Please critique my site
LiVeShOtNj
I just put up a new site. Please tell me what you think..
Http://members.aol.com/liveshotnj/index.html
Mike Naylor
lives...@aol.com (LiVeShOtNj) wrote:
>I just put up a new site. Please tell me what you think..
>Http://members.aol.com/liveshotnj/index.html
Would that be the same one that you posted about 15 minutes ago, saying
that it gets 4,000 hits per day?
-
Mike Naylor - myfirstname...@mail.serve.com
Play Five by Five Poker at http://www.serve.com/games
Stephen Traub
lives...@aol.com (LiVeShOtNj) wrote:
>I just put up a new site. Please tell me what you think..
>Http://members.aol.com/liveshotnj/index.html
>
Here's the message I got at your page:
This web page uses frames, but your browser doesn't support
them.
Evidently your page was not made for the _World Wide_ Web.
Steve
--
Web Page Re<p>air - Widen your Web site's audience.
http://www.shore.net/~straub/wpr.htm
Property Valuation Advisors - Commercial Real Estate
Appraisal in New England http://www.shore.net/~straub/
HS: CONNECT (Webmaster)
http://www.weir.net/herald-star.
Please let me know what you think, and how it could be improved.
Thanks!
Paul
(no flames necessary)
Jukka Korpela
"HS: CONNECT (Webmaster)" <hs...@weir.net> writes:
> http://www.weir.net/herald-star.
> Please let me know what you think, and how it could be improved.
I _really_ think it sucks. I _really_ am graphically challenged now,
since I'm on vacation and my normal home PC broke and I temporarily
had to downgrade to using my old 286 with 9600 bps modem in text only mode.
Please notice that for the majority of mankind, 286 with 9600 bps
would be a _huge_ improvement to their Internet accessibility.
Yeah I know I _could_ navigate through your use of frames, perhaps.
I won't.
Yucca, http://www.hut.fi/~jkorpela/
Craig A. Keefner
http://www.primenet.com/~keefner/index.html
I will be glad to return the favor adn critque a site for you as
well...
thanks
Craig
Bill Sever
I've visited your site and am see where you've given folks
a choice whether or not to access your enhanced version
(Frames). A pretty good approach I think.
I noticed there are some folks that find it much easier to
be negative than offer any kind of valuable input. Perhaps,
since these folks are such "authorities" on HTML, those that
are on the Internet, the equipment they use and offer such
'high-tech' terms as "sucks", we should all bow to their
superb minds and place offerings on their alters.. Perhaps not..
Any further comments along this line and I'll appear as
pompous as these folks so I'll leave it at this.
Best to you.
Bill
Craig A. Keefner
On Sun, 20 Apr 1997 11:49:04 -0700, Bill Sever <sev...@gte.net> wrote:
>Craig A. Keefner wrote:
>>
>> http://www.primenet.com/~keefner/index.html
>>
>> I will be glad to return the favor adn critque a site for you as
>> well...
>>
>> thanks
>
>Craig,
>
>I've visited your site and am see where you've given folks
>a choice whether or not to access your enhanced version
>(Frames). A pretty good approach I think.
>
>I noticed there are some folks that find it much easier to
>be negative than offer any kind of valuable input. Perhaps,
>since these folks are such "authorities" on HTML, those that
>are on the Internet, the equipment they use and offer such
>'high-tech' terms as "sucks", we should all bow to their
>superb minds and place offerings on their alters.. Perhaps not..
>
I remember when we "techeads" use to criticize "Marketing" etc for
having a warped idea of what customers actually think (and potential
customers particularly).
Funny to me how techheads are now moreso in that position. I guess I
should've prefaced my request as "technical evaluation".
Cheers
Craig
Rich Adams
Craig A. Keefner (kee...@primenet.com) wrote:
: http://www.primenet.com/~keefner/index.html
:
: I will be glad to return the favor adn critque a site for you as
: well...
:
: thanks
: Craig
Straight forward and simple. My preferences, anyway.
The news articles under (Kiosk Newsbits) would be nice if you could cgi
a filter or search by date or vendor, but still works for me the way it
is.
--
|Rich Adams [DNRC] | "The time has come", the Walrus said, "To talk of |
|ri...@alpha.delta.edu | many things: Of shoes--and ships--and sealing wax-- |
| | Of cabbages--and kings--And why the sea is boiling |
| | hot--And whether pigs have wings." - Lewis Carroll |
Matthew Ebbertt
Could someone please look at my site and make suggestions. Please reply to
the address below. You can visit any url listed below, they're all the
same.
--
Matthew Ebbertt -- MJEb...@juno.com
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/3179
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/4754
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/4755
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Vista/6551
Stephen Traub
What is this "HTML programing" of which you speak?
Example from your Web page:
Complete reference pertaining to HTML programing
Jean-Francois Arseneault
Why is it your Complete HTML programing guide (which contains 4 frames, 2
of which seem unnecessary) has 2 frames linking to GeoCities? Looks like
screen estate loss to me...
Your TOC frames (extreme left) is also short a few pixels andI need to
scroll it sideways.
I would recommend setting a defined width for that frame, so people see it
the way they should all the time...also make sure you add about 10 pixels
since Netscape's positionning differs from MSIE's.
--
Jean-Francois Arseneault
ECLECTICA: http://pages.infinit.net/cosinus
eMail: mailto:j...@videotron.ca
Stephen Traub <str...@shore.net> wrote in article
<5jh5u1$b...@fridge-nf0.shore.net>...
J.D. Baldwin
In article <335A65...@gte.net>, Bill Sever <sev...@gte.net> wrote:
Craig A. Keefner wrote:
>I noticed there are some folks that find it much easier to be negative
>than offer any kind of valuable input.
Why must input be "positive" to be "valuable"? When I posted my own
"Please check out my site" request, I was braced for negative
comments, because I was prepared to *act* on them (or to make an
equally considered decision not to). I'd rather have intelligent
posters here making negative comments about my site than have an
unknown number of prospective customers shaking their heads in
disbelief at some error or bad design decision, without my ever
knowing about it.
>Any further comments along this line and I'll appear as pompous as
>these folks so I'll leave it at this.
Too late.
--
From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
_,_ Finger bal...@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
_|70|___:::)=}- for PGP public |+| retract it, but also to deny under
\ / key information. |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jedi Master Yoda
ri...@alpha.delta.edu spouted:
OK here's my two penn'orth.
1) There seems to be no explanation on the main page as to what the site
is meant to be! I know you can find this information if you dig deeper,
but it helps if it is on the front page, and this will help users of
search engines too.
2) What does [INLINE] mean and why is it scattered throughout your pages?
Is it some arcane code?
3) Text seems to be centred or left-aligned almost at random and in
different places on the same page for no apparent reason. Something wrong
with the HTML?
4) On your links page the links are all jumbled up with several on a line
and run together. Could you make them a list, or give each one a separate
line? It's a bit confusing.
5) Why is there a link on the index page called 'Home page for the site'?
What is it I was looking at? When you go to this page you get an enormous
mess under the heading 'What are KMP 2000's Technical Specifications?'
6) You don't appear to explain anywhere exactly what a 'kiosk' is in the
context of what you're apparently talking about.
Yoda.
J.D. Baldwin
In article <335797...@weir.net>, HS: CONNECT (Webmaster)
<hs...@weir.net> wrote:
>http://www.weir.net/herald-star.
>
>Please let me know what you think, and how it could be improved.
Lose the frames.
Put ALT tags in the elements for graphical links.
Test your site with lynx before presenting to the world.
Ken Riley
yo...@dagoba.org (Jedi Master Yoda) wrote:
--- various stuff snipped throughout the following ---
>2) What does [INLINE] mean and why is it scattered throughout your pages?
>3) Text seems to be centred or left-aligned almost at random and in
>different places on the same page for no apparent reason.
>4) On your links page the links are all jumbled up with several on a line
>and run together.
Come on, Yoda. Why not just tell the guy his site isn't friendly to
Lynx or whatever text-only browser you're using? I thought Yoda was a
teacher; your post didn't teach him anything.
KLR
Craig
My 2 cents
The site is good BUT!
Add the <alt> tag for your .Gif's
Lose the function scrollit...
Most users want to see the "landing URL" befor they "click on a LINK"
the Line on http://www.weir.net/herald-star/right.html:
[News][Sports][Opinion][Community][Spotlight][Photos][Webmaster's Site
of the Week]
splits into 2 lines on a 14" monitor (as does the next line)
You should test at 14" 17" & 21"....
glad to see the <NOFRAMES>
Craig
Jean-Francois Arseneault
According to BrowserWatch.com, the Lynx percentage of users is close to
1%...
Why do we feel it is a requirement 'sine qua non' to have pages
Lynx-downgraded !?!
I won't even go into tentative analogies, but people - we need to
understand technology has to move on.
Don't get me wrong, I put ALT tages where needed and focus on text, but
will not "test" my Designs on Lynx just so I can probably accomodate that
very small percentage of visitors.
On the same subject, WHO are those people using Lynx??? I mean, most major
corporations who give Web access to their employees are nowadays running
graphical OSes. Could we be talking here about home users for the most
part, using "antiquated" computers (and I say that in all respect...really)
The people running such machines will have to understand (and would
probably agree) that they cannot expect to get ALL the benefits of the Web
without updating their beast one day or another.
And a message to J.D. Baldwin: "Man, loosen up will ya?"
Give the guy a brake with your: "Test your site with lynx before presenting
to the world."
And if I go to YOUR site, will I see "Better experienced with Lynx lame
GIFs"?
--
Jean-Francois Arseneault
ECLECTICA: http://pages.infinit.net/cosinus
eMail: mailto:j...@videotron.ca
Jean-Francois Arseneault <j...@videotron.ca> wrote in article
<01bc5139$adb383a0$8168fdcf@cosinus>...
> What the hell is all this fuss about Lynx???
> --
> Jean-Francois Arseneault
> ECLECTICA: http://pages.infinit.net/cosinus
> eMail: mailto:j...@videotron.ca
>
>
> J.D. Baldwin <bal...@netcom.com> wrote in article
> <baldwinE...@netcom.com>...
Miguel Cruz
For a lot of people Lynx is the browser of choice. For some people - the
blind, for instance, a page that isn't readable in Lynx won't be readable at
all.
Remember that the browser count statistics are based on total number of hits
by a given program. However, since Lynx doesn't pull down graphics, it is
drastically underrepresented. How many graphics are on the average page? 5?
10? Then you can multiply the estimated share of Lynx users relative to
others by 5 or 10 to get an accurate count.
It's the fastest browser by far. I can navigate through ten pages in Lynx in
the time it takes someone with Netscape to piddle through one. It allows me
to do more things with the information than any other browser. It can show
me more information about web pages. It's great for debugging scripts
because it can show the exact form data to be sent.
The only problem is that it doesn't show the pretty pictures.
miguel
Jean-Francois Arseneault
What the hell is all this fuss about Lynx???
Eric Bohlman
Jeff Cochran (jcoc...@gate.net) wrote:
: For a lot more people, Lynx isn't the browser of choice. And an
: alternative set of pages for blind users is always an option, if the
: data is of interest or need to them. (And this is from experience, on
: my intranet, we have a blind user and I have to support a reader for
: him...).
