Sunday, November 28, 2010

uzbl browser versus useable Arora

I was looking for user info (not programmer info) for the uzbl browser when I stumbled into a nasty thread in which a new user was attacked for not having read the README file.

I installed uzbl from an Ubuntu 'maverick' repository (as I recall) and the README that I found said to read the README in /usr/share/uzbl/docs

Now that will be no help to a user.  This is a browser, and there is a readme.php at their site - whcih says to read the README in /usr/share/uzbl/docs

Personally, I would rather see a linux browser install to /opt

My sudo apt-get install uzbl had not installed a /docs but only an /examples

I'm also a programmer, so I ran

   git clone https://github.com/dusanx/uzbl.git

and I got more - but not a docs directory

Then I tried

  git clone https://github.com/Dieterbe/uzbl.git

and this time I get /docs but not documentation and not a README.  There is a file README.cookies

So how to start with uzbl?  I recommend starting with arora and using it to look for user documentation.  What you will find is that in spite of their use of python, what could have been a great tool for site-specific browsing is instead yet-another unix tool.

Perhaps the user will get a light-weight browser now that Tcl 8.6 will have TclOO as standard.

If you are a unix scripter, uzbl looks great;  otherwise uzbl is anything but useable.

This posted from an Arora tab on a netbook running Ubuntu maverick.

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