Using EWW on Emacs

Since eww stands for Emacs Web Wowser (No, I’m not kidding!) putting Emacs in the title of this piece is redundant. I figured EWW might just not be a term whose definition would easily come to mind. I couldn’t resist wowser in any case.

Browsing via eww is not particularly useful when I am searching for a page online. I have Linux running in a container on my Chromebook. The TLDR of this is that I have one terminal to work with. I can use Chrome to search the web on the Chromebook side.

Complicating things for me is that the Chromebook screen reader only works at a terminal prompt but not in, for example, editors. That’s why I am using Emacs. I am using speechd.el for speech in the app.

Using EWW to Read Web Pages Focused on Documentation

I have wanted to refer to specific information contained on a number of web pages, especially code. Copying this can be tricky. Reviewing the steps to accomplish tasks is even trickier.

EWW helps here.

  1. Activate EWW.

    M-X eww RET

  2. At the prompt you can either type keywords for a search or the web site address. I can copy the address in Chrome and then yank it into the prompt with C-y.

  3. The page appears in a buffer. There are a number of actions you can take here, but what I do is type C-x C-w and then a filename with a .txt extension. .

Voila. I have saved the information on the web page. I can now review it at my leissure and days or weeks later should I need to go back to it. I can copy commands as needed.

For my own convenience I have created a directory called documentation-on-various-topics where I save these pages.

Local html browsing

-In Setting Up Ablog I did not show you how to view your index.html files. If your installation is like mine or you want something quick, eww can help. It’s a different command, but the outcome is the same.

eww-open-file

Enter the filename you want to open as a web page. For example:

	~/posts/_website/index.html

Voila. Here’s your web page. It’s not as pretty as your regular browser would do, but I can spot big errors and then work to fix them.

.

Previous: Our Walk was Crazy Today   Next: Kearsarge Second Draft