Text Browser for Android

[Dark Lord of Tech]

‘Text-Only,’ a Text-Only Browser for Android


Make like it's 1992 with the Text-Only browser

Back in the swirling mists of the last century, men were men, browsers were text-based and pictures were ASCII. Now you can relive those wild, Deadwood years of the Internet with Text-Only, a — you guessed it — text-only browser.

The free app is built for Android, but there’s a web-based version so you can access it from any browser. And because the web today isn’t really accessible by a text-only browser, it pulls some tricks.

Enter a URL and the app will return a list of articles on that page, without any adds, pop-ups, pictures or other cruft. Think of it as being like Instapaper, only in live browser form.

If the article list doesn’t load, you can give the app the page’s RSS feed address and take things from there. As this involves firing up another browser in order to copy the RSS link, it’s not ideal.

What it is good for is low-bandwidth browsing. And I mean low-bandwidth in two ways: You can pull down the relevant parts of a site when abroad, or when approaching the limit of your monthly data allowance, or just on a slow connection. And you reduce the clutter on a typical page, offering much less distraction.

If bandwidth isn’t a problem, try Readability in your regular browser. Otherwise, Text-Only is nicely old-school. If only it rendered graphics as ASCII art.

wired.com

 

[ssddx]

90% useless for most pages that you cannot already RSS feed from already.

What about image link buttons, flash, javascript and css? Such things can be integral to viewing the web.

As for data, the web only doesnt chew through much. Pandora, youtube and other such streaming media or downloads are the bandwidth hogs