

Note that there is newer material at 
@url{http://emacspeak.blogspot.com/2014/05/emacspeak-eww-updates-for-complete.html}
and in @xref{emacspeak-eww}. 
For Emacs 24.4 and later, note that the built-in Web browser EWW is also
the browser of choice for emacspeak.  



@MDash{} 
 T. V. Raman, October 2014. 

This document, ``The State of Web Browsing in Emacspeak'' describes
the primary web browsers in use under emacspeak and ways they might be
used more efficiently.   

Version 1.0 @MDash{}   February, 2007. 

Copyright @copyright{} 2007 Robert D. Crawford @email{rdc1x@@comcast.net}

@menu
* Intro::               Why this document and what it is about
* emacs-w3::            Browsing the web with emacs/w3
* Add-ons::             Add-ons to make life better
* Conclusion::          Wrapping it up
@end menu

@node Intro
@subsection Intro

Web browsing in emacspeak can be made as simple or as complicated as
you wish to make it.   On the one hand, all that need be done is to
open a web browser and fetch a particular url.   This works fine in
many cases with exceptions being things like html tables.   On the
other hand, if you spend a little time learning a particular browser
and its functionality, web browsing can be made more efficient and the
web more navigable. 

This document is intended to be an introduction to the 2 primary
browsers that run under emacs: emacs/w3 and EWW.   I also intend
to introduce a couple of add-on packages intended to make life easier
and to address specific shortcomings. 

The primary reason for this documentation is the fact that a lot of
the documentation of the various functions tells exactly what it does,
but not why or in what circumstance one might use it.   Hopefully I can
remedy that here. 

@heading  Who this document is intended for

While this document is geared toward emacspeak users, it might be
helpful for other users as well.   I have tried to note where functions
are specific to emacspeak. 

@heading Assumptions

This document assumes emacs is installed.   If reading the section on a
particular browser and trying out the associated functions, it, of
course, assumes that the browser is installed and working.  For
features specific to emacspeak, a working install of emacspeak is
necessary.   It is far beyond the scope of this document to help with
the installation of these programs. 

For help with installing any of the above bits of software, the
following mailing lists and / or newsgroups are available:

@itemize
@item
emacs - @code{gnu.emacs.help}

@item
emacs/w3 - the mailing list for w3 is pretty dead.   Sorry.  
The documentation is, however, not terrible. 

@item
emacspeak - see @url{http://emacspeak.sf.net}
@end itemize

It is highly suggested that the mailing list archives, google, and the
relevant documentation be consulted before posting messages to any
mailing list.   Nothing is more irritating than answering the same
questions over and over.   Those of you with kids know what I am
talking about. 

It is also assumed that the reader is comfortable with using emacs
itself.   Understanding the convention for communicating keystrokes to
run commands, navigating documents, and the like are not covered. 


@node  emacs-w3
@subsection emacs-w3

emacs/w3 is a web browser written completely in emacs lisp.   It has
some really nice features applicable to the emacspeak community such
as the ability to navigate tables and support for the w3c's aural
cascading stylesheets.   

@heading emacs/w3 advantages

As mentioned above, the ability to navigate tables is a super help. 
emacs/w3 also has support for cascading stylesheets.   This allows
incredible control of voices used for what would normally be visual
attributes of the text such as bold, italics, preformatted text and
the like. 

Another advantage of emacs/w3 is that it is written completely in
emacs lisp.   With some effort, emacs/w3 is very customizable and quite
extendable.   

@heading emacs/w3 disadvantages

Rendering can be slow.   Sometimes it can be painfully, excruciatingly
slow.   That might be a slight exaggeration, but slow it is.   This is
because it is written in lisp... something I mentioned just above as a
strength.   It is a trade-off, but one that some see as worth it. 
There are, however,  some things that can be done to speed up the browsing
process.   See
@xref{xsl-transform,,@code{emacspeak-w3-xsl-transform}},
for more information. 

