the
136 state, so that when you reopen the manager later it will have the same items
137 selected and the same folders opened or closed.
139 The basic default controls for managers are the following:
141 `--------------`--------------------------------------------------------------
142 Keys Action
143 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
144 Up/Down Select the item above/below.
145 '*' Toggle marking of a item.
146 Space Open and close folders.
147 Left/Right Select the button to the left/right.
148 Home/End Select the first/last item.
149 Enter Press the currently selected button.
150 Esc Close the manager dialog.
151 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
153 Some managers also supports searching, either by pressing the 'Search'
154 button or by pressing '/'. By searching the empty string, all hidden items
155 from the previous search will be shown again.
157 LED status indicators
158 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
160 As an optional feature it is possible to have tiny LED-like status
161 indicators shown at the bottom-right of the screen. They are used for
162 displaying an overview of the current browsing state, ie. whether you are
163 currently talking through a SSL-secured connection, what is the current
164 input mode (normal or insert), JavaScript errors etc.
166 An example display may look like: `[SIJP--]`. Each position in the LED
167 display is associated with the following state:
169 `--------------`--------------------------------------------------------------
170 Symbol Description
171 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
172 'S' Whether an SSL connection was used.
173 'i'/'I' The state of insert mode for text-input form-fields: 'i' \
174 means modeless, 'I' means insert mode is on.
175 'J' A JavaScript error has occurred.
176 'P' A JavaScript pop-up window was blocked.
177 - Unused.
178 - Unused.
179 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
181 `-` generally indicates that the LED is off.
183 The above information is also available in the LED dialog available by
184 either clicking on the LED display or via the Help menu.
186 Navigation
187 ~~~~~~~~~~
189 ELinks provides various ways to navigate documents. Depending on how
190 documents are structured, it can be a great help to change navigation style.
191 The navigation styles can roughly be divided into page-oriented,
192 link-oriented and screen-oriented. They overlap in many ways, so this
193 separation is mostly used as a mean to present them.
195 Page-Oriented Navigation
196 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
198 This involves scrolling documents horizontally and vertically. Documents
199 can be scrolled page-wise, where the next or previous subpage will be
200 displayed. It is also possible to scroll documents in steps, either
201 line-wise (vertically) or column-wise (horizontally). The step size can be
202 configured and by default is 2 lines and 8 columns. Alternatively, whole
203 documents can be scrolled to the start or the end.
205 The basic default controls:
207 `--------------`--------------------------------------------------------------
208 Keys Action
209 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
210 Insert/Delete Scroll up/down line-wise. (vertically)
211 PageUp/PageDown Scroll up/down page-wise.
212 '['/']' Scroll left/right column-wise. (horizontally)
213 Home/End Scroll to the start/end of the document.
214 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
216 Link-Oriented Navigation
217 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
219 For hypertext documents, access to the links makes it more practical to
220 navigate by jumping between links in the document. There are two ways to do
221 this; either you can move between links relationally or by number. Using
222 relational link navigation it is possible to focus the next/previous link or
223 move in a directional manner to the link in a certain direction such as
224 left/right/up/down.
226 In order to navigate using link numbers, you have to first toggle link
227 numbering on; this will prefix all links with a number using the notation
228 [number]. `[23]` indicates link number 23. When link numbering is enabled,
229 pressing any number key will pop up a "Go to link"-dialog where the complete
230 link number can be entered. By pressing Enter the entered link number will
231 be focused, but only if it is a valid link number.
233 Note: it is also possible to jump to links by searching the link text; check
234 the documentation on searching.
236 The basic default controls:
238 `--------------`--------------------------------------------------------------
239 Keys Action
240 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
241 Up/Down Move to the previous/next link.
242 '.' Toggle link numbering.
243 Enter/Right Follow the current focused link.
244 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
246 No keys are by default configured for directional link navigation.
248 Position-Oriented Navigation
249 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
251 Positional navigation (sorry, bad word) uses the either the position of the
252 cursor or the mouse click to navigate the document. If you are familiar with
253 the w3m text-browser you will be familiar with cursor routing. Basically,
254 you move the cursor around -- kind of like a mouse -- in the document area
255 of the user interface. When the cursor is over a link, the link is
256 highlighted, and when the cursor moves outside the current document view, it
257 will cause the document view to scroll.
259 The possibilities when using the mouse to navigate the document depend on
260 what terminal you are using. In some terminals, it is possible to scroll by
261 using the mouse wheel. Scrolling is however also possible by clicking in the
262 edge areas of the document view. Highlighting links can be done by clicking
263 on a link but waiting to release the mouse button until the link is no
264 longer under the mouse pointer.
266 No keys are by default configured for cursor routing.
268 Forms
269 ^^^^^
271 The status bar will indicate the type and name of the field.
273 Input text/Password fields::
274 These will be displayed as `________`.
275 Note that passwords will be obscured using `*` characters.
276 Status bar will display something like "Text field, name q",
277 or "Password field, name password" for password fields.
279 Textarea boxes::
280 These will be displayed as multiple lines consisting of `_`.
281 Status bar will display something like "Text area, name comment"
283 Buttons::
284 These will be displayed as `[ Go ]`.
285 Status bar will display something like "Submit form to ...",
286 "Post form to ..." for submit buttons.
288 Checkboxes::
289 These will be displayed as `[ ]` or `[X]`.
290 Status bar will display something like "Checkbox, name c, value 1".
291 To set one just press ENTER on it.
293 Radio buttons::
294 These will be displayed as `( )` or `(X)`.
295 Status bar will display something like "Radio button, name radio1".
296 To set one, you may use ENTER.
298 Select lists::
299 These will be displayed as `[first item____]`.
300 Note that if multiple attribute is used, these are displayed as a
301 group of checkboxes instead.
302 Status bar will display something like "Select field, name list"
303 To select one entry, press ENTER, then navigate using UP/DOWN, then
304 press ENTER again.
307 Searching
308 ~~~~~~~~~
310 Searching is by default available by pressing '/'. This will open a search
311 dialog with a input text field for entering the search terms and checkboxes
312 to control how searching is performed. You can indicate whether matching
313 should be case sensitive and whether regular expressions or normal searching
314 should be used.
316 It is also possible to make an incremental search, also called type-ahead
317 searching. You can search either the whole document text or only link text.
318 The latter can be useful if you see a link deep inside a page and want to
319 get to it quickly.
321 Matches of the search term will be high-lighted. After having performed
322 document text search all matches will be high-lighted. To get rid of this
323 high-lighting you have to ``search for the empty string'', that is open a
324 search dialog and just press Enter in the input field.
326 Previous search words are saved in the search history, so they can easily be
327 found and used later. Browsing the history will replace the current entered
328 search terms.
330 The basic default controls for searching are the following:
332 `--------------`--------------------------------------------------------------
333 Keys Action
334 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
335 '/' Open search dialog
336 '?' Open search dialog for backwards searching
337 '#' Start incremental link text search
338 '#/' Start incremental document search
339 'n'/'N' Show next/previous match
340 Tab Show next match (only for incremental searching)
341 Up/Down Insert previous/next search word from history (only when the \
342 input field is selected)
343 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
345 Hints and Odd Features
346 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
348 Note: This is still a work in progress and from here on an below
349 everything is marked TODO!
351 - Numerical action prefixes. Example: 3<Down> jumps down three links.
353 - How to move forward in the document history ('u').
355 - Toggling color modes, plain/html and image link rendering.
357 - Link numbering.
359 - Insert mode in text-input form-fields.
361 - Menu searching.