First-time usage

Read and change all data

Despite this access, RetroTxt always ignores websites other than those you tell it to monitor in the background. It also ignores all markup text, such as HTML or XML, for your privacy and overall browser performance.

If unrestricted access remains a worry, you can configure the browser to restrict RetroTxt further.

Add extension

When you install Chrome web store or Microsoft Edge add-ons, your browser will prompt for permission to read and change all data on all websites. Unfortunately, there is no workaround to avoid this. For more information, see Read and change all data to the right.

Extension prompt, Add "RetroTxt"?

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New install

What is .ANS

The .ANS filename extension signifies text files embedded with ANSI escape control characters for terminals to permit the layout and colorization of the text.

Once installed, you can test the functionality by viewing the RetroTxt ANSI logo hosted at:

retrotxt.com/e/preview_02.ans

RetroTxt ANSI logo in the tab

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Hide the header

You can click the blue arrow on the upper-left corner to hide the header and remove the clutter.

The blue arrow is clickable and hides the header

The clutter free display

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Original text

If you want to view the original ANSI document, focus the tab and to launch a view source tab, tap:

Ctrl u   or   Cmd Option u

RetroTxt logo raw ANSI text

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Monitor a new website

This example shows how to add a new website to the collection that RetroTxt monitors in the background. In this case, we will use the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority website at iana.org, which hosts many documents in plain text.

• In a tab, open the text document special-use-domain-names.txt.

• Despite being plain text, RetroTxt ignores the page as it is not monitoring iana.org.

Special-Use Domain Names text document

• Click the RetroTxt toolbar button and a popup will display the websites it monitors in the background. You can learn more about or remove these websites.

The popup button (blue) is often hidden behind the Extensions button (red)

• In the popup, click the blue To include a new website button.

Toolbar popup

• Under Feature > Autorun for websites > Paste a URL or hostname input, copy and add the website URL:

  https://www.iana.org

Add and monitor www.iana.org

Reload a tab

To reload or refresh a tab,
tap F5   or   Cmd r

• Switch back to the tab with the special-use-domain-names.txt document and reload. RetroTxt will now format the text!

Special-Use Domain Names styled with the IBM VGA font

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Change the font

• Click the RetroTxt fonts options button (the TT icon) in RetroTxt toolbar popup.

The RetroTxt fonts options button

• Choose IBM Plex Mono Regular from the Suggested fonts.

IBM Plex suggested fonts

• Switch back to the tab with the special-use-domain-names.txt text, and the font will update.

Special-Use Domain Names using the IBM Plex mono font

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Swap colors

• Click the RetroTxt display options button (the monitor icon) in RetroTxt toolbar popup.

The RetroTxt display options button

• Under Text color > Foreground and background pair, choose the white on light selection.

White on light text pair selection

ANSI text

A black background works best with ANSI text.

Switch to the tab with the special-use-domain-names.txt text, and the page colors will reflect the change. Feel free to revert to the MS-DOS color pair or choose another.

The document using the white on light text pair selection

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Remove a website monitor

Finally, to remove the monitoring of www.iana.org.

• Click the RetroTxt settings button (the cog icon) in RetroTxt toolbar popup.

• Under Feature > Autorun for websites

• Click the X button (remove) besides the www.iana.org entry.

Remove a URL or hostname

• Switch back to the special-use-domain-names.txt document tab and reload. It should revert to the original, unformatted text.

The plain text document is in a browser tab