Another disadvantage is that emacs/w3 chokes on some pages.   Sometimes
it gives error messages and doesn't display anything.   Sometimes it
does this to some people and doesn't do it to others as we saw on the
emacspeak mailing list a short time ago.   Sometimes it gives error
messages and renders the page anyway. 

One other major annoyance of emacs/w3 is that sometimes it simply
stops doing anything while rendering a page.   There is a way I have
found to get around this.   I hit @kbd{C-g}.   I usually wait five to ten
seconds and then simply quit, using @kbd{C-g}.   Not always, but usually,
the page has already completed downloading and is being rendered and
it therefore is not a problem.   

emacs/w3 also has no bookmark functionality.   This can be remedied in
several ways.   One simple way, mentioned below, is to use the emacs
package bmk-mgr.   Another way is to use org mode with remember which
is the method used by Dr. Raman, the author of emacspeak.   See
@xref{bmk-mgr,,bmk-mgr}, later in this manual, for more information. 

History back and next in the browser also seem to be broken but this
is not generally a problem for me as I never look back.  

@heading emacs/w3 native functions

Many functions for efficient navigation of the internet are native to
emacs/w3.   Some of the most useful functions are listed below

Unlike emacs-w3m, the information presented by @code{describe-mode} is very
complete, but a little terse.   All the function names are listed and
asking for help on particular functions works well.   That being said,
use this list to augment, not replace, the built-in help that is
available in emacs. 

@kbd{C-f} will open a new buffer containing the cell point is in.   In most
instances, this works very well.   Imagine you are looking at a page
that is divided into 4 distinct areas: a cell at the top of the page
that contains a banner and some navigation, and a ``body'' area that is
divided into three sections consisting of more navigation, an article,
and advertisement.   If point is in the main article cell, using @kbd{C-f}
will open another buffer that contains only the text of that cell, the
article you are interested in. 

One caveat is that this does not always work as advertised.   Sometimes
the leftmost character of each line is missing.   At least it makes for
interesting reading.   Usually when I have this problem I simply exit
that buffer and linearize the tables in the original page. 

The @kbd{m} key executes a very useful command.   It will complete a link
on the page.   Imagine that you are reading through a document and you
hear a link that you need to visit.   You could tab through all the
links until you hear the one you want or you could hit the @kbd{m} key and
enter the link text at the prompt.   Completion is available and it is
not case-sensitive.   Efficient, no? 

The period in a cell will speak the contents of that particular cell. 
This command is, in my opinion, most useful when navigating tables
with cells that have only one paragraph or less.   I tend to not read
whole articles in this manner because, inevitably, someone will
interrupt me and I will lose my place. 

The equals key, while in a table cell will give you the cell
information.   It tells you the row and column position, the size of
the table, and at what nesting level the table is. 

The pipe key, is used to read the table column.   As this command seems
to read the rectangle the column is in, this command is most useful
when used in a table where there is no column spanning, i.e. all rows
and columns are uniform.   

Here is a list of table navigation commands:

@itemize
@item
@kbd{C-e +} moves to the beginning of the next table row. 

@item
@kbd{C-e -} moves to the beginning of the previous table row.  

@item
@kbd{C-e <} moves to the beginning of the table. 

@item
@kbd{C-e >} moves to the end of the table. 

@item
@kbd{C-e =} moves to the top of the table column. 

@item
@kbd{C-e <DOWN>} moves to the next cell down in the same column. 

@item
@kbd{C-e <UP>} moves to the previous cell in the same column. 

@item
@kbd{C-e <LEFT>} moves to the previous cell in the same row. 

@item
@kbd{C-e <RIGHT>} moves to the next cell in the same row. 
@end itemize

As you can see, table navigation in w3 can be easy and fun. 

@heading emacspeak specific functions for emacs/w3 

An incredible amount of work has been done by the emacspeak community
to make emacs/w3 accessible to those with visual impairments.   Here is
an explanation of some of those functions. 

