The basic usage of Emacs-w3m is the same as w3m itself. The host keys is the same as w3m. So it is very easy for the users who are familiar with w3m to use Emacs-w3m.

Although the manual of w3m has described the operation of w3m very clearly, I still want to outline some points confused me when I use Emacs-w3m at the beginning.

  1. How do I fill in forms with w3m?

    Form input fields are displayed in red (or reverse). Move the cursor to them and hit RETURN.

  2. How do I enter a URL?

    Type SHIFT-U, or use ‘U’ instead.

  3. How to get link URL?

    When the cursor is on a link, use ‘u’ to peek link URL. Emacs will get the link URL into system’s clipboard.

In which suitation should I use Emacs-w3m? Comparing with other browsers like Chrome, Firefox, is there any reason for you to use Emacs-w3m?

At first the reason I used Emacs-w3m was jsut for fun, just want to enjoy the cleanness provided by text browser. But right now I use w3m in three suitations:

  1. To read some articles I don’t want other colleagues know. By using w3m, I can make the website look ugly and not easy to identify.

  2. To copy formatted text from HTML to Emacs Org file. When I take notes or write blogs in Org Mode, I need to copy some content from internet and I don’t want to edit hyperlinks manually. So Emacs-w3m together with org-w3m is the thing for me.

    I will write a mode for Emacs which can copy the Chrome, Firefox region into the clipboard in org-mode format, so that pasting into org-mode buffers retains all html links and images. It will be more convinent.

  3. To find my blog article links. There are a lot of internal links in my blog articles, when I need them I use Emacs-w3m to find them and copy links directly.

Is it awsome? Let Emacs be your time killer at first, and Emacs will be your time saver at last.