Uzbl

Uzbl follows the Unix philosophy, “Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface.” As a result, Uzbl does not contain many of the features of other browsers. Uzbl has none of its own tool bars or graphical control elements, and does not manage bookmarks, history, downloads, or cookies, leaving them to be handled by external programs or scripts. These scripts are typically user-written, although some are available for download like uzbl_tabbed for tabbed browsing support. For interaction it can read input from standard input (FIFO pipe) or from POSIX local IPC socket or it can be passed text files such as a configuration file. This design is intentional, allowing for more customization. == Features ==

Uzbl uses the WebKit layout engine, and therefore inherits support for many web standards, including HTML, XML, XPath, Cascading Style Sheets, ECMAScript (JavaScript), DOM, and SVG, passing the Acid3 browser test. Web kit supports Netscape-style plugins such as Adobe Flash Player and MPlayer. Uzbl's design focuses on keyboard control and hot keys, although it also supports mouse and other pointing device input. Like the pentadactyl and vimperator Firefox extensions, Uzbl employs a mode-based interface derived from the vi and Vim text editors. Rather than move the cursor to an address bar or a link, a user presses a hotkey to switch to "command" mode. From this mode the user may: select links in the view port through assigned keys (0 through 9 by default) or through typing an unambiguous string of the link text; navigate to another web page by typing its URL; modify settings; and perform other normal web-browsing tasks. While this mode-based interface creates an initially steep learning curve, once learned it typically allows a user greater speed and convenience than many other browsers. Uzbl allows configuration of the hot keys used. == History ==

The idea of creating a new web browser started in spring 2009 on the internet forums of Arch Linux. Dieter Plaetinck started the development of the browser and was then supported by other developers. and was migrated to its testing branch on October 2, 2009. == See also ==