Considering this is the year 2025, I probably spend way too much time in a terminal, on the command line. Old habits are hard to break and this one goes all the way back to the genesis of my personal computing experience. I still frequently use a text-mode browser for reading content.

The modern web doesn’t make that easy, heck Google now demands the use of JavaScript for it’s most basic services:

Google says it has begun requiring users to turn on JavaScript, the widely used programming language to make web pages interactive, in order to use Google Search.

The advantage of text-mode web browsing is it declutters most sites as advertising pop-ups and other such nonsense don’t usually work in that environment. And while it’s been an easy way to avoid the garbage for decades, many sites other than Google are now making it more difficult to go that route. Fortunately, there are contemporary web sites that maintain text-only pages. These work well using a text browser, but they also work well using your normal web browser too. In fact, it’s a delight to view content sans the typical enshittification of the web.

For example, take a look at the text-only version of NPR: National Public Radio, or that of CNN Lite. Pretty nice, huh? CBC also maintains a lite version of its main news page as does the Christian Science Monitor.

LegibleNews from Wikipedia is another source for “lite” news in a browser.

Wttr.In provides text-only weather reports.

These are only a few, there are others available intended for text-mode viewers.

You could also use “Reader Mode” in many web browsers. This strips the page down to text and content-related images. You can read how to enable this mode in various browsers here though the result is not always as eye-pleasing as a site that was created specifically for text-mode.