The command @kbd{C-t} will toggle the visibility of table borders.   This
command might be useful where you want to hear all punctuation symbols
on a page but the table characters get in the way. 

The quote key will execute a command that allows you to skim the
contents of the buffer.   it will read the page,
paragraph-by-paragraph, pausing between paragraphs to prompt you to
move on by pressing @key{SPACE}.   If you hit @key{SPACE} in the
middle of a paragraph, it skips to the next paragraph. 

Another skimming command is bound to the @kbd{z} key.   This will allow you
to zip through web pages by logical blocks such as div, paragraph, and
table tags. 

Using the imenu facilities is another way of skimming the document and
getting to the information you desire.   imenu works especially well
for well-structured documents.   The first thing that need be done is
to copy the @file{w3-imenu.el} file from the @file{contrib} directory
of the @file{w3} directory to somewhere in your load path.   I am using
the cvs version of w3 and my w3 directory is under
@file{/home/rdc/sourceforge}.   The easiest thing to do is probably to
do an @kbd{M-x locate} and search for @file{w3-imenu.el} to see where
it is.   After locating the file, move it into your load path.   In my
case I have it under @file{/home/rdc/share/emacs/site-lisp/}. 

There are two ways to use the imenu facilities: automatically and
manually.   Since I do not use imenu on every site, I prefer to invoke
it manually to save the time required to build the index.   

Once things are in place, invoke imenu with the @kbd{j} key.   This will ask
you for an index position.   Hitting @key{TAB} will give you a list
of the possible index positions.   Another way of navigating the
document would now be to use the keys @kbd{M-n} and @kbd{M-p} to go to the next
and previous index positions.   Note that you have to build an index
for a page before you can use these commands. 

@kbd{Cap A} and @kbd{cap R} serve the same function.   @kbd{Cap A}
browses the Atom feed at point and @kbd{cap R} browses the rss feed at
point.   This is useful to sample the feed, so to speak, before going
through the trouble of configuring your feed reader to fetch the feed. 
It might also be useful to grab the headlines from a page and present
them in a more concise, readable format.   If using the sort-tables xsl
transform, there will be a link at the top of the page if there is an
rss feed available.   See @xref{rss,, emacspeak atom and emacspeak rss},
for more information.  

Google provides many useful tools for web surfers.   The following
commands are useful to access much google goodness. 

@kbd{Cap C} extracts the current page from the google cache.   With a
prefix argument it will extract the link under point.   This is useful
for those times when a particular site is down... maybe it is in the
cache... maybe it is not.   It can also be used for when particular
pages are removed from a site like in the case of a government
conspiracy.   Are we at war with Eurasia or East Asia? 

The slash key will search google for pages similar to the current
page.   

The command @kbd{g} will do a google search restricted to the site of the
document. 

The @kbd{l} command googles for who links to this page. 

@anchor{w3 transcode}
The command @kbd{t} runs the url under point
through the google transcoder.   This is useful for sites that are
heavy on the use of tables and the xsl transforms are not helpful.   It
also works on some sites that use javascript to go to the next page in
the story, such as Reuters.   Using a prefix argument with this command
will untranscode the url under point for pages that are currently
transcoded. 

@kbd{Cap T} will jump to the first occurrence of the title in the
document.   Multiple consecutive executions of this command will jump
to further occurrences.   This command is probably one of the most
useful timesavers while web browsing.    

@kbd{M-s} jumps to the ``submit'' button for the form you are editing. 

@kbd{M-r} plays the media stream at point with the default media player.  

The @kbd{y} command will rewrite the url of the url under point.   This is
useful for those sites you frequent.   Often, sites that have printer
friendly content have a specific way in which the url is written.   For
The first time you run this command in a particular buffer you are
prompted for a pattern to use.   The pattern is in the form of 

@samp{("from string" "to string")}

The opening paren is supplied.   Remember to quote the strings or you
will get an error.   From this point on, until you kill the buffer in
which you wrote the rule, hitting @kbd{y} on a link will use this rewrite
rule to visit the page.   If you mistyped the rule, providing a numeric
argument will allow you to rewrite the rewrite rule.   I love
alliteration.  

