GUI browsers

CSE's preferred web browser is Mozilla Firefox which is installed in all the linux and Windows laboratories. On linux it can be started from the Fluxbox desktop menu or by typing firefox into an xterm. On Windows it can be started from the Start menu.

As it's part of the operating system and not easily removed, Internet Explorer is available in the Windows labs but in order to avoid the many IE exploits out there, we recommend you use it only if you need to visit one of those wretched websites that have been written to only work for IE. And complain to the webmaster!

Safari is available in the Macintosh lab.

Text browsers

It may surprise you to learn that you don't need a graphical browser to look at websites. In the linux labs there are also three text-based web browsers available:

• lynx - the most basic, lynx does not display images
• links and w3m - which display images.

Why would you want to use a text-based browser? They're fast, much faster even than Firefox, which is (or used to be) pretty lightweight for a GUI browser. If you're working on something and just need to quickly check a web reference, or writing HTML, it's often easier and quicker to type lynx <URL> than to invoke a GUI browser.