uzbl

INTRODUCTION

Any program can only be really useful if it complies with the Unix philosophy. Web browsers (and other tools that work with HTML, such as feed readers) are frequent violators of this principle:

• They build in way too much things into one (complex) program, dramatically decreasing the options to do things the way you want.
• They store things in way too fancy formats (XML, RDF, SQLite, etc.) which are hard to store under version control, reuse in other scripts, and so on.

The Uzbl project was started as an attempt to resolve this.

EDITIONS

"Uzbl" is an umbrella project consisting of different flavors. In the future more things may come, but for now:

uzbl-core

Main component meant for integration with other tools and scripts.

• Uses WebKitGtk+ for rendering and network interaction (libsoup). CSS, JavaScript, and plugin support come for free.
• Provides interfaces to get data in (commands/configuration) and out (events): stdin/stdout/fifo/Unix sockets.
• You see a WebKit view and (optionally) a status bar which gets populated externally.
• No built-in means for URL changing, loading/saving of bookmarks, saving history, keybindings, downloads, etc.
• Extra functionality: many sample scripts come with it. More are available on the Uzbl wiki or you can write them yourself.
• Entire configuration/state can be changed at runtime.
• Uzbl keeps it simple, and puts you in charge.

uzbl-browser

A minimal browser which encompasses a default configuration file, event manager and a selection of scripts which gives a comparable browsing experience to the more common browsers.

• Uses a set of scripts (mostly Python) that will fit most people, so things work out of the box; yet plenty of room for customization.
• Brings everything you expect: URL changing, history, downloads, form filling, link navigation, cookies, event management, etc.
• Advanced, customizable keyboard interface with support for modes, modkeys, multichars, variables (keywords) etc. (e.g., you can tweak the interface to be Vi-like, Emacs-like or any-other-program-like).
• Adequate default configuration.
• Focus on plaintext storage for your data and configuration files in simple, easy-to-parse formats and adherence to the XDG basedir spec.
• Visually, similar to uzbl-core except that the status bar contains useful information.
• One window per page.

uzbl-tabbed

A flavor of uzbl built on top of uzbl-browser which adds tabbed browsing.

• Spawns one window containing multiple tabs, each tab containing a full embedded uzbl-browser.
• Ideal as a quick and simple solution to manage multiple uzbl-browser instances without getting lost.

Throughout the documentation, when referring to uzbl we mean uzbl-core, unless otherwise specified.

CONFIGURATION / CONTROL:

The general idea is that Uzbl by default is very bare bones. You can send it commands to update settings and perform actions, through various interfaces. There is a limited, built-in default configuration. It sets a basic status bar, title format, and network connection settings. By default, there are no keybindings defined at all (default keybindings would be counterproductive when you try to customize). For examples of the possibilities what you can do, please see the sample configurations, and wiki page.

There are several interfaces to interact with Uzbl:

• uzbl --config : `` will be read line by line, and the commands in it will be executed. Useful to configure Uzbl at startup. If you have a file in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/uzbl/config (this expands to ~/.config/uzbl/config on most systems), it will be automatically recognized.

• stdin: to write commands into stdin, use --config - (or -c -).

• Interactive: you can enter commands (and bind them to shortcuts, even at runtime). By default, the behaviour is modal (vi-like):

  • command mode: every keystroke is interpreted to run commands
  • insert mode: keystrokes are not interpreted so you can enter text into html forms

  There is also support for "chained" commands (multiple characters long), and keyworded commands. Also you can trigger incremental matching on commands and variables after pressing return. See the sample configuration file for more information.

  By default, copy and paste works when typing commands:

  • insert (paste X cliboard)
  • shift insert (paste primary selection buffer)

• FIFO & socket files: If enabled by setting their paths through one of the above means, you can have socket and FIFO files available which are very useful to control uzbl using external programs.

  • The advantage of the FIFO is you can write directly to it, but it's half duplex only (uzbl cannot send a response to you).

  • The socket is full duplex but a socket-compatible wrapper such as socat is needed to work with it. For example:

    echo | socat - unix-connect:

When uzbl forks a new instance (e.g., "open in new window") it will use the same command line arguments (e.g., the same --config ), except for --named. If you made changes to the configuration at runtime, these are not passed on to the child.

WebKit1 vs. WebKit2

WebKit2 changes many things compared to WebKit1, some of which impact uzbl greatly. This version of uzbl only supports WebKit1 while older version tried to support both at the same time.

For a uzbl built on WebKit2 check out the next branch

COMMAND SYNTAX

Uzbl will read commands via standard input, named FIFO pipe (once fifo_dir is set) and Unix socket (once socket_dir is set). For convenience, uzbl can also be instructed to read commands from a file on startup by using the --config option. Indeed, the config file is nothing more than a list of commands with support for comments (using the # character).

Each command starts with the name of a command or a uzbl variable that expands to it. A command is terminated by a newline. Empty lines and lines that start with the hash sign (ignoring leading whitespace) are ignored by the parser. Command names are always written in lowercase.

