Some Customizations to W3m-Mode

For many tasks, I find that it is easier to use a text mode browser in Emacs than it is to use an external browser. This is clearly the case when you would like to copy some text from a web page into an Emacs buffer, like when you are grabbing code examples from a manual or tutorial. One of the main uses I have of this is to quickly browse the Common Lisp Hyperspec. I have found that W3m and W3m-Mode is quite good for these tasks. W3m is a text mode browser that exists independently from Emacs. W3m-Mode is a mode that connects to W3m, sends requests from Emacs to the external process, and receives the output and displays it in an Emacs buffer. Edit: If you want to set Emacs up to use this browser, or any browser, customize the browse-url-browser-function variable.

Of course W3m won't work with a lot of "modern" websites, anything that uses Flash (of course), or anything that utilizes Javascript extensively. Even with all of those barriers, it works surprisingly well because much of the information that is out there on the Internet (and most of the information that I consume using this browser) is actually just text. Further, thanks to HTML5 and the return of the separation of content (HTML) and design (CSS) many websites can be rendered usefully in text.

However, as much as I have learned to like W3m-Mode, there are some annoying aspects of the mode that are the default. Namely, I would like to be able to move through the buffer with the standard directional keys, as well as switch tabs in the way that most other browsers do via "C-<tab>", and move forward and backward in history via "M-<right>" and "M-<left>", respectively. With a little help from the Emacs folks on /r/emacs, here are some bindings that will set this up for you.

;; W3m for browsing
(defun w3m-mode-options ()
  (local-set-key (kbd "<left>") 'backward-char)
  (local-set-key (kbd "<right>") 'forward-char)
  (local-set-key (kbd "<up>") 'previous-line)
  (local-set-key (kbd "<down>") 'next-line)
  (local-set-key (kbd "M-<left>") 'w3m-view-previous-page)
  (local-set-key (kbd "M-<right>") 'w3m-view-next-page)
  (local-set-key (kbd "C-<tab>") 'w3m-next-buffer)
  (local-set-key (kbd "q") 'bury-buffer))
(add-hook 'w3m-mode-hook 'w3m-mode-options)

That last local-set-key is to rebind the "q" key. By default, "q" tells W3m-Mode to kill all W3m sessions and close the window. This isn't the right thing to do for a couple of reasons. First, if I want to kill all W3m sessions, I will do so by killing the buffer (which will kill the sessions). I don't need a separate key for that. Second, closing windows without the user expressly asking for a window to be closed is not good Emacs interface style. The correct thing to do is to go away (whatever that means) and leave the window to be filled with another buffer. The only exception to the rule is popup windows, windows that are meant to be extremely short lived (less than a minute) and which created the window in which the reside. W3m is most definitely not a popup window. Looking at this, I felt that the best solution is to map "q" to bury-buffer and leave it at that.

There are a few other bindings that are different from the standard key bindings that a browser uses, including making a new tab and kill that tab. These exist and are reasonable (they fit in with the standard Emacs user interface), just check the help for W3m-Mode via "C-h m".