Text-based web browsers era passed away?

Question

Hi Stackoverflowers,

Do you think text-based web browsers era has reached the end? Please try to enumerate your reasons by topics like CSS, Scripting, etc.

Thanks in advance,

Answer 1

While they may never completely be gone, text-based browsers reached their end quite a while ago.

With the lack of support for interactive content (Flash, Silverlight, etc.), Javascript, CSS they're really just not the relevant anymore.

When the Internet was strictly about finding information, they were useful. The Web is so much more now...and text-based browsers are effectively obsolete.

Answer 2

It depends on how you define "the era of text-based web browsers". If you define it as a period of time when more people used text-based browsers than browsers that could display graphics, then I'm not sure that era ever existed. The first web browsers, such as NCSA Mosaic and Netscape could all display images in addition to text. The text-only browsers came after those and provided a way for people to browse the web in environments where images were not supported (e.g. consoles/shell accounts).

However, if you define "the era of text-based web browsers" as the era in which it is possible to browse the web with text based browsers, then that era is not over. Text-based browsers, in my experience, are a very good way to check if a site is accessible to those with disabilities (e.g. those with screen readers and the like). As long as there are people designing sites to be accessible to everyone, text based browsers will have a role.