I dabbled in the cli browser space but a lot was left to be desired due to the state of the modern web. I was having trouble with HN threads even. They would lose indentation structure for the comments and appear all one after another. Mostly dabbled in links and w3
I actually dislike the indented structure. I disable tables in links.
Non-hyperlinked HN can also be retrieved and read without using a browser, e.g., using the Firebase JSON endpoint. I can filter the JSON into formatted text the way I like it.
For anything other than reading, I can use the command line: short shell scripts I wrote for retrieving, submitting, replying and editing.
I also filter HTML to SQL and have the HN pages^1 stored in SQLite database. I prefer searching (not fulltext) using sqlite3 over using Algolia.
For me, the whole idea of not using a popular browser is that is is _different_. As I mentioned, these smaller programs can be more robust and can handle many MBs of HTML at a time without a hiccup. There is no auto-loading of resources, no CSS or Javascript. There are no "web sockets". The web developer's control is minimised and the computer owner's control is maximised. All websites look more or less the same. That's a feature not a bug, IMHO.
If I wanted to try to recreate what so-called "modern" browsers do, potentially giving control over one's entire computer to "web developers", then I would not be making HTTP requests outside the browser and using a text-only browser to read HTML.
At this point I am heavily biased. I have been reading text on a black, textmode screen (no X11) for so long that the color and indentation on HN threads in a graphical browser is ugly to me. Perhaps it is difficult for a graphical browser user to switch to a text-only browser for reading HN because, if nothing else, it is so unfamiliar. It is certainly difficult for me to switch from a text-only HTML reader to a graphical browser for reading HN. It is very awkward.
As a text-only www user, I find that the so-called "modern" web is continually becoming _more_ not less text-friendly. (Many HN commenters complain about so-called "SPAs", I welcome them.) Because, in general, more and more websites and every "web app", have a resource serving plain text, usually JSON, sometimes CSV, XML, GraphQL, etc. The early www had text files, and I still like the old formatting that was used back then, but the text was not as structured as what I get today.