How do you decide whether or not the data is of interest or need to blind
users? Blind people, being people, tend to have the same range of
interests and needs as sighted people. Therefore, your approach
essentially mandates a parallel set of pages for blind users on *every*
site, which certainly falls into the class of "maximize the amount of
work required to achieve a certain result" solutions.
One can certainly not rely on Web authors to use "common sense" to
determine whether or not blind people would be interested in a particular
topic, because it has been demonstrated over and over again that the
typical sighted person's "common sense" regarding blindness is mostly
myth and superstition.
Furthermore, indexing robots share many characteristics with blind users,
and therefore pages that are useless to blind users tend to be pages that
show up poorly, if at all, in searches.
Jeff Cochran
>>What the hell is all this fuss about Lynx???
>For a lot of people Lynx is the browser of choice. For some people - the
>blind, for instance, a page that isn't readable in Lynx won't be readable at
>all.
For a lot more people, Lynx isn't the browser of choice. And an
alternative set of pages for blind users is always an option, if the
data is of interest or need to them. (And this is from experience, on
my intranet, we have a blind user and I have to support a reader for
him...).
>Remember that the browser count statistics are based on total number of hits
>by a given program. However, since Lynx doesn't pull down graphics, it is
>drastically underrepresented. How many graphics are on the average page? 5?
>10? Then you can multiply the estimated share of Lynx users relative to
>others by 5 or 10 to get an accurate count.
Giving Lynx maybe a 1% usage rate instead of only 1%. It's still not
a significant number.
>It's the fastest browser by far. I can navigate through ten pages in Lynx in
>the time it takes someone with Netscape to piddle through one. It allows me
>to do more things with the information than any other browser. It can show
>me more information about web pages. It's great for debugging scripts
>because it can show the exact form data to be sent.
>The only problem is that it doesn't show the pretty pictures.
Ahhh... There's the rub. I can write a short informative article
about Coors Light that gives more information and substance than any
advertisement, and is readable by every blind beer drinker in America
who gets my Braille version, but the Swedish Bikini Team on the page
sells more suds.
Jeff
Alan J. Flavell
On 25 Apr 1997, Jean-Francois Arseneault wrote:
> According to BrowserWatch.com, the Lynx percentage of users is close to
> 1%...
> Why do we feel it is a requirement 'sine qua non' to have pages
> Lynx-downgraded !?!
We don't. We just ask that the HTML documents be capable of being
presented to the best ability of any WWW browsing situation. Lynx is
just one example of a WWW browsing situation.
It also usefully models the way in which indexing robots evaluate your
site. Visits from indexing robots may be even less than 1%, but they
are your most important visitors.
> I won't even go into tentative analogies,
excellent
(further misguided analysis omitted)
Alan J. Flavell
On Thu, 24 Apr 1997, Craig wrote:
> Add the <alt> tag for your .Gif's
There is no <ALT> tag. It's the ALT attribute of the IMG tag.
Craig A. Keefner
On 21 Apr 1997 18:44:29 -0400, ri...@alpha.delta.edu (Rich Adams)
wrote:
> Straight forward and simple. My preferences, anyway.
>
> The news articles under (Kiosk Newsbits) would be nice if you could cgi
>a filter or search by date or vendor, but still works for me the way it
>is.
Agreed. My current provider doesn't give me free cgi access/creation.
I'm in process of switching providers.
Craig
Warren Steel
Jean-Francois Arseneault wrote:
> According to BrowserWatch.com, the Lynx percentage of users is close to
> 1%...
> Why do we feel it is a requirement 'sine qua non' to have pages
> Lynx-downgraded !?!
The number of Lynx users may be small, but for some users
(terminal connections at freenets, libraries, etc.) it's the
only way to browse the Web. Blind users usually use Lynx
(connected to a speech syntheszer or braille brinter), or a
similar text-mode device. Web indexers are similar to Lynx
in that they ignore images and presentation markup, and yet
they are important to you, if you wish to get your message
out. Finally, an increasing number have taken to surfing
with images off, to save time, money, and annoyance.
> Don't get me wrong, I put ALT tages where needed and focus on text, but
> will not "test" my Designs on Lynx just so I can probably accomodate that
> very small percentage of visitors.
> And a message to J.D. Baldwin: "Man, loosen up will ya?"
> Give the guy a brake with your: "Test your site with lynx before presenting
> to the world."
That was good advice he gave you! Viewing your own
documents in Lynx is not a substitute for a syntax validator
or a style checker (linter), but if you can see that your own
work is clear and coherent when viewed in Lynx, you can be
sure that:
(1) your work is accessible to all, and doesn't *rely on*
plugins, javascripts, style sheets, FONT elements, or browser-
specific markup to make its point.
(2) your work can be viewed adequately without loading
images--Lynx will help you catch poorly-conceived ALT texts
like "[neat logo here] welcomes you to..."
(3) your work can be adequately indexed by the robots,
crawlers, and other agents who lead viewers to your work.
--
Warren Steel mu...@olemiss.edu
Department of Music University of Mississippi
URL: http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~mudws/
Tero Paananen
In <01bc5139$adb383a0$8168fdcf@cosinus> "Jean-Francois Arseneault" <j...@videotron.ca> writes:
>What the hell is all this fuss about Lynx???
I could ask the same about Netscape.
Lynx is often used as an example of a browser that is fundamentally
different from the popular browsers. Is is an easy and quick way to
demonstrate problems with someone's HTML.
And there is, surprise, surprise, people who actually do use Lynx.
-TPP
Tero Paananen
In <01bc513b$66d66c20$8168fdcf@cosinus> "Jean-Francois Arseneault" <j...@videotron.ca> writes:
>According to BrowserWatch.com, the Lynx percentage of users is close to
>1%...
>Why do we feel it is a requirement 'sine qua non' to have pages
>Lynx-downgraded !?!
Have you *ever* read any of the stuff written in this newsgroup?
I doubt that very much, since you felt compelled to come up with
something as ... hmmm ... misinformed as "Lynx-downgraded".
>I won't even go into tentative analogies, but people - we need to
>understand technology has to move on.
Hehhe, try Lynx 2.7, it supports quite a lot of more HTML than the
popular browsers.
>Don't get me wrong, I put ALT tages where needed and focus on text
You do?
ECLECTICA)
[INLINE] [INLINE] [INLINE] [INLINE] [INLINE] [INLINE] [INLINE] [INLINE]
[INLINE]
are the few first lines from an URL in your sig.
>On the same subject, WHO are those people using Lynx???
DejaNews is your friend.
>Could we be talking here about home users for the most
>part, using "antiquated" computers (and I say that in all respect...really)
FUD, DejaNews will prove you wrong.
>The people running such machines will have to understand (and would
>probably agree) that they cannot expect to get ALL the benefits of the Web
>without updating their beast one day or another.
God. What if they don't want "ALL the benefits of the Web"?
>Jean-Francois Arseneault
>ECLECTICA: http://pages.infinit.net/cosinus
>eMail: mailto:j...@videotron.ca
-TPP
Tero Paananen
>Giving Lynx maybe a 1% usage rate instead of only 1%. It's still not
>a significant number.
Maybe for a site getting 400 hits a day it isn't. For a site getting
a million it damn well is.
-TPP
J.D. Baldwin
In article <01bc513b$66d66c20$8168fdcf@cosinus>, Jean-Francois
Arseneault <j...@videotron.ca> wrote:
>According to BrowserWatch.com, the Lynx percentage of users is close
>to 1%...
The probability that that figure is accurate is so close to zero that
there is no appreciable difference, unless it means "users who have
Lynx and nothing but Lynx" (quite different from the "percentage of
users"). Nevertheless, assume it's true, or close to true, for a
moment.
If your site is recreational, or non-computer sales, or what-have-
you, then there are probably no real consequences to alienating or
completely cutting off 1% or 5% or even 15% of your target audience.
But if you're selling Internet- or web-related services, software,
hardware, etc., the people who care about this aspect of design are
*precisely* the ones who are likely to be webmasters or other
technical/design personnel whose recommendations *count*. I, for
example, effectively control the Internet software/hardware purchasing
decisions for a $100M company. If you were selling stuff to me, why
on earth wouldn't you take the five or six minutes to add a few ALT
attributes? Because when *I* look at a site that's trying to sell
me something technical, and they don't have their own act together,
I quietly move on. (It's going to be *years* before I forgive
Netscape for their idiotic download interface.)
The same comments apply to people who browse with MSIE or Netscape and
have images turned off. Such people (who know *how* to turn off image
display, and who see the reason for doing so) are much more likely to
be the kinds of technical people who make up the target technical
audience. Trust me, it pays to impress us, and one way to do so is
almost effortless: test your site in Lynx.
>Why do we feel it is a requirement 'sine qua non' to have pages
>Lynx-downgraded !?!
There's no "downgrading" involved. Making your site browser-
independent is so close to being "free" that the ROI of one impressed
customer more than justifies the effort.
>I won't even go into tentative analogies, but people - we need to
>understand technology has to move on. Don't get me wrong, I put ALT
>tages where needed and focus on text, but will not "test" my Designs
>on Lynx just so I can probably accomodate that very small percentage
>of visitors.
Your prerogative. If you made television programs or movies, it would
likewise be your prerogative to shoot every other scene out of focus.
Maybe you'd only lose 1% of your audience because the "content"
justified the inconvenience of the presentation. Maybe.
>On the same subject, WHO are those people using Lynx??? I mean, most
>major corporations who give Web access to their employees are nowadays
>running graphical OSes. Could we be talking here about home users for
>the most part, using "antiquated" computers (and I say that in all
>respect...really)
Most likely we're talking about people running UNIX workstations (like
the one I'm typing this on right now) who don't care for the overhead
of X or other GUI interfaces and who prefer to work from the command
line on a terminal-based screen (or window). Much more common than
you might think.
I doubt there's any serious web browsing being done from home DOS
machines with modems and lynx, unless the users are dialed into a
shell account somewhere.
(My PC, with the current release MSIE and the latest Netscape beta
installed, for use with my corporate T1, is right behind me, and I use
it quite a lot, too. Depends what I'm looking for. It's hard to
read "Dilbert" from within Lynx.)
>The people running such machines will have to understand (and would
>probably agree) that they cannot expect to get ALL the benefits of the
>Web without updating their beast one day or another.
The definition of "benefits" is quite flexible here. My main "benefit"
I derive from the web is information, not cutesy graphics. I've been
downloading both for nearly eight years now.
>And a message to J.D. Baldwin: "Man, loosen up will ya?" Give the guy
>a brake with your: "Test your site with Lynx before presenting to the
>world."
I was asked for advice, I gave same. No flames, no acrimony. Just
good, sound advice.
>And if I go to YOUR site, will I see "Better experienced with Lynx
>lame GIFs"?
Make your own decision: www.syntelinc.com. *All* comments welcome,
here or privately (most, so far, have been pretty positive). BTW,
what are "Lynx lame GIFs"?
