3.1.3 Moving from page to page

This section explains how to move from page to page, but not by following links or inputing URLs (these ways of moving are explained in 3.1.1 Go ahead, just try it).

This includes commands to move backwards and forwards in history (the familiar "Back" and "Forward" from other browsers), and the obligatory "Go to the home page" feature. You will probably understand this better after reading the 3.3 Going back through time and space section.

B

Move back one page in history (w3m-view-previous-page). With a numeric argument ARG, move back ARG pages. This is the preferred way to go back in time.

N

Move forward one page in history (w3m-view-next-page). Of course, this will work only if you've used B to move back in history. If called with a numeric argument ARG, move forward ARG pages. This command actually allows you to go back to the future!

H

Move to the home page (w3m-gohome). You can specify the URL of the home page by customizing the w3m-home-page variable ("about:" by default).

These commands are exclusive features of emacs-w3m, we were able to obtain patents on them, so you won't find them anywhere else. That's why you must learn to use them today! (Just kidding.)

^

Attempt to move to the parent directory of the page currently displayed. For instance, it will attempt to move to "http://foo/" when "http://foo/bar/" is displayed. This function has been implemented because of the following observation: users of web browsers often have to move up one level of directories because the information they're looking for isn't displayed on the current page (either because it has been deleted, or because a search engine took them to the wrong page).

When you use another web browser, you usually need to remove the last component from the URL by using the DEL key, etc. several times manually. In emacs-w3m, this operation can be performed in only one keystroke, by typing ^!

SPC

When the current point is located at the end of the buffer and you cannot scroll down further, hit the SPC key to go on to the "next page" (w3m-scroll-up-or-next-url). Here, "next page" means the page referred to in the special "next" header of the current page (read on). This feature has nothing to do with the history.

You probably noticed that some websites split their contents over several small pages, partly because it's not comfortable for users to wait for huge contents to transfer in one go. For example, search results of search engines often appear like that. On such sites, users often need to follow links manually from one page to the next in order the access all the information.

Hopefully emacs-w3m attempts to enable you to browse a series of contents over pages as if you were viewing them as a single page, by combining two operations: explicitly following links and scrolling.

That's how it works: these kinds of websites often have fields such as "next", "prev" or "previous" in the headers of their web pages. These fields contain information about links between divided pages. Emacs-w3m uses these fields to know what to follow.

Let's take an example with Google again to explain how the two operations (following links and scrolling) are combined. Open http://www.google.com and search for a word. If you search for a very common word (e.g. "hamburger"), you will get tons of search results. Google returns the first page of search results, after having sorted them using its own algorithm and divided them into several pages. Use SPC to scroll through this first page. Keep scrolling until you see the end of the web page in the window. Here, a surprise is waiting for you. If you use a web browser other than emacs-w3m and want to see the rest of the search results, you would have to click on any of the numbers listed under

Gooooooogle

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8...

to follow the link. But with emacs-w3m, you can follow the link by just typing SPC, just as if you were scrolling!

DEL

When the point is located at the beginning of the buffer and you cannot scroll upward, hit the DEL to go to the "previous" page (w3m-scroll-down-or-previous-url). Here, the "previous" page means the page which is assigned to the "prev" or "previous" fields in the header of the current page. This function has nothing to do with the history, and works like SPC(w3m-scroll-up-or-next-url).