A list of commands supported by uzbl is given here. Optional arguments are given in square brackets ([]) with literal strings options in lowercase separated by a pipe (|) character. N indicates an integer value and other uppercase values are placeholders describing what the value should be. Required options are given in angle brackets (<>). Arguments on which argument splitting is not performed are given in curly braces ({}). Variable arguments are indicated with ellipses (...). As an example:

`example1   [URI...]`

means that the command example requires its first argument which must either be a literal a or b, a second argument which is an integer, and any remaining arguments are treated as URIs. Another example:

`example2  {VALUE}`

means that the first argument is split off used as a key and the remaining string is used verbatim. The command example2 key many args would have key as KEY and many args as VALUE.

Navigation

• back [N]
  • Navigate to the Nth (default: 1) previous URI in the instance history.
• forward [N]
  • Navigate to the Nth (default: 1) next URI in the instance history.
• reload [cached|full]
  • Reload the current page. If cached is given (the default), the cache is used. If full is given, the cache is ignored.
• stop
  • Stop loading the current page. This usually means that no new network requests are made, but JavaScript can still run.
• uri {URI}
  • Tell uzbl to navigate to the given URI.
• download [DESTINATION]
  • Tell WebKit to download a URI.

Page

• load
  • Load content into the page. Supported subcommands include:
    • html
      • Load content as HTML relative to a URI.
    • text
      • Load content as plain text.
    • error_html
      • Load content an error page (which does not appear in the forward/back list) at the given URI with the given
• frame [NAME]
  • Operate on frames in the current page. If not name is given, the _current frame is used. Supported subcommands include:
    • list (Unimplemented)
      • Returns a JSON object representing the of frames in the frame.
    • focus (Unimplemented)
      • Give focus to the frame.
    • reload
      • Reload the frame.
    • stop
      • Stop loading the frame.
    • save (Unimplemented)
      • Save the content frame.
    • load (Unimplemented)
      • Load content into the frame.
    • get (Unimplemented)
      • Get information about a frame.
    • set (Unimplemented)
      • Set information about a frame.

Cookie

• cookie
  • Manage cookies in uzbl. The subcommands work as follows:
    • add
      • Manually add a cookie.
    • delete
      • Delete a cookie from the cookie jar.
    • clear all
      • Delete all cookies.
    • clear domain [DOMAIN...]
      • Delete all cookies matching the given domains.

Display

• scroll
  • Scroll either the horizontal or vertical scrollbar for the page. The value may be one of:
    • begin
      • Scrolls to the beginning of the page (either left or up).
    • end
      • Scrolls to the end of the page (either right or down).
    • [-]N
      • Scrolls N "units" as defined by the scrollbar (seems to be pixels).
    • [-]N%
      • Scrolls N% of a single page.
    • N!
      • Scrolls to position N on the scrollbar (also in "units").
    • N%!
      • Scrolls to position N% on the scrollbar.
• zoom [VALUE]
  • Zoom either in or out by the given amount. When setting, the value is required. If no value is given, the variable zoom_step is used.
• hardcopy [REGION]
  • Print the given region. Supported regions include:
    • page (the default)
      • Prints the entire page.
    • frame [NAME]
      • Prints the frame with the given name or the current frame if no name is given.
• geometry
  • Set the size of the uzbl window. This is subject to window manager policy. If the size is maximized, the uzbl window will try to maximize itself. Otherwise, the size is parsed using the WIDTHxHEIGHT±XOFFSET±YOFFSET pattern.
• snapshot [FLAG...] (WebKit1 >= 1.9.6)
  • Saves the current page as an image to the given path. Currently supported formats include: png. Acceptable regions include:
    • visible
      • Only includes the regions of the page which are currently visible.

Content

• plugin
  • Exposes control of plugin-related information. Supported subcommands include:
    • refresh
      • Refresh the plugin database.
    • toggle [NAME...]
      • Toggle whether the given plugins are enabled (or all if none are given).
• remove_all_db
  • Remove all web databases.
• spell (WebKit1 >= 1.5.1)
  • Use WebKit's spell check logic. Supported subcommands include:
    • ignore [WORD...]
      • Add the given words to the list of words to ignore.
    • learn [WORD...]
      • Teaches that the given words are spelled correctly.
    • autocorrect
      • Returns the word as autocorrected by the checker.
    • guesses
      • Returns the guesses for the word given by the checker as a JSON list.
• favicon
  • Controls the favicon database. Supported subcommands include:
    • clear
      • Clears all cached favicons.
    • uri
      • Returns the URI of the favicon for the given URI.
    • save (Unimplemented)
      • Saves the favicon for the given URI to a path.
• css
  • Controls CSS settings in web pages. Supported subcommands include:
    • add
      • Adds a CSS file to pages when loaded. Despite the name, subsequent calls repla