Arnoud Galactus Engelfriet
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
In article <01bc513b$66d66c20$8168fdcf@cosinus>,
"Jean-Francois Arseneault" <j...@videotron.ca> wrote:
> Why do we feel it is a requirement 'sine qua non' to have pages
> Lynx-downgraded !?!
Whether it's "downgrading" or not is open to debate, but for the
average author it's rather hard to grasp the concept of platform-
independent markup. He will most likely be using one browser for
a graphical interface, and so expect that that is where his documents
will always be displayed on. Lynx is so different that it's quite
effective as counter-argument.
> I won't even go into tentative analogies, but people - we need to
> understand technology has to move on.
Yes. What does that have to do with Lynx? Surely you are not suggesting
that I never run xterms again, but always use Netscape? There are
situations where Netscape is best, and situations where Lynx is best.
A website should be able to accomodate to both, even when it looks
a bit boring and textonly in Lynx.
> The people running such machines will have to understand (and would
> probably agree) that they cannot expect to get ALL the benefits of the Web
> without updating their beast one day or another.
No one said they should, and I doubt anyone using Lynx is expecting
"all the benefits", if that refers to flash, animated gifs, movies,
background music and what-have-you. But I *do* expect to at least
get the text, which is probably what I'm looking for when I use Lynx.
> And if I go to YOUR site, will I see "Better experienced with Lynx lame
> GIFs"?
No, because I believe that Web sites should be accessible to all users,
regardless of platform, browser, hardware or OS. That's why we founded
the WDG: http://www.htmlhelp.com/
- --
E-mail: gala...@htmlhelp.com .................... PGP Key: 512/63B0E665
Maintainer of WDG's HTML reference: <http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/>
-----END PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Pete Bevin
Jean-Francois Arseneault writes:
>According to BrowserWatch.com, the Lynx percentage of users is close to
>1%...
>Lynx-downgraded !?!
For much the same reason that we provide wheelchair access to buildings.
If you're blind, Lynx is probably the best browser you can use.
Pete.
Randy Shipp
On Fri, 25 Apr 1997 15:42:18 GMT, bal...@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
wrote:
>I doubt there's any serious web browsing being done from home DOS
>machines with modems and lynx, unless the users are dialed into a
>shell account somewhere.
>
>(My PC, with the current release MSIE and the latest Netscape beta
>installed, for use with my corporate T1, is right behind me, and I use
>it quite a lot, too. Depends what I'm looking for. It's hard to
>read "Dilbert" from within Lynx.)
You'd admit, then, that from the developer of the Dilbert Zone's
perspective, lynx users are not his audience and therefore not to be
considered at all? Some of the people are so adamant about
backward-compatibility that they seem to refuse to admit that browser
choice could be related to the makeup of their audience. If I sell
image-processing software or the latest natural media paint program, I
couldn't care less what people on UNIX terminals see. My program
isn't for UNIX, it's not text-based...I mean, aren't there sites, even
of a purely informational nature, where the audience is "people who
rush out and get the latest version of everything"? I think so. And
I think if you have reason to believe that's true, it's OK to write
your pages to please those folks, even if it means the page is a
little broken for others. Sure, use ALT tags...avoid frames. But
don't be afraid to make the "HOT NEW PC GAME HOMEPAGE" a little more
attractive by using tables for layout, some nifty Photoshopped type
effects, and an animated gif of a joystick in your title area. As
long as it gets the point across to the target audience (in this case
probably people with the latest-greatest everything), then I say it's
fine to skimp on backward-compatibility.
If, on the other hand, you're putting up the U.S. Code online, or your
company's latest earnings and stockholder report, then it might
behoove you to stick to the basics and go for the larger variety of
browsers and hardware configurations. It's all about being
appropriate for your audience and application.
Randy...
Les Jones
In article <Pine.A41.3.95a.970425115011.70032B-100000@sp053>, "Alan J.
Flavell" <fla...@mail.cern.ch> wrote:
> On 25 Apr 1997, Jean-Francois Arseneault wrote:
>
> > According to BrowserWatch.com, the Lynx percentage of users is close to
> > 1%...
> > Why do we feel it is a requirement 'sine qua non' to have pages
> > Lynx-downgraded !?!
>
> We don't. We just ask that the HTML documents be capable of being
> presented to the best ability of any WWW browsing situation. Lynx is
> just one example of a WWW browsing situation.
Well said. The point isn't Lynx compatibility per se. It's browser
accessibility in general. If you can't use the site in Lynx, chances are
you can't use it on a PDA, and it may be compromized on a WebTV.
Web authors who laugh at WebTVs now may be in for a serious shock in a year
or two. Now that Microsoft owns the company, you can expect a lot more
WebTV visitors in the future. Does your site fit in a 544 pixel width? It
had better, because that's as wide as it gets with WebTV, and there's no
sideways scrolling. Does your site depend on plugins or Netscape-specific
code that isn't supported by WebTV? WebTV users aren't going to see that
content.
+ Les Jones + Documentation Supervisor + U.S. Internet +
Brian Found
Lynx and other text only browsers are VERY important to blind people who
need text only programs and operating systems.
Perhaps what is needed is a "text-only" page of current pages. This is
often not hard to do if you want to use frames, imagemaps, etc.
And if you could care less about the blind, then maybe your information
ain't worth looking at anyways.
"Jean-Francois Arseneault" (j...@videotron.ca) writes:
> According to BrowserWatch.com, the Lynx percentage of users is close to
> 1%...
> Why do we feel it is a requirement 'sine qua non' to have pages
> Lynx-downgraded !?!
>
> I won't even go into tentative analogies, but people - we need to
> understand technology has to move on.
> Don't get me wrong, I put ALT tages where needed and focus on text, but
> will not "test" my Designs on Lynx just so I can probably accomodate that
> very small percentage of visitors.
>
> On the same subject, WHO are those people using Lynx??? I mean, most major
> corporations who give Web access to their employees are nowadays running
> graphical OSes. Could we be talking here about home users for the most
> part, using "antiquated" computers (and I say that in all respect...really)
>
> The people running such machines will have to understand (and would
> probably agree) that they cannot expect to get ALL the benefits of the Web
> without updating their beast one day or another.
>
> And a message to J.D. Baldwin: "Man, loosen up will ya?"
> Give the guy a brake with your: "Test your site with lynx before presenting
> to the world."
>
> And if I go to YOUR site, will I see "Better experienced with Lynx lame
> GIFs"?
>
> --
> Jean-Francois Arseneault
> ECLECTICA: http://pages.infinit.net/cosinus
> eMail: mailto:j...@videotron.ca
>
>
> Jean-Francois Arseneault <j...@videotron.ca> wrote in article
> <01bc5139$adb383a0$8168fdcf@cosinus>...
>> What the hell is all this fuss about Lynx???
>> --
>> Jean-Francois Arseneault
>> ECLECTICA: http://pages.infinit.net/cosinus
>> eMail: mailto:j...@videotron.ca
>>
>>
>> J.D. Baldwin <bal...@netcom.com> wrote in article
>> <baldwinE...@netcom.com>...
>> > In article <335797...@weir.net>, HS: CONNECT (Webmaster)
>> > <hs...@weir.net> wrote:
>> > >http://www.weir.net/herald-star.
>> > >
>> > >Please let me know what you think, and how it could be improved.
>> >
>> > Lose the frames.
>> >
>> > Put ALT tags in the elements for graphical links.
>> >
>> > Test your site with lynx before presenting to the world.
>> > --
>> > From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin |+| "If anyone disagrees with
>> anything I
>> > _,_ Finger bal...@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not
> only
>> to
>> > _|70|___:::)=}- for PGP public |+| retract it, but also to deny
>> under
>> > \ / key information. |+| oath that I ever said it." --T.
>> Lehrer
>> >
>>
> ***~~~~---------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>> --
>> >
>>
--
Brian Found
Ottawa, Canada
Warren Steel
J.D. Baldwin wrote:
> >... It's hard to
> >read "Dilbert" from within Lynx.)
Randy Shipp wrote:
> You'd admit, then, that from the developer of the Dilbert Zone's
> perspective, lynx users are not his audience and therefore not to be
> considered at all?
I don't admit it! Notice that JDB said "from within
Lynx." If a Dilbert site is accessible to Lynx users, has
reasonable ALT= texts, and doesn't rely on frames, javascripts,
push, pull, imagemaps, and the like, then a Lynx user can
1) download the cartoon of the day for viewing on a
graphic system (I leave aside the possible legal distinctions
between "downloading" to a browser display or disk cache and
downloading via FTP, Kermit, or Z-modem to another machine), or
2) on an X-windows system, spawn an image viewer to see
Dilbert in all his glory!
> Some of the people are so adamant about
> backward-compatibility that they seem to refuse to admit that browser
> choice could be related to the makeup of their audience. If I sell
> image-processing software or the latest natural media paint program, I
> couldn't care less what people on UNIX terminals see. My program
> isn't for UNIX, it's not text-based...I mean, aren't there sites, even
> of a purely informational nature, where the audience is "people who
> rush out and get the latest version of everything"? I think so. And
> I think if you have reason to believe that's true, it's OK to write
> your pages to please those folks, even if it means the page is a
> little broken for others....
That's too bad. Some people go out and get the latest
everything, including Lynx 2.71 (released this month), and
then go on to use the appropriate tool for the task. I see
nothing strange about using a fast, efficient, text-mode
browser with a dazzling set of command-line options for
locating and retrieving advanced graphics software. And,
yes, blind users browse the web and order merchandise from
illustrated online catalogs, if only the author has taken
even minimal care to make the site accessible. Too bad your
own imagination can't encompass the possibilities of the
Web.
> As
> long as it gets the point across to the target audience (in this case
> probably people with the latest-greatest everything), then I say it's
> fine to skimp on backward-compatibility.
If you say so.
--
Warren Steel mu...@olemiss.edu
Department of Music University of Mississippi
Yoo C. Chung
bal...@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin) writes:
>
> (My PC, with the current release MSIE and the latest Netscape beta
> installed, for use with my corporate T1, is right behind me, and I use
> it quite a lot, too. Depends what I'm looking for. It's hard to
> read "Dilbert" from within Lynx.)
>
FYI, for me it's quite easy to read Dilbert with Lynx. I just press
return on the "Today's strip" link and the strip shows up in xv. Of
course, it may be a whee bit difficult to do that if you want to do
this on a Windows system ...
So it still makes sense for pages to be browser independent even if
it's primary purpose is to provide graphical content.
--
Yoo C. Chung <http://plaza.snu.ac.kr/~wacko/>
School of Electrical Engineering, Seoul National University
Geoffrey Hebert
19K for what! Too mutch bandwidth for too little in return.
Eliminate the 19K. Here is a trick that is usefull.
put it at the end of the script and put a size of 0.0.
User will not see it. But the browser will load it, while
the user is reading and deciding what to do.
Put the 19K on subsequent pages. Because the browser
has already loaded it, it will appear very quickly.
"HS: CONNECT (Webmaster)" <hs...@weir.net> wrote:
>http://www.weir.net/herald-star.
>Please let me know what you think, and how it could be improved.
>Thanks!
