So relatively little to do with anime today, but recently I went looking at a new (well, new to me at least) web browser called dwb. It's a browser reminiscent of luakit, uzbl, etc. and so there is fairly little to be seen when actually using the browser. It has support for tabs, has a status bar, and aside from that, has the web page. There are of course the other general sort of features that any normal browser has (history, bookmarks, etc), but there are a number of minor differences in comparison to my preferred browser of choice (which is luakit).
For one thing, instead of using numbers to follow links, it uses letters. It's a small difference, but that means you don't need to move up or to your keypad to follow links, but just keep typing on the normal keys. Another fine addition is the availability of changing the keyboard shortcuts and settings within the browser without any real hassle (though you need to keep an eye out for conflicting shortcuts). With that said, luakit might be more flexible since you can actually define everything yourself, but for a simpler user such as myself, the convenience is welcomed.
Of course, the real browsers you should be using would have to be chromium/chrome. This is not without justification, and although luakit/dwb/uzbl/firefox/etc are all usable for your general searching, I find a particular plugin available for chromium/chrome to be a requirement for my manga reading needs.
I'm sure many of you have heard of it, but it's called "AllMangasReader" (
allmangasreader.com) and I think it's a great plugin. It supports a variety of websites (even a number of ones with different languages) and gives a small number of perks to reading manga on those sites as well. Most sites display manga page by page, but the plugin does the convenient thing and combines them all into one page (continuous pages separated by chapters) which I find to be much more streamlined and not quite as jarring to shuffle between pages. Of course, there are websites like
kissmanga.com that already do that for you, but with the plugin in hand, your range of websites can increase.
Not only that, but the plugin keeps a consolidative listing of the various manga from said various websites so you don't have to keep track of them. When the site updates with a new chapter, you get a spiffy notification that can be clicked to bring you straight to the latest chapter OR the chapter that you haven't read yet (because it also keeps track of what chapter you last read). It works rather well as a running list of the stuff you have read, though you can't export it to MAL or anything. It's one of the few plugins that I always get, whether in Windows or Linux. If only there were a userscript alternative TT-TT. Unfortunately there don't seem to be any userscript alternatives that provides the great consolidated list that AllMangasReader does, nor do they give updates (at least not the ones I looked at).
All in all, my current default browser remains as chromium, though I still keep firefox, luakit, and dwb because I can spare the space, and hopefully one day they too will have something spectacular (I'm really wishing for a userscript), but until then, luakit/dwb will have to be used as just generic stuff (both are lightweight :D).
To sum up this post, I did nothing all week except find a neat lightweight web browser to play around with, and I still use chromium for a single plugin.
