![]() ![]() So as Surf ships from the factory, you need to keep switching from mouse to keyboard: A guaranteed productivity killer. But Surf lacks keyboard-accessibility in one critical browsing activity: Navigating to and following links. This out of the box keyboard-centricity is fine: Keyboard productivity is much higher than mouse productivity. With no URL field, no button bar, and no back button, Surf isn't mouse-friendly without adding some user addable features discussed toward the end of this document. And when you modify by recompilation, you'll find that Surf depends on a surprising number of other software you might not have installed. And typically, the package manager version has small, low contrast fonts used to acquire URLs, requiring modification by anyone with bad vision. Also, the only way to configure Surf is to recompile it, and many folks prefer to use the version installed by their package manager. Because in some environments using Surf with plugins producing the dreaded "program vanished" Webkit bug, many folks can't use Surf with plugins such as ad blockers. Maybe you can get it to work with SSL, but lacking both a URL bar and that cool little lock icon, I wouldn't do online banking, shopping or bill paying with Surf. I found no obvious way to use SSL with Surf, although the source code appears to have some code related to SSL. So now, with the big boys defaulting on stability and performance, Surf begins to look like the best of the bunch, at least for general purpose browsing. ![]() And if you run it right, it's stable: More stable than most of the usual suspects: Especially Firefox and Palemoon. Meanwhile, over the past few years, the Surf browser has acquired CSS and Javascript abilities, so it now renders as well as, and very similarly to, any of the big boys. If you're anything like me, these days browsers are exhibiting ever worsening flaws, so that ever more frequently you need to once again switch browsers to one that sucks just a little less than the others. I'm having some success with Chromium, but it's piggy and often quirky. Midori, Luakit, Xombrero and most of the other Webkit derived browsers intermittently abort suddenly, at least when hosted on Void Linux. Palemoon, the "lighter Firefox", has performance problems that frequently drag the whole computer almost to a standstill. We all know Firefox is now skating on the edge of uselessness, at least on several distros. Surf gains a new credibility and significance now (2017), because in 2017, most browsers have declined in stability and performance, over the last several years, to the point where several of them are unusable on various distros. This web page serves as the needed documentation to make Surf a pleasure to work with. Unfortunately, Surf is underdocumented, so most who try Surf give up after a few minutes, moving on to Firefox or Chromium or Palemoon or Midori. When compiled and configured right, Surf is incredibly robust and stable, able to handle most websites extremely well, and it has a clean and simple layout without buttons and bars to encroach on the web material you're reading. Surf is a simple, lightweight browser from Suckless Tools, the same people who brought you dmenu and dwm. This is a necessary document because other browsers have become so rickety that Surf has become the go-to browser for anyone willing to use a simple, keyboard-centric interface. This is a long document because it's the only complete documentation for the Surf browser. Integrating Tabbed and Surf With Other Programs. ![]()
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