>Paul
>(no flames necessary)
------- signature ----------
Check out the Perl site!
http://www.microserve.net/~soccer/
use password perlmisc
Geat tool for Developers>
Jean-Francois Arseneault
Answering back...
Miguel Cruz <m...@diana.law.yale.edu> wrote in article
<5jpr2i$k...@news.ycc.yale.edu>...
> Jean-Francois Arseneault <j...@videotron.ca> wrote:
> >What the hell is all this fuss about Lynx???
>
> For a lot of people Lynx is the browser of choice. For some people - the
> blind, for instance, a page that isn't readable in Lynx won't be readable
at
> all.
...as music to deaf people, dancing for quadraplegics or the sweet smell of
freshly blossomed flowers to dolphins...what's your point?
>
> Remember that the browser count statistics are based on total number of
hits
> by a given program. However, since Lynx doesn't pull down graphics, it is
> drastically underrepresented. How many graphics are on the average page?
5?
> 10? Then you can multiply the estimated share of Lynx users relative to
> others by 5 or 10 to get an accurate count.
I brought on the numbers not to argue whether it was 1,2 or 10. Just to say
it wasn't 75%, or even only 30% like MSIE's stats. You say lynx users are
underrepresented, I say they're OVERRATED...
>
> It's the fastest browser by far. I can navigate through ten pages in Lynx
in
> the time it takes someone with Netscape to piddle through one. It allows
me
> to do more things with the information than any other browser. It can
show
> me more information about web pages. It's great for debugging scripts
> because it can show the exact form data to be sent.
>
Speed is good...speed is very good. That's until you want to see something
else than 1970 amber ASCII (we really should go to Unicode anyway...but
that's another story on american narrow-mindedness) on a plasma screen.
> The only problem is that it doesn't show the pretty pictures.
Pictures, sound, music, effects - haaaaaaa but sorry! These are all things
you'd probably resent from a "browser" anyway.
>
> miguel
>
Jean-Francois
Alan J. Flavell
On 26 Apr 1997, Jean-Francois Arseneault wrote:
> > For a lot of people Lynx is the browser of choice. For some people - the
> > blind, for instance, a page that isn't readable in Lynx won't be readable
> at
> > all.
>
> ...as music to deaf people, dancing for quadraplegics or the sweet smell of
> freshly blossomed flowers to dolphins...what's your point?
Please keep this stream of offensive nonsense up. It saves us the
bother of poking fun at your site.
Alan J. Flavell
On 25 Apr 1997, Brian Found wrote:
> Lynx and other text only browsers are VERY important to blind people who
> need text only programs and operating systems.
Yes, but that's far from being the only reason for ensuring that your
textual materials work well in text-only mode, as has been frequently
presented here (though routinely howled down by graphic designer
wannabees).
> Perhaps what is needed is a "text-only" page of current pages. This is
> often not hard to do if you want to use frames,
For the most part, I disagree. Quite strongly, in fact, since the most
common excuse for not making pages text-friendly is "I can't waste my
time producing a text-only alternative". And in the vast majority of
cases, it's totally unnecessary to produce text-only alternatives. Just
why do you imagine that frames and text are somehow mutually hostile?
They aren't - the design of frames shows many shortcomimgs, it's true,
but it _does_ make provision for supporting non-frames situations,
whether graphical or text-only: if you use those provisions properly,
there is _NO_ reason to go messing around with a second _text-only_
version of a site. In a sense you'd need a second _no-frame_ version of
the site, but the same pages can often be re-used for that, so it's no
big deal.
Disclaimer - I don't actually use frames myself, but I think I
understand how to if I had to. I find myself in quite good agreement
with Galactus on this topic, as I see that he provides some good hints
on the use of frames at the www.htmlhelp.com site, while not actually
using them himself. (Correct me if I'm wrong there).
> imagemaps, etc.
I respectfully call your attention to the text-friendly authoring hints
at http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/alt/
Again there is no need to produce an alternative _version_ of your
pages just for the reason that you use an imagemap. There are better
ways, that can be of benefit also to those who _could_ use the imagemap.
For example, on a city street plan it could be useful to have a text
search feature _as_well_as_ the imagemap.
(Please trim your quotes in accordance with usenet conventions, thanks).
Alan J. Flavell
On Fri, 25 Apr 1997, Randy Shipp wrote:
> On Fri, 25 Apr 1997 15:42:18 GMT, bal...@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
> wrote:
>
> >it quite a lot, too. Depends what I'm looking for. It's hard to
> >read "Dilbert" from within Lynx.)
>
> You'd admit, then, that from the developer of the Dilbert Zone's
> perspective, lynx users are not his audience and therefore not to be
> considered at all?
Of course not! Lynx has the best graphics presentation, it simply calls
up a dedicated graphics display program as helper app. [Naturally, this
only applies in an appropriate environment, but as you'll have read from
the various Lynx users who have posted here, many of them are in fact in
such an environment, and are running Lynx from choice rather than
necessity. Nevertheless, I am resolutely going to make my textual
materials accessible even to those for whom a text-only Lynx environment
_is_ a necessity, no matter how much scorn and sarcasm I get from the
graphics designer crowd for doing so. Indeed, I take their scorn as a
compliment.]
Lynx can display graphics even without X Windows (e.g in linux with a
vga graphics display program) if the machine is too under-powered to run
X. Can Netscape do that? It can not, and its built-in graphics
software isn't exactly the best. On c.i.w.a.images you can often see
people explaining how to _degrade_ images in order to get them to
display adequately on Netscape. Lynx doesn't need that!
If you're going to make decisions based on your perception of the
abilities of particular software, you had better learn more about the
capabilities of that software before making yourself look foolish.
> Some of the people are so adamant about
> backward-compatibility that they seem to refuse to admit that browser
> choice could be related to the makeup of their audience.
Do they? Let's see a citation that supports that contention.
> If I sell
> image-processing software or the latest natural media paint program, I
> couldn't care less what people on UNIX terminals see.
So you wouldn't even let them browse your catalog and pricelist when
they happened to be away from their graphics station? I think that's a
shortsighted approach, but of course everyone has the right to make
their own mistakes. I just don't see the benefit of having to read
postings here that are little more than a long litany of excuses for
those mistakes.
DJ Delorie
"Jean-Francois Arseneault" <j...@videotron.ca> writes:
> > For a lot of people Lynx is the browser of choice. For some people
> > - the blind, for instance, a page that isn't readable in Lynx
> > won't be readable at all.
>
> ...as music to deaf people, dancing for quadraplegics or the sweet smell of
> freshly blossomed flowers to dolphins...what's your point?
I know blind people that use lynx 2.7 under MS-DOS with a screen
reader. They're blind. They use lynx. They can read web pages. Got
the point?
Just because *you* don't understand how they do it doesn't mean that
they aren't doing it. Blind people use the web. If you write good
HTML, you don't have to worry about it. If you write poor HTML, the
only people who will be able to use your page are people who have the
same browser and machine as you. I use an SGI for web browsing. It's
way faster (CPU and graphics) than a PC, and way more expensive. I've
got a dedicated line to the Internet. I use Lynx (Lynx is faster than
Netscape) to surf. On pages that use good HTML, I can use the browser
*I* want. When an author can't figure out how to make HTML the way
HTML was intended, I have to figure out where I am and switch
browsers, which is annoying.
So, just do it the right way and your page will be better.
Oh, and deaf people can hear loud music with their hands on the
speakers, quadraplegics can dance (only their heads move, of course,
and I've seen a co-worker who's paraplegic dance with his wheelchair),
and dolphins *do* have noses.
Jean-Francois Arseneault
Personal attacks will get you nowhere in life...
- Buddy, raise yourself instead of lowering other people -
If you can't participate intelligently to a discussion (you know a stream
of sentences with arguments and counter-arguments...) then bail out!
--
Jean-Francois Arseneault
ECLECTICA: http://pages.infinit.net/cosinus
eMail: mailto:j...@videotron.ca
Alan J. Flavell <fla...@mail.cern.ch> wrote in article
<Pine.A41.3.95a.970426133657.99116A-100000@sp053>...
> On 26 Apr 1997, Jean-Francois Arseneault wrote:
>
> > > For a lot of people Lynx is the browser of choice. For some people -
the
> > > blind, for instance, a page that isn't readable in Lynx won't be
readable
> > at
> > > all.
> >
> > ...as music to deaf people, dancing for quadraplegics or the sweet
smell of
> > freshly blossomed flowers to dolphins...what's your point?
>
Jean-Francois Arseneault
Les Jones <lesj...@usit.net> wrote in article
<lesjones-ya023480...@news.usit.net>...
> In article <Pine.A41.3.95a.970425115011.70032B-100000@sp053>, "Alan J.
> Flavell" <fla...@mail.cern.ch> wrote:
>
> > On 25 Apr 1997, Jean-Francois Arseneault wrote:
> >
> > > According to BrowserWatch.com, the Lynx percentage of users is close
to
> > > 1%...
> > > Why do we feel it is a requirement 'sine qua non' to have pages
> > > Lynx-downgraded !?!
> >
> > We don't. We just ask that the HTML documents be capable of being
> > presented to the best ability of any WWW browsing situation. Lynx is
> > just one example of a WWW browsing situation.
>
> Well said. The point isn't Lynx compatibility per se. It's browser
> accessibility in general. If you can't use the site in Lynx, chances are
> you can't use it on a PDA, and it may be compromized on a WebTV.
Agreed. Lynx would not be an absolute objective in this case, but just
another point to try to keep in mind..
I buy that.
>
> Web authors who laugh at WebTVs now may be in for a serious shock in a
year
> or two. Now that Microsoft owns the company, you can expect a lot more
> WebTV visitors in the future. Does your site fit in a 544 pixel width? It
> had better, because that's as wide as it gets with WebTV, and there's no
> sideways scrolling. Does your site depend on plugins or Netscape-specific
> code that isn't supported by WebTV? WebTV users aren't going to see that
> content.
>
> + Les Jones + Documentation Supervisor + U.S. Internet +
>
Agreed as well. I suppose we will have to put up with WebTV audiences in
large numbers eventually...
Jean-Francois Arseneault
>
> I respectfully call your attention to the text-friendly authoring hints
> at http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/alt/
>
Thanks for the URL.
I have taken this site on my bookmark list and will give it necessary
attention when designing future pages.
THIS site is the kind of help and tips that I find unobstrusive and
well-written enough to consider suitable for a reference.
Jean-Francois Arseneault
Brian Found <al...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA> wrote in article
<5jr7tm$f...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>...
>
>
> Lynx and other text only browsers are VERY important to blind people who
> need text only programs and operating systems.
>
> Perhaps what is needed is a "text-only" page of current pages. This is
> often not hard to do if you want to use frames, imagemaps, etc.
>
> And if you could care less about the blind, then maybe your information
> ain't worth looking at anyways.
>
It is not that I couldn't care less, it is only that, like many of us out
there, thinking about EVERY possible type of visitor and making the site
accordingly can become very time-consuming, and I just feel that for many
of us, this kind of development is done most of the time on a best-effort
basis.
Daniel Ford Sohl
In article <01bc5205$96e6e640$758760cf@cosinus>, "Jean-Francois Arseneault"
<j...@videotron.ca> wrote:
+ Pictures, sound, music, effects - haaaaaaa but sorry! These are all things
+ you'd probably resent from a "browser" anyway.
