plumpmath / webmacs

webmacs - keyboard driven (emacs key bindings) browser, https://webmacs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

webmacs

webmacs is yet another browser for keyboard-based web navigation.

It mainly target emacs-like navigation, and started as a clone (in terms of features) of conkeror.

See the documentation manual: https://webmacs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

webmacs is based on qt webengine and written mainly in Python (version 3).

Features

Short list of features:

• keyboard navigation everywhere (including basic emacs movements in editable web content)
• Integrated, fast ad-blocker
• live documentation
• highly customizable using Python

Installation

Use pip/virtualenv - be prepared to have a working c and c++ compiler with python development library. Note I only have tested on linux.

You will also need the PyQt5 library, as I believe it can’t be installed through pip. It’s easy to install using any package manager though.

Then you have to check out the repository (do not forget the recursive flag):

git clone --recursive https://github.com/parkouss/webmacs

To test it, or work on it, I recommend virtualenv:

virtualenv --system-site-packages -p python3 venv
# activate the virtualenv
source venv/bin/activate
# install webmacs in there
pip install -e <path_to_webmacs_sources>
# and now to run webmacs
python -m webmacs.main

Then you can create a system alias to run it:

sudo ln -s <path_to_venv>/bin/webmacs /usr/local/bin/webmacs
# now you can use the webmacs command on your system, given that
# /usr/local/bin is in your PATH.

Running tests

To run the tests, you will need a few more dependencies (the virtualenv needs to be activated):

# install test dependencies
pip install -r <path_to_webmacs_sources>/test-requirements.txt
# also install the herbstluftwm window manager, using your package manager.
# Example on fedora:
sudo dnf install herbstluftwm

Then you can run the tests (the virtualenv needs to be activated):

py.test <path_to_webmacs_sources>/tests
# you can run them with the windows visible:
py.test <path_to_webmacs_sources>/tests --no-xvfb

Qt versions support

Every stable Qt version from (and including) 5.7 should work with webmacs.

Note that there are some known limitations:

• spell checking only works with Qt >= 5.8
• support for iframes is broken with Qt < 5.10 (webcontent-edit mode is unreachable)
• dev tools only works with Qt >= 5.11

Contributions

Contributions are much welcome! Writing this browser is exciting and I love that, though I don’t have many time to spend on it, having a family life and a job; And anyway the more we are to work on it and use the tool, the better!