Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Facebook on Lynx

Facebook on Lynx, as of 15/03/2011
Lynx is a text based browser, on Linux Terminal. It is more efficient in testing such as A/B testing, as it lets the user know how it proceeds, and when it redirects. It also lets the user to accept or reject each of the cookies.


Facebook used to work on Lynx, as I confirmed on the March 2011 on Ubuntu Gnome terminal! However, it does not work anymore. :(

Lynx has been listed as an unsupported browser, and attempted log ins are redirected to the page with the below message.
Update Your Browser

   You’re using a web browser that isn’t supported by Facebook.
   To get a better experience, go to one of these sites and get the latest version of your preferred browser:
   Internet Explorer
   Mozilla Firefox
   Google Chrome


However, accessing Facebook mobile page using lynx "lynx m.facebook.com" was working for a while.

But when I checked today, it gave the below error log and stopped working. It also attempted to open a Firefox private browser in the process.

$ lynx m.facebook.com
Looking up  'm.facebook.com' first

(process:6596): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_slice_set_config: assertion 'sys_page_size == 0' failed

Looking up m.facebook.com first
Looking up m.facebook.com
Making HTTP connection to m.facebook.com
Sending HTTP request.
HTTP request sent; waiting for response.
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Allowing this cookie.
Allowing this cookie.
Allowing this cookie.
Data transfer complete
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Using https://m.facebook.com/?_rdr
Looking up m.facebook.com
Making HTTPS connection to m.facebook.com
Verified connection to m.facebook.com (cert=*.facebook.com)
Certificate issued by: /C=US/O=DigiCert Inc/OU=www.digicert.com/CN=DigiCert High Assurance CA-3
Secure 128-bit TLS1.1 (RSA_AES_128_CBC_SHA1) HTTP connection
Sending HTTP request.
HTTP request sent; waiting for response.
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Allowing this cookie.
Data transfer complete
Using file://localhost/tmp/lynxXXXXjiIbl2/L6589-7762TMP.bin.gz
firefox -private-window /tmp/lynxXXXXjiIbl2/L6589-7762TMP.bin.gz

lynx: Start file could not be found or is not text/html or text/plain
      Exiting...


So, unfortunately, Facebook is not working on Lynx, as of now. :(

7 comments:

  1. anymore details ? Can you get this to work now ?

    ReplyDelete
  2. It used to work on my Lynx installed on Ubuntu-12.04 - 64 bit.
    Lynx Version 2.8.8dev.9 (12 Jun 2011)
    libwww-FM 2.14, SSL-MM 1.4.1, GNUTLS 2.12.14, ncurses 5.9.20110404(wide)
    Built on linux-gnu Nov 19 2012 15:53:36


    But I tried now, since you asked, in exactly the same system (Lynx or OS wasn't updated).

    After entering the user name and password, it keeps reloading the log in page (https://www.facebook.com/unsupportedbrowser), instead of letting me log in. Lynx is an unsupported browser for facebook anyway.

    It just says,
    Update Your Browser

    You’re using a web browser that isn’t supported by Facebook.
    To get a better experience, go to one of these sites and get the latest version of your preferred browser:
    Internet Explorer
    Mozilla Firefox
    Google Chrome

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yes, same thing here :(. Thanks !

    ReplyDelete
  4. I made a bet with my professor that I can create a program in unix that will automatically poke back all the people that poked me.Can you think of any other way of getting this done,I really don't want to admit my failure.

    ReplyDelete
  5. This worked for me, go directly to
    m.facebook.com
    within lynx and voilà,

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jean, Thanks a lot. I confirmed - this works for me too.. :D

      Delete

  6. Recently I bought a NetZero WiFi hotspot that only allows 200MG/mo. free for 12 months, so I had to be able to access Facebook in flat text. My university account provides Lynx Version 2.8.3rel.1 . I use it to access the mobile version of Facebook at m.facebook.com . At first, it would only return compresses web pages with the *.gz extension. I would rename these to "fb.gz" and suspend lynx. At the command prompt, I enter "gunzip fb.gz" and rename the decompressed file, "mv fb fb.htm" so that lynx will render it as a web page. I then edit the web page inserting the base tag: "base href="https://m.facebook.com" />" at the top.

    All these steps, some which can be automated, had to be repeated for every action taken on Facebook.

    At first Facebook would not let me log in until I returned to the graphical version and asserted that, yes, I had intended to log in from an unknown site. After that, I had no problem logging in from lynx. For some unknown reason, at one point it sent back a login page that no longer returned compressed web pages, but live pages! I now can log in using lynx and pretty much use Facebook without too much fuss.

    ReplyDelete

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