You just don't get it, do you? Do you want to see a page that uses images,
background, and *content*, and it looks fairly good in graphical browsers
while being entirely accessible to anybody who can't/does't want to have
anything to do with graphics?
<http://www.netspace.org/users/ford/underconstr.html>
Tell me what you think -- does it fit your preconceived bullshit notion of
"Lynx-downgraded"? It's got a banner image, it uses a background pattern...
If I wanted to, I could toss sound in there too, and that'd be fine. As it
is, I myself dislike webpages that toss out stupid MIDI files or whatever,
so I'm not going to do that. Effects? I could toss a Java applet in there,
and that'd be fine too.
I started out with the goal that every browser should be able to read this
page, and *I* know that the appearance in newfangled "cutting-edge"
browsers doesn't have to suffer to let others view a perfectly good page.
Read TimBL's quote sometime -- you can find it at the bottom of any of
Abigail's posts...
--
_______________<http://www.netspace.org/users/ford/>_______________
|Daniel "Ford" Sohl |"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,|
|Fort...@brown.edu| the on that heralds new discoveries, is |
| The ____est Man | not 'Eureka' (I found it!) but 'That's |
| on the Net | funny...'" -- Isaac Asimov |
|TO REPLY, SIMPLY REMOVE THE WORD "ANTISPAM" FROM MY EMAIL ADDRESS|
Jean-Francois Arseneault
Arnoud "Galactus" Engelfriet <gala...@htmlhelp.com> wrote in article
<+wPYz4uYO...@htmlhelp.com>...
> Yes. What does that have to do with Lynx? Surely you are not suggesting
> that I never run xterms again, but always use Netscape? There are
> situations where Netscape is best, and situations where Lynx is best.
> A website should be able to accomodate to both, even when it looks
> a bit boring and textonly in Lynx.
I am not suggesting that in any way. In fact I work for a company for which
text-displays are still an important part of the daily work (like
X-Windows, 3270, 5250 and so on..) and I also believe it is still of
importance...just not as much as everyone is giving it these days.
As other might have pointed out, I only agree a site should be viewable
from ANY browser when it calls to, well, any user. A site catering to a
specific audience could very well design mostly for graphical access when
offering products which should attract only those people with these needs.
> No one said they should, and I doubt anyone using Lynx is expecting
> "all the benefits", if that refers to flash, animated gifs, movies,
> background music and what-have-you. But I *do* expect to at least
> get the text, which is probably what I'm looking for when I use Lynx.
Perhaps a better choice of words for "all the benefits" could have been
"all the available features"
I certainly wouldn't like to categorize invasive Popup JavaScript Windows
as a "benefit" now that I'm thinking about it :)
> No, because I believe that Web sites should be accessible to all users,
> regardless of platform, browser, hardware or OS. That's why we founded
> the WDG: http://www.htmlhelp.com/
Your site happens to be on my Bookmark list and I find it is very useful!
I probably just don't agree on what the baseline should be for WebDesign
with some other posters in this NG. Some would place all sites to be Lynx
2.4 compatible as other will say they support Netscape 2.x and up.
I guess, after reading all the comments, it will eventually come back to
which audience you focus on.
Jean-Francois Arseneault
I don't know how they do it, but their detection code is very accurate in
returning information on the browser I'm using...
check it out!
--
Jean-Francois Arseneault
ECLECTICA: http://pages.infinit.net/cosinus
eMail: mailto:j...@videotron.ca
Jean-Francois Arseneault <j...@videotron.ca> wrote in article
<01bc5271$31b5ee80$bc67fdcf@cosinus>...
> You will all be very happy to know that I just downloaded the Win32 port
of
> Lynx to give it a spin!!!
> Surprising how it brings back memories of my 1st 386 computer...
>
> I must say it is a nice product, and viewing my WebSite in Lynx showed me
I
> didn't make that many mistakes, placing ALT tags almost everywhere, but a
> few places... amongst which the Home page :)
>
> I will fix the most obvious, but don't plan on changing my whole design
for
> Lynx browsing. Just making sure the basics are covered so a visitor
> wouldn't be turned off by it [the WebSite] and would get the info he
needs.
>
> --
> Jean-Francois Arseneault
> ECLECTICA: http://pages.infinit.net/cosinus
> eMail: mailto:j...@videotron.ca
>
>
> Tero Paananen <p11...@cc.tut.fi> wrote in article
> <5jq2vv$kr1$1...@cc.tut.fi>...
> > In <01bc5139$adb383a0$8168fdcf@cosinus> "Jean-Francois Arseneault"
> <j...@videotron.ca> writes:
> >
> > >What the hell is all this fuss about Lynx???
> >
Dave Kristula
Jean-Francois Arseneault wrote:
>
> What the hell is all this fuss about Lynx???
Lynx was a once widespread WWW client, now less than .01% of accesses on
major web sites come from people using it. The theory behind "What
about Lynx?" goes way beyond the actual use of Lynx, rather it is termed
as "Jello" for "Gelatin", meaning it is the widespread use "What happens
when someone isn't viewing images?" which is a MUCH large problem than
people not being able to view a page with the Lynx Browser.
I am writing an e-zine soon with many articles about the internet, web,
HTML, banner ads, standards, statistics, and more... if anyone would
like me to notify them of when it opens just drop me a note at
webm...@davesite.com.
Also, if you have a few minutes, I would appreciate any comments or
suggestions on my HTML Tutorial...
HTML: An Interactive Tutorial for Beginners
http://www.davesite.com/webstation/html/
Thanks!
-Dave Kristula
--
,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,
. Dave Kristula, President webm...@davesite.com .
, Dave's Site!--> http://www.davesite.com/ ,
. .
, "Dave Kristula: Reformist for U.S. Senate (Pennsylvania)" ,
. .
, The Top 10 Lists--> http://www.davesite.com/humor/top10/ ,
. HTML Tutorial--> http://www.davesite.com/webstation/html/ .
, Home Page--> http://lets.get.some.free-codeine.home.ml.org/ ,
.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.
Miguel Cruz
Especially when you correct for Jeff's inability to multiply 1 by 10 and get
10 rather than 1.
miguel
.
Jean-Francois Arseneault
You will all be very happy to know that I just downloaded the Win32 port of
Lynx to give it a spin!!!
Surprising how it brings back memories of my 1st 386 computer...
I must say it is a nice product, and viewing my WebSite in Lynx showed me I
didn't make that many mistakes, placing ALT tags almost everywhere, but a
few places... amongst which the Home page :)
I will fix the most obvious, but don't plan on changing my whole design for
Lynx browsing. Just making sure the basics are covered so a visitor
wouldn't be turned off by it [the WebSite] and would get the info he needs.
--
Jean-Francois Arseneault
ECLECTICA: http://pages.infinit.net/cosinus
eMail: mailto:j...@videotron.ca
Tero Paananen <p11...@cc.tut.fi> wrote in article
<5jq2vv$kr1$1...@cc.tut.fi>...
> In <01bc5139$adb383a0$8168fdcf@cosinus> "Jean-Francois Arseneault"
<j...@videotron.ca> writes:
>
> >What the hell is all this fuss about Lynx???
>
Miguel Cruz
Jean-Francois Arseneault <j...@videotron.ca> wrote:
>...as music to deaf people, dancing for quadraplegics or the sweet smell of
>freshly blossomed flowers to dolphins...what's your point?
My point is that there is a readily identifiable group of people/consumers
who are unable to access material which isn't pretended in a format friendly
to all browsers. And I can promise you that if there's one, there's more.
Think of site indexers. Think of people in countries or organizations where
bandwidth is scarce. And think of sophisticated computer users who enjoy
speedy response.
What your point is about music to deaf people, etc., I don't know. Dolphins
smell, most all deaf people can hear something or at least feel music, and
quadraplegics can dance as well as most white people, by moving their heads
or otherwise.
>I brought on the numbers not to argue whether it was 1,2 or 10. Just to say
>it wasn't 75%, or even only 30% like MSIE's stats. You say lynx users are
>underrepresented, I say they're OVERRATED...
Overrated by whom? You've done a marvellous job of creating a play between
the prefixes "under" and "over" but there seems to be no point in evidence.
>Speed is good...speed is very good. That's until you want to see something
>else than 1970 amber ASCII (we really should go to Unicode anyway...but
>that's another story on american narrow-mindedness) on a plasma screen.
If I want to see a picture, lynx will pop it up on my sceen in a window,
still more quickly than Netscape, I might add.
>Pictures, sound, music, effects - haaaaaaa but sorry! These are all things
>you'd probably resent from a "browser" anyway.
No, that's not the point at all. I don't hate effects. I simply don't think
that they are a good excuse for making content inaccessible.
miguel
Alan J. Flavell
On Sat, 26 Apr 1997, Dave Kristula wrote:
> Lynx was a once widespread WWW client, now less than .01% of accesses on
> major web sites come from people using it.
This is self-fulfilling, isn't it? Many "major web sites" are extremely
Lynx-hostile, furthermore they have tens of images on every page. Some
of them even collect their statistics via image-based counters. Not
surprisingly, text-mode browsers seem to be rather rare. When
statistics are collected more honestly, a more plausible figure is
obtained, although as the well-known Cranfield stats page explains, they
still aren't reliable as anything more than an indicator of the load on
the server. I'd put the figure at a few percent, but then, I'm not
representing "major web sites": frankly I find "major web sites" about
as interesting as the average "major tv show", namely, a complete yawn.
The pictures are much better on radio ;-)
> ... "What happens
> when someone isn't viewing images?" which is a MUCH large problem than
> people not being able to view a page with the Lynx Browser.
Yup, (like perhaps 30% rather than a few percent), but if you write
_for_the_WWW_ rather than "for" a specific graphical browser, then the
size of, and potential inaccuracy of, all these percentages is of no
great importance to you.
Please, trim that oversize sig of yours.
--
Wish the electron a happy 100th birthday! -
See: http://www.pparc.ac.uk/news/electron.html
and: http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/electron100/
Jean-Francois Arseneault
Daniel "Ford" Sohl <fort...@brown.edu.ANTISPAM> wrote in article
<forty-two-ya024080...@news.brown.edu>...
> In article <01bc5205$96e6e640$758760cf@cosinus>, "Jean-Francois
Arseneault"
> <j...@videotron.ca> wrote:
>
things
> + you'd probably resent from a "browser" anyway.
>
> You just don't get it, do you? Do you want to see a page that uses
images,
> background, and *content*, and it looks fairly good in graphical browsers
> while being entirely accessible to anybody who can't/does't want to have
> anything to do with graphics?
It's humor, of course...You just don't get it do you?
>
> <http://www.netspace.org/users/ford/underconstr.html>
>
> Tell me what you think -- does it fit your preconceived bullshit notion
of
> "Lynx-downgraded"? It's got a banner image, it uses a background
pattern...
What I don't like of a website is to only offer a version which caters to
the least common denominator.
Between you and me, your personal site does not go really beyond the HTML
we were first getting when the Web started...