Saving the best for last, @kbd{e} is the xsl map prefix.   As I mentioned
in the section on emacs-w3m, xsl transforms are some powerful magic
that takes a web page and transforms it in some way.   Linearizing
tables is a good example, and the one I use most often.   

The keystroke @kbd{e a} prompts for an xsl transform to apply to the
current page.   If you know the name of the particular transform you
want you can use tab completion to select it.   Otherwise, you can hit
@key{TAB} to get a buffer that contains the list of choices. 

If you know that you want a particular transform done automatically
you can use the command @kbd{e s} to select a transform and then @kbd{e o} to
turn xslt on (the same command will turn xslt off).   Then, every page
opened from that point on will have the transform applied. 

@anchor{xsl-transform}
There is the variable
@code{emacspeak-w3-xsl-transform} that can be set via the usual
methods.   This variable specifies a transform to use before displaying
a web page.   There is an advantage to turning on xsl transforms all
the time.   If you use the @file{identity.xsl}, the
@file{linearize-tables.xsl} or the @file{sort-tables.xsl} it can
actually speed up rendering of the page.   This is because the
transforms provide clean and balanced html to the renderer. 
Additionally, using @file{sort-tables.xsl} or
@file{linearize-tables.xsl} will provide a little more boost as
rendering nested tables is particularly difficult for a web browser. 

Sometimes it is just easier to read the printer friendly version of a
story instead of having to linearize the tables and search for the
content.   Also, some sites, like the New York Times, I believe, make
you navigate several pages to read the whole story, but if you select
a ``Print this story'' link you can read the entire story on one page
formatted without a lot of the cruft on the normal page.   This is
where the @kbd{e Cap P}  command comes in.   It will extract all the print
streams from the current document. 

Closely associated commands are @kbd{e r} and @kbd{e Cap R} which extract the
media streams from the current page and from the link under point,
respectively.   

The command @kbd{e y} is another command that is useful for frequented
sites.   It does the same as the @kbd{y} command above in that it rewrites
the url at point and follows it.   In addition, it filters the output
by a particular CSS class.   

The command @kbd{e e} does more magic to the url at point.   It processes
the url using a specific function.   For example, it can be used in
retrieving radio content from the BBC.   If you execute @kbd{C-e u} and
type in @kbd{BBC Channel On Demand} or use tab completion to get the same,
and then type in @kbd{radio4} you will be presented with a page containing
a plethora of links to other pages containing information about
particular shows.   On these pages there is, somewhere, a link that
will play the program.   If you hit enter on one of the links on the
first page, you will be taken to one of these description pages.   By
using the @kbd{e e} command on a link you cut out this middle step and
proceed directly to playing the program you are interested in. 

If there is no executor defined for a current buffer, hitting @key{TAB}
after @kbd{e e} will give you a list of possibilities to choose from. 
One nice feature of this function is that it can be used for any
function.   If you cannot remember the keystroke that will play the url
under point in @code{emacspeak-m-player}, but you know what it is called, you
can hit @kbd{e e} and then enter the name of the function.   Nice. 

The @kbd{e f} command will run the current page through an XPath filter
and return the results.   For more information on XPath, see
@url{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XPath}.   If you wanted to see only the
links on a page, when prompted enter @kbd{//a} and you will be returned
every link on the page.   If you wanted to see only the contents of ``p''
tags, you would enter @kbd{//p}.   This can be useful for many things, form
elements included.   Giving this command a prefix argument will reverse
the filter, giving you everything but the content of the specified tag. 

A related command can be invoked with the @kbd{e p} keystroke.   This
command does the same as the filter above but works on the url under
point.  

@heading emacs/w3 tips and tricks

As I mentioned above, using @kbd{C-g} when it seems the browser is not
responding will often display the page with no ill effects.   Your
mileage may vary.   Taxes, tags and title are extra. 

