Do you long for your first connections to the Transpac network via a minitel with a character-based display? If you are on macOS or a Linux operating system (and even Windows 10 with WSL), download Carbonyl without delay. This little piece of code is able to run a web browser based on Chromium (open source version of Google Chrome) in a terminal window. In short, it is via a terminal window that a user can access a Shell, a command line interpreter, to execute certain commands in his operating system. It therefore only displays characters and surfing in such a window is a unique experience.
Carbonyl is sufficiently developed to display most current sites with an impressive level of detail: the mouse is taken into account, as are links, videos or animations. Impressive. The author of Carbonyl is also behind the html2svg software, which transforms an HTML page into a vector image which is then transcribed into characters. So don’t expect a spectacular level of detail, but the result is convincing.
Download Carbonyl
Amusing, the experience is naturally very limited, but we remain in awe of the work accomplished. However, if the text-based web appeals to you, there are a few alternatives, including the Lynx browser.