> I started out with the goal that every browser should be able to read
this
> page, and *I* know that the appearance in newfangled "cutting-edge"
> browsers doesn't have to suffer to let others view a perfectly good page.
Your page looks the SAME, whether looked in MSIE, Netscape or Lynx.
Now, you may think that's great, personnally, I believe it is possible to
spice up the design WITHOUT losing sight of Lynx users...and you may check
my site with any browser you want as a proof.
Dave Kristula
Miguel Cruz wrote:
>
> Dave Kristula <webm...@davesite.com> wrote:
> >Lynx was a once widespread WWW client, now less than .01% of accesses on
> >major web sites come from people using it.
>
> find), 5.8% of accesses were made with Lynx. Multiply to take into account
> the number of images on a Yahoo page (what, 4?) and you get 23.5% of
> accesses. Hardly insignificant.
>
> The fact that you don't use it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
>
> miguel
[Server Logs for davesite.com for past 2 days]
Printing the first 20 browsers, sorted by number of requests.
#reqs: browser
----- -------
37249: Mozilla
13894: Mozilla (compatible)
442: NetAttache 2.1
169: -
121: Teleport Pro
83: Scooter
77: PRODIGY-WB
69: Lynx
67: Lycos_Spider_(T-Rex)
46: Mosaic
45: Microsoft Internet Explorer
44: aolbrowser
42: IWENG
34: WebSage
33: NetManage Chameleon WebSurfer
31: ArchitextSpider
31: Lotus-Notes
28: IBM-WebExplorer-DLL
22: OmniWeb
22: TradeWave winWeb 2.0(Mozilla aware)
Consider 1 in 3 accesses is a page, that means that there were 16,000
netscape and IE accesses compared to 69 Lynx accesses, making it .4%...
sorry, I was way off :)
Miguel Cruz
Jean-Francois Arseneault
Funny, I've noticed you've used this "resum´" on your homepage which I
cannot read properly on Lynx...
--
Jean-Francois Arseneault
ECLECTICA: http://pages.infinit.net/cosinus
eMail: mailto:j...@videotron.ca
>
David Richards
In article <3362AD...@davesite.com>,
Dave Kristula <webm...@davesite.com> wrote:
This is also ignoring the non-trivial number of people who use the new Lynx
ability to set the agent type to anything the user chooses, handy for
getting into the sites that bar non-gui browsers.
>[Server Logs for davesite.com for past 2 days]
>
>Printing the first 20 browsers, sorted by number of requests.
>
>#reqs: browser
>----- -------
>37249: Mozilla
>13894: Mozilla (compatible)
> 442: NetAttache 2.1
> 169: -
> 121: Teleport Pro
> 83: Scooter
> 77: PRODIGY-WB
> 69: Lynx
>Consider 1 in 3 accesses is a page, that means that there were 16,000
>netscape and IE accesses compared to 69 Lynx accesses, making it .4%...
>sorry, I was way off :)
So your pages average only three images each, when your first page inlines
12 graphics from your site alone?
Dave Kristula
David Richards wrote:
> This is also ignoring the non-trivial number of people who use the new Lynx
> ability to set the agent type to anything the user chooses, handy for
> getting into the sites that bar non-gui browsers.
That's cool. Guess I'll have to look into that. :)
> So your pages average only three images each, when your first page inlines
> 12 graphics from your site alone?
--//--
Program started at Sat-26-Apr-1997 00:21 local time.
Analysed requests from Thu-24-Apr-1997 00:03 to Sat-26-Apr-1997 00:02
(2.0 days).
Total successful requests: 52 170
Average successful requests per day: 26 085
Total successful requests for pages: 18 289
Total failed requests: 19
Total redirected requests: 551
Number of distinct files requested: 260
Corrupt logfile lines: 39
Total data transferred: 218 076 kbytes
Average data transferred per day: 109 038 kbytes
--//--
The 52k / 18k is 2.8 something... so its actually 1 page in less than 3
acesses, pretty neat huh? Few accesses go directly to my main page.:)
charleydarbo
In article <baldwinE...@netcom.com>, bal...@netcom.com (J.D.
Baldwin) wrote:
> Because when *I* look at a site that's trying to sell
> me something technical, and they don't have their own act together,
> I quietly move on. (It's going to be *years* before I forgive
> Netscape for their idiotic download interface.)
Maybe you should quietly move on.
Jean-Francois Arseneault
DJ Delorie <d...@delorie.com> wrote in article
<xnenbyo...@delorie.com>...
>
> "Jean-Francois Arseneault" <j...@videotron.ca> writes:
> > > For a lot of people Lynx is the browser of choice. For some people
> > > - the blind, for instance, a page that isn't readable in Lynx
> > > won't be readable at all.
> >
smell of
> > freshly blossomed flowers to dolphins...what's your point?
>
> reader. They're blind. They use lynx. They can read web pages. Got
> the point?
Yes I do...but taking this sentence alone and using it out of context can
help on blowing things way out of proportion.
> Just because *you* don't understand how they do it doesn't mean that
> they aren't doing it. Blind people use the web. If you write good
Happens to be I do know how the software works.
> HTML, you don't have to worry about it. If you write poor HTML, the
> only people who will be able to use your page are people who have the
There is a difference is writing poor/good HTML and writting Lynx-oriented
HTML. The latter beeing far less interesting for the graphical client
softwares available today such as Netscape and MSIE
> same browser and machine as you. I use an SGI for web browsing. It's
> way faster (CPU and graphics) than a PC, and way more expensive. I've
> got a dedicated line to the Internet. I use Lynx (Lynx is faster than
> Netscape) to surf. On pages that use good HTML, I can use the browser
Let me get this straight: You have a) an SGI machine b) a dedicated
connection and c) use a text-only based browser. Is there something I'm
missing? Should I be going back to firecamps and ditch my oven as well?
> *I* want. When an author can't figure out how to make HTML the way
> HTML was intended, I have to figure out where I am and switch
> browsers, which is annoying.
>
> So, just do it the right way and your page will be better.
Totally agree. Good coding is always better.
> and dolphins *do* have noses.
Thanks you for that precision. But can they smell? (Sorry. This *may* be
escaping the topic of HTML authoring)
Daniel Ford Sohl
In article <01bc5297$db6a5710$9367fdcf@cosinus>, "Jean-Francois Arseneault"
<j...@videotron.ca> wrote:
+ What I don't like of a website is to only offer a version which caters to
+ the least common denominator.
+ Between you and me, your personal site does not go really beyond the HTML
+ we were first getting when the Web started...
And why should it? What would you do with
<http://www.netspace.org/users/ford/underconstr.html>?
I believe in uncluttered webpages. I don't see the need to specify exactly
where on my visitor's screen everything should go. It'll get there in one
form or another... I use stylesheets on most of my pages (the page above
being a noticeable exception -- I haven't gotten around to changing it to
more stylesheet-based) for suggestions, but it should be up to my user to
determine how best to view things.
I'd like to think that, while the design is simple, I've actually got a
fairly sophisticated usage of HTML going -- by using it more or less as it
is meant to be used. I mark the stuff up by the meaning. If you think it
looks boring, it's your browser's fault, not mine.
I can't afford Shockwave, Java would be a waste (what would I do, some
silly animation thing?), I can't stand audio-enhanced pages... HTML + CSS.
+ Your page looks the SAME, whether looked in MSIE, Netscape or Lynx.
I don't see this as a problem with my site, but perhaps with the browsers
not being creative enough in their rendering efforts... Perhaps you'd
prefer it if I had a site which was only viewable in MSIE, and which spits
Sanskrit at all Lynx users and crashes the hard drive of Nutscape users?
Ptooie.
Andrew Charlton
Lynx is a browser which tends to be different from the other browsers, and
serves to highlight the fact that browsers are free to present HTML in any
way they see fit.
On the ideal WWW, information would be tailored to the preferences/needs of
each individual user. One of the choices which is available today to do
that is the choice of browser. Page authors can help people to choose the
right tool for each job by writing browser-independant HTML.
--
____/\___ |Andrew D. Charlton This message best viewed with Agent
___/__\__) |---------<->--------- -------------
(__/ \__ |mailto:char...@ihug.co.nz | Agent NOW |
/ \ |http://crash.ihug.co.nz/~charlton/andrew/ -------------
Alan J. Flavell
On 26 Apr 1997, Jean-Francois Arseneault wrote:
> Funny, I've noticed you've used this "resum´" on your homepage which I
> cannot read properly on Lynx...
Assuming that you meant "é" then it means you haven't got your
Lynx environment set up properly yet.
You're using the Win95 version, did you say? Ideally you would set the
Win95 console for CP850, and I would like to recommend that, although MS
have made it ridiculously complicated to achieve that. I have some
notes about it on this page
http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/iso8859/browser-report.html
under the heading "Lynx 2.7 versions for MS-DOS and for Win32".
If you do that, and set Lynx itself (i.e Options/displayCharset) to
"IBM PC Codepage 850", then the coverage of the HTML character
repertoire (ISO Latin 1 aka iso-8859-1) will be perfect. Otherwise,
you may find shortcomings. You could check it out with the test tables
available in the same directory,
http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/iso8859/
If you prefer not to use CP850, the default W'95 console is in
CP437, for which the appropriate Lynx setting is "IBM PC character
set".
Lynx can have no idea what charset its console is set to; it cannot
verify that what you have told it is correct. (This is a fundamental
limitation of the character mode terminal situation, it's not a
problem that the Lynx authors can solve for you).
So, it's your responsibility to choose an appropriate code, and tell
Lynx what it is. Then Lynx will do the best that it can, i.e using that
code when the desired Latin-1 character is available, or using
substitutions when it isn't.
Pete Cooper
Ken Riley wrote in article <3361bd7b...@news-s01.ca.us.ibm.net>...
>>2) What does [INLINE] mean and why is it scattered throughout your
pages?
>>3) Text seems to be centred or left-aligned almost at random and in
>>different places on the same page for no apparent reason.
>>4) On your links page the links are all jumbled up with several on a
line
>>and run together.
>
>Come on, Yoda. Why not just tell the guy his site isn't friendly to
>Lynx or whatever text-only browser you're using? I thought Yoda was a
>teacher; your post didn't teach him anything.
Good point. Besides, the use of Lynx isn't very high anymore. Most people
dont even consider Lynx when producing a site. People want their sites to
impress and to look good (formatted text, logos, some graphics), the sites
aren't designed just to be a big bundle of text.
Cheers,
Pete
Pete Cooper
Arnoud Galactus Engelfriet
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
In article <86214468...@trenham.demon.co.uk>,
"Pete Cooper" <pe...@trenham.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Good point. Besides, the use of Lynx isn't very high anymore. Most people
> dont even consider Lynx when producing a site.
So? Do you mean that they're doing the _right_ thing? It is not that
hard to write a site that can be used by Lynx, even though it may not
look as visually pleasing as in a graphical browser.
> People want their sites to
> impress and to look good (formatted text, logos, some graphics), the sites
> aren't designed just to be a big bundle of text.
No one said they should be designed like that. It's just that in Lynx,
you only see the text, not the images.