Also mentioned above is the use of sort-tables or identity as an xsl
transform to speed up the rendering of pages.   Every little bit
helps.  

Another useful tip is the use of the @kbd{k} key.   This key will place the
current url in the kill-ring for later yanking.   If a page will not
render correctly, using @kbd{k} will get the url and allow me to pass it
to emacs-w3m.  The counterpart to this command, @kbd{cap K} puts the url
under point in the kill-ring. 

@node Add-ons
@subsection Add-ons

Some of these are emacspeak specific, some are not.   You can usually
tell by the name. 

@anchor{emacspeak url template}
@heading emacspeak url template

I love this package.   Since changing my primary browser to emacs/w3 I
have really been giving the @code{url-template} package a workout.   The
@code{url-template} package contains templates that prompt you for
information to supply to various sites to retrieve information without
all the fuss of having to go to the site and navigate it.   One really
nice thing about url-templates is the fact that they need not be web
pages.   Media streams can also be made into url-templates.   

The way to get to the templates is with the command @kbd{C-e u}.   A @key{TAB} at
the prompt will give you a list of the available templates.   You
should go now and have a look at the info manual section on
@xref{URL Templates,,URL Templates},  and read it.   I'll wait here. 

By the way, the ones I find most useful are the ``Google Hits'',
``emacswiki search'' ``NPR On Demand'' and ``Weather forecast from Weather
Underground''. 

@heading  emacspeak atom and emacspeak rss

@anchor{rss}
These are fairly simple rss and atom browsers for the emacspeak
desktop.   Using the Customize interface you add feeds in the form of
titles and urls.   Then you call the readers with @kbd{C-e C-u} for rss
feeds and use @kbd{M-x emacspeak-atom-browse} for atom feeds.   There is also
emacspeak support for newsticker, an rss / atom reader that is a part
of emacs 22, but I have never used it. 

I personally use @inforef{Top,gnus,gnus}, for rss feeds but setting gnus up for only that
purpose is like hunting rabbits with a bazooka.  

@heading  emacspeak websearch

@code{emacspeak-websearch} provides more search options than you can shake a
stick at;  @code{emacspeak-websearch} provides search for dictionaries, news
sites, software sites, google tools, weather, currency converter and
much more.   It can be accessed with the keystroke @kbd{C-e ?}.   At the
prompt, you can enter another question mark to get a list of the
available search options.   You will then be prompted for the necessary
information.   One of the nice things about this package is that it attempts to jump to and read the most relevant information
on the result page. 
Module @code{emacspeak-websearch} is complemented by module
@code{emacspeak-url-template}; that 
module provides URL templates that prompt for and retrieve  the relevant
information from complex Web pages. 

@xref{emacspeak-websearch,emacspeak-websearch},
and @xref{emacspeak-url-template, emacspeak-url-template},
for more information. 

@anchor{bmk-mgr}
@heading  bmk-mgr

This is a newcomer to the emacspeak world.   In the interest of full
disclosure, I am the one that wrote the emacspeak module that makes
this package accessible.   It is a bookmarks manager that works with
both emacs/w3 and emacs-w3m.  As of the writing of this document there
are still some issues, especially when using it on emacs version 22,
but those are being worked on.   I think this is a good solution to the
problem of emacs/w3 not having bookmarks functionality and providing
one central bookmark location for those who regularly use both
browsers.   See
@url{http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/EmacsBmkMgr}, for more
information. 

@node Conclusion
@subsection Conclusion

emacspeak makes the internet not only accessible to those with visual
impairments, but it makes browsing and information retrieval quick and
efficient.   If a user will spend a little time up front to learn the
tools available to access the web, the increase in efficiency and
ability will more than make up for the time spent.   The nice thing
about these tools is that you can integrate them in your day-to-day as
you have the time.   While it is not necessary to use everything mentioned in
the above document, if you add some of these tools to your repertoire
you will not be sorry.   

In the end, no one makes you use a hammer to drive nails but it sure
beats using a banana.