- --
E-mail: gala...@htmlhelp.com .................... PGP Key: 512/63B0E665
Maintainer of WDG's HTML reference: <http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/>
-----END PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
E. Gartner
Nice site.
Pat Barling
Geoffrey Hebert wrote:
>
> 19K for what! Too mutch bandwidth for too little in return.
> Eliminate the 19K. Here is a trick that is usefull.
> put it at the end of the script and put a size of 0.0.
> User will not see it. But the browser will load it, while
> the user is reading and deciding what to do.
> Put the 19K on subsequent pages. Because the browser
> has already loaded it, it will appear very quickly.
>
> "HS: CONNECT (Webmaster)" <hs...@weir.net> wrote:
>
> >http://www.weir.net/herald-star.
Any chance of feedback on the below URL?
http://msowww.anu.edu.au/~barling/firebreak.html
Thanks Pat
Tor Iver Wilhelmsen
"Jean-Francois Arseneault" <j...@videotron.ca> writes:
>
>It is not that I couldn't care less, it is only that, like many of us out
>there, thinking about EVERY possible type of visitor and making the site
>accordingly can become very time-consuming, and I just feel that for many
>of us, this kind of development is done most of the time on a best-effort
>basis.
You have failed to understand something fundamental: If you use a feature
not supported by a browser, the browser will _ignore_ that bit, but will
_render_ what it can understand.. All it takes are a few extra keystrokes
to add explanations for degrading (ALT attributes for images, NOFRAMES
elements, and the contents of APPLET elements). Then, leave it to the
_visitor_ to use the features they like.
What has given you this idea you need to create a lot of extra work for
yourself?
Anyway, as a Canadian, shouldn't you be more concerned with writing
bilingual pages? :-)
- Tor Iver
--
tor...@pvv.org * http://www.pvv.org/%7etoriver/
Careful what you wish, you may regret it
Careful what you wish, you just might get it. - Metallica: King Nothing
Andersen
Some vocal techies (*some*) use Lynx friendliness as a benchmark for
cross-browser viewability of content. Many of the average folks the
likes of which are fueling the growth of the Web are drawn to online
content in the first place out of a desire to "keep up" with the
current technology (e.g. "fetish"), and have far greater an
appreciation for the "bells and whistles" than some "Web authors"
would care to admit. It's a real paradox, in a sense, which never
ceases to perplex me. Rick
On Sat, 26 Apr 1997 23:34:11 GMT, "Alan J. Flavell"
<fla...@mail.cern.ch> wrote:
>On Sat, 26 Apr 1997, Dave Kristula wrote:
>> Lynx was a once widespread WWW client, now less than .01% of accesses on
>> major web sites come from people using it.
>This is self-fulfilling, isn't it? Many "major web sites" are extremely
>Lynx-hostile, furthermore they have tens of images on every page. Some
>of them even collect their statistics via image-based counters. Not
>surprisingly, text-mode browsers seem to be rather rare.
_______________________________
Richard Andersen
Calgary Alberta Canada
ande...@canuck.com
Tor Iver Wilhelmsen
"Jean-Francois Arseneault" <j...@videotron.ca> writes:
>freshly blossomed flowers to dolphins...what's your point?
>
Are you being thick on purpose, or only when it serves your agenda? The
_point_ is that there is this hundred-year-old technology called _braille_
which encodes characters in binary matrixes, which the blind user can
_feel_. Then, as an extension of this technology, there are devices which
can "display" electronic text in this "alphabet".
>I brought on the numbers not to argue whether it was 1,2 or 10. Just to say
>it wasn't 75%, or even only 30% like MSIE's stats. You say lynx users are
>underrepresented, I say they're OVERRATED...
If the next earthquake to hit San Fransisco kills 1% of the population, it
will still be called a tragedy. Why? Because 1% means "one in hundred",
and becomes a significant number when multiplied by a large number.
Anyway, it should not matter: The user chooses their browser, not you. If
you, and others like you, spent _half_ the energy you waste on your
crusade against Lynx on adding ALT and stuff, the point would become moot.
>Speed is good...speed is very good. That's until you want to see something
>else than 1970 amber ASCII (we really should go to Unicode anyway...but
>that's another story on american narrow-mindedness) on a plasma screen.
It's very hard to see beyound your stereotypes, isn't it? You're pushing
the idea that people who use Lynx don't see anything beyond 7-bit text
(whatever happened to the 8th bit?), while everybody who actually _uses_
the damn thing are perfectly capable of viewing images, hearing sounds
etc.
The differences are twain:
1) Lynx knows there are a shitload of programs out there much better
at rendering non-textual information. So you can set up Lynx to fire up
your favourite image-viewer instead of incorporating everything under the
sun inside the browser.
2) Since Lynx only downloads images and shit on the _user's_ request, you
don't spend ages downloading images that add nothing to the content.
Any other misguided superstitions I can help you with?
J.D. Baldwin
In article <33611759...@news.airmail.net>, Randy Shipp
<rsh...@airmail.net> wrote:
>>(My PC, with the current release MSIE and the latest Netscape beta
>>installed, for use with my corporate T1, is right behind me, and I use
>>it quite a lot, too. Depends what I'm looking for. It's hard to
>>read "Dilbert" from within Lynx.)
>
>You'd admit, then, that from the developer of the Dilbert Zone's
>perspective, lynx users are not his audience and therefore not to be
>considered at all?
Absolutely not. I once read "Dilbert" every day for several weeks
with nothing but Lynx and an offline viewer. I downloaded the image
and opened it in the viewer as separate steps. This was a pain, but I
was sequestered in an environment where it was the only option due to
other project constraints.
I'm not suggesting that the webmaster at "Dilbert" (a fairly
poorly-maintained site in general, by the way) make the cartoons
themselves readable for Lynx users, but the effort spent to make them
*findable* (and to make the other links useful) is so near to zero
that it's next to impossible to justify *not* doing so.
> Some of the people are so adamant about backward-compatibility that
>they seem to refuse to admit that browser choice could be related to
>the makeup of their audience. If I sell image-processing software or
>the latest natural media paint program, I couldn't care less what
>people on UNIX terminals see. My program isn't for UNIX, it's not
>text-based...I mean, aren't there sites, even of a purely
>informational nature, where the audience is "people who rush out and
>get the latest version of everything"? I think so.
You have a funny idea of market segmentation. The computer I'm
sitting at right now is *not* the machine I use for my applications
development work, and neither one of those is the machine on which I
play games, and none of those is the same machine on which my web
site resides. Yet I might want information about something that
interests me for my "machine A" task while I happen to be sitting at
machine B, or vice versa, or any combination imaginable. This is one
of so many reasons why Open is Good, and Proprietary is Bad.
>Sure, use ALT tags...avoid frames. But don't be afraid to make the
>"HOT NEW PC GAME HOMEPAGE" a little more attractive by using tables
>for layout, some nifty Photoshopped type effects, and an animated gif
>of a joystick in your title area. As long as it gets the point across
>to the target audience (in this case probably people with the
>latest-greatest everything), then I say it's fine to skimp on
>backward-compatibility.
None of those specifics *do* "skimp on backward-compatibility" (and
even that begs the question of whether Lynx is itself a step
"backward" from MS/Netscape's latest GPF-inducing offering). If
you "use ALT [attributes]...avoid frames" then you've done 99%
of what we Lynx advocates are asking.
--
From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
_,_ Finger bal...@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
_|70|___:::)=}- for PGP public |+| retract it, but also to deny under
\ / key information. |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Brian maurice
On 25 Apr 1997 05:29:34 GMT, "Jean-Francois Arseneault"
<j...@videotron.ca> wrote:
>
>What the hell is all this fuss about Lynx???
>--
>Jean-Francois Arseneault
>ECLECTICA: http://pages.infinit.net/cosinus
>eMail: mailto:j...@videotron.ca
I use MSIE 3+ and Netscape 3+.
Somewhere in this thread someone stated that 1% of the internet
community is using Lynx or text only browsers. Please consider
that 1% of 20Million is 200Thousand PEOPLE. (yes I am shouting)
The PEOPLE on the CLIENT side are YOUR CUSTOMERS, learn
the addage - "The customer is always right."
Never have so many found it so important to argue about so little.
It is so simple to create a text only page with a Hypertext Link from
your main page. Or even text links under your Image or Image Map.
Feature rich browsers are fun to play with, but the internet's
greatest potential is making information instantly available to the
whole WORLD (Billions of people).
A picture may be worth a thousand words (typically three written
pages), but sometimes one paragraph will suffice, or even two words:
Text Only.
Bob
The opinions expressed are my own,
and as such do not represent my employer.
J.D. Baldwin
In article <01bc5299$3c0de9f0$9367fdcf@cosinus>, Jean-Francois
Arseneault <j...@videotron.ca> wrote:
>Funny, I've noticed you've used this "resum´" on your homepage
>which I cannot read properly on Lynx...
It renders properly ("properly," that is, given the misspelling of the
word in question) on my character-based terminal. This is a
limitation of the character set, not of lynx. Seeing anomalies like
this isn't something to hold against lynx or the author of the page.
It's just one of those annoying things.
BTW, both e's are accented in the correct rendition of that word,
which I won't try to write here due to the limitations of my own
character-based terminal.
DJ Delorie
Here are some stats from my server, which logs the agent with the URL
so I can get better stats. Stats are for a whole week (Sun to Sat).
"Compatible" agents are de-compatibilized for more accurate stats, but
I can't compensate for false info. Agents with only one entry were
deleted.
Based on these stats *I* have decided to continue supporting Lynx
users, since I get hundreds of them each week. General note: I
maintain a few html-checkers at http://www.delorie.com/web/ The web
page backwards compatibility viewer and the web page purifier can be
used to "simulate" a text-only session (it's not lynx) for those of
you who want to see how good your HTML is.
POSTs (usually, starting a chess game) - can't be cached, must be
loaded once per person to start each game:
2 0.0063% -
2 0.0063% Spyglass_Mosaic
2 0.0063% Thai
3 0.0095% NCSA
4 0.013% AIR_Mosaic
5 0.016% NetCruiser
8 0.025% IWENG
8 0.025% aolbrowser
9 0.028% Opera
16 0.05% PRODIGY-WB
22 0.069% AOL
22 0.069% IBM-WebExplorer-DLL
26 0.082% Amiga-AWeb
27 0.085% PlanetWeb
29 0.091% SPRY_Mosaic
38 0.12% IBM
73 0.23% Microsoft
195 0.61% Lynx
725 2.3% Quarterdeck
5649 18% MSIE
24871 78% Mozilla
31738 100% Total
GETs to http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/, which can be cached:
2 0.033% BiDi
2 0.033% Caldera
2 0.033% IBM-WebExplorer-DLL
2 0.033% Lokace
2 0.033% NETCOMplete
2 0.033% WebWhacker
3 0.05% Amiga-AWeb
3 0.05% LaSCoW-trace
3 0.05% NCSA_Mosaic
3 0.05% NetAttache
4 0.066% Enhanced_Mosaic
4 0.066% MSProxy
4 0.066% NCSA
4 0.066% Opera
5 0.083% Microsoft
5 0.083% PRODIGY-WB
5 0.083% Teleport
6 0.099% NetJet
8 0.13% Wget
9 0.15% Proxy
13 0.22% -
45 0.75% WWWC
203 3.4% Lynx
1557 26% MSIE
4110 68% Mozilla
6039 100% Total
Warren Steel
Jean-Francois Arseneault wrote:
> > Hehhe, try Lynx 2.7, it supports quite a lot of more HTML than the
> > popular browsers.
> ... I would like you to tell me in which
> way this browsers "supports quite a lot more HTML than the popular
> browsers." (I suppose you are thinking about NS and MSIE?).
> Looking forward to your answer on this one...
OK, here's a start.
Lynx supports LINK REV= with a keystroke command to send mail
to the document author. NS and MS do not.
Lynx supports LINK REL= to create a toolbar of related pages,
always accessible by a single keystroke, as described in the
specs for HTML 2.0, 3.0, and 3.2; NS and MS support none of it.
Lynx supports the TITLE attribute for mailto: links, to specify
the e-mail subject. NS and MS do nothing with this attribute.
Lynx supports client-side image maps: both the Spyglass MAP
(which requires ALT attributes) and the W3C OBJECT style of
map, which permits full markup of alternate text. The
MAP may be contained in a separate, linked file. NS and MS
do *not* support the OBJECT imagemap at all, and NS does not
recognize linked MAP files, making it impossible to use the
same MAP file for imagemaps on several pages.
Lynx interprets SGML comments correctly. NS does not.
Lynx supports unbulleted (plain) lists, using the
HTML 3.0 <UL PLAIN>, also as implementations of the
MENU and DIR elements. NS and MS display generic
bullets for all of these.
Lynx supports Figures with Captions and Credits;
also the BQ element with Credits. NS and MS have
not implemented these useful elements. Other
readers can surely add more to this list.
Lynx does not support inline images, although it
can spawn an appropriate graphics viewer. But its
most severe lack is table support. Lynx is developed
and maintained by volunteers in their spare time.
Now what was NS or MS's excuse for not supporting
many of the elements and features listed above?
--
Warren Steel mu...@olemiss.edu
Department of Music University of Mississippi
URL: http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~mudws/
Les Jones
> > >http://www.weir.net/herald-star
The graphics need lots of work. The main logo is a bad crop job: you can
see the line where the selection rectangle ended. The buttons are boring
and the text on the buttons is dinky. Whoever did the graphics is not a
graphics designer. Hire one.
I don't see the point in putting a navigation frame on the front page if
none of the other pages are framed. You load thirteen graphics, but then
you don't re-use them. Complete waste of bandwidth.
If I'm going to a newspaper's Web site, I expect to be able to search it.
Your search button goes to a page where I can search Alta Vista, Lycos,
etc. What's the point?
I'd advise changing Web hosts or hosting options. For a little more money
you can get a virtual Web server at a place like www.superb.net, with your
own domain name (heraldstar.com is available) and a site search engine. A
custom domain name is easier for your customers to remember, and it's more
prestigious.
Lose the JavaScript ticker in the location bar. Most people find tickers
annoying. As a Web page reader, it's not something I'd want to see on a
site I accessed as frequently as a newspaper.
I don't like the jumble of links at the bottom of the page, either. Make
bullets out of them, use a pre tag list, a table, or something. Anything
but the jumble.
Boy, I just don't have anything nice to say, do I? :)
I'm conviced that newspapers (the real ones that are made out of paper)
have a lot to teach Web page designers about layout and interface. A banner
across the top indentifying the paper. Major news on the front page. An
index to inner sections in a column on the page. You could improve the
functionality of the interface by taking a few lessons from the hard copy
version of the Herald Star.
+ Les Jones + Documentation Supervisor + U.S. Internet +
DJ Delorie
"Jean-Francois Arseneault" <j...@videotron.ca> writes:
> > same browser and machine as you. I use an SGI for web browsing. It's
> > way faster (CPU and graphics) than a PC, and way more expensive. I've
> > got a dedicated line to the Internet. I use Lynx (Lynx is faster than
> > Netscape) to surf. On pages that use good HTML, I can use the browser
>
> Let me get this straight: You have a) an SGI machine b) a dedicated
> connection and c) use a text-only based browser. Is there something I'm
> missing?
Correct. I have an R5000SC/150 SGI Indy with hardware accelerated
24-bit graphics (including hardware Z-buffer and 3-D engine), 128Mb of
RAM, a 17" monitor, and a dedicated 56K frame relay connection.
That being said, Lynx is still faster than Netscape.
> Should I be going back to firecamps and ditch my oven as well?
Why use an old-fashion barbeque grill when you've got a high-tech
microwave oven? Those steaks come out hot either way, but the
microwave is so much more popular.
My point is that HTML authors (stores) should create documents (food)
that allow the user (cook) to select how they want to have the
document (food) presented to them (cooked). That way, the users
(cooks) can present (cook) the information (food) in such a way as to
maximize its usefulness (tastiness) to them.
The web isn't about writing pages for your own use (usually) - it's
about sharing information, which means that the most important person
to consider is the reader, not the author, since it's the reader that
makes the web meaningful. That's why I maintain pages
(http://www.delorie.com/web/) that help authors see how their pages
behave under different situations.
Jean-Francois Arseneault
Miguel Cruz <m...@diana.law.yale.edu> wrote in article
<5jtse0$t...@news.ycc.yale.edu>...
> >I brought on the numbers not to argue whether it was 1,2 or 10. Just to
say
> >it wasn't 75%, or even only 30% like MSIE's stats. You say lynx users
are
> >underrepresented, I say they're OVERRATED...
>
> Overrated by whom? You've done a marvellous job of creating a play
between
> the prefixes "under" and "over" but there seems to be no point in
evidence.
Let me rephrase: Although some might think that Lynx users are grossly
misrepresented by the detection scripts of many popular sites (and it
probably is true in some way), I believe some HTML authors in this NG seem
to overrate Lynx' importance beyond its relative weight as far as browser
choice from the user's perspective (whether we take the given weights or
the ajusted weights some would offer here).
> No, that's not the point at all. I don't hate effects. I simply don't
think
> that they are a good excuse for making content inaccessible.
> miguel
Miguel, just to make sure we're on the same wavelenght on the topic of
content...Content is not only text right? Pictures and other "multimedia"
(I *hate* this term...) realizations count as well toward content?
Decklin Foster
On 26 Apr 1997 19:43:00 GMT, "Jean-Francois Arseneault" <j...@videotron.ca>
wrote:
>I don't know how they do it, but their detection code is very accurate in
>returning information on the browser I'm using...
>
>http://www.ibm.com/~webmaster
>
>check it out!
>
Erm, no more so than ennyone else can...
--
qrpxyva sbfgre <zbb...@agcyk.arg> - uggc://fuevxr.ubzr.zy.bet/
tbbq tbireazrag. tbbq tbireazrag. fvg. fgnl.
Jean-Francois Arseneault
Daniel "Ford" Sohl <fort...@brown.edu.ANTISPAM> wrote in article
<forty-two-ya024080...@news.brown.edu>...
> In article <01bc5297$db6a5710$9367fdcf@cosinus>, "Jean-Francois
Arseneault"
> I can't afford Shockwave, Java would be a waste (what would I do, some
> silly animation thing?), I can't stand audio-enhanced pages... HTML +
CSS.
These are personal tastes and I can understand your choices, which should
also be acceptable choices for people who do decide to use these features.
> + Your page looks the SAME, whether looked in MSIE, Netscape or Lynx.
>
> I don't see this as a problem with my site, but perhaps with the browsers
> not being creative enough in their rendering efforts... Perhaps you'd
> prefer it if I had a site which was only viewable in MSIE, and which
spits
> Sanskrit at all Lynx users and crashes the hard drive of Nutscape users?
> Ptooie.
LOL...I really liked this comment...in a good way!
I am unfortunately *not* a soldier of MSIE, nor any specific browser
(although I do have a preference for a graphical base browser). I don't
even run a crusade against Lynx, although lots of people seem to think so.
Jean-Francois Arseneault
Tero Paananen <p11...@cc.tut.fi> wrote in article
<5jq4jl$m16$1...@cc.tut.fi>...
> In <01bc513b$66d66c20$8168fdcf@cosinus> "Jean-Francois Arseneault"
<j...@videotron.ca> writes:
>
> >According to BrowserWatch.com, the Lynx percentage of users is close to
> >1%...
> >Why do we feel it is a requirement 'sine qua non' to have pages
> >Lynx-downgraded !?!
>
> Have you *ever* read any of the stuff written in this newsgroup?
> I doubt that very much, since you felt compelled to come up with
> something as ... hmmm ... misinformed as "Lynx-downgraded".
1. You should check out DejaNews before assuming...
2. Had you followed the whole thread, you might understand why I've used
the terms above.
Although a bit harsh, I admit (which is why I use **), they reflected my
notion that some people will not only have they Web pages degrade
gracefully to non-graphical browsers, but will actually make their site
look the same in all browsers, rendering the graphical versions *maybe*
less attractive to some viewers running graphical browsers.
> >I won't even go into tentative analogies, but people - we need to
> >understand technology has to move on.
>
> Hehhe, try Lynx 2.7, it supports quite a lot of more HTML than the
> popular browsers.
I use Lynx 2.7 (the port to Win32) and I would like you to tell me in which
way this browsers "supports quite a lot more HTML than the popular
browsers." (I suppose you are thinking about NS and MSIE?).
Looking forward to your answer on this one...
> >Don't get me wrong, I put ALT tages where needed and focus on text
>
> You do?
I have made many comments in this NG. Some good, some not so good. But one
thing's for sure, I have learned a lot in here. Amongst which, the ALT
tags. I challenge you to go to my site now, and you should have a hard time
finding [INLINE] anymore.
(It also is Lynx-friendly for your information, for V2.7 at least...)
Miguel Cruz
Jean-Francois Arseneault <j...@videotron.ca> wrote:
>Miguel, just to make sure we're on the same wavelenght on the topic of
>content...Content is not only text right? Pictures and other "multimedia"
>(I *hate* this term...) realizations count as well toward content?
Absolutely. I can (and often do) use lynx to view things like weather maps,
comic strips, etc., which it does very nicely (and much faster than
Netscape). These all qualify as content since that's what I'm looking for.
On the other hand, plenty of images are used as decorations. I don't think
that web designers should so singlemindedly pursue decorativeness as to
exclude others from accessing whatever genuine content they may have to
offer.
I suppose there is the argument that the style is the substance in some
cases, but that's too deep for me.
miguel
Andrew Charlton
"Jean-Francois Arseneault" <j...@videotron.ca> wrote:
> I believe some HTML authors in this NG seem
>to overrate Lynx' importance beyond its relative weight as far as browser
>choice from the user's perspective (whether we take the given weights or
>the ajusted weights some would offer here).
That's because the importance of Lynx doesn't come from its market share,
but in the fact that it demonstrates a different way of thinking about the
Web other than the purely visual.
>Content is not only text right? Pictures and other "multimedia"
>(I *hate* this term...) realizations count as well toward content?
Sometimes. That's not really the issue, though. You should use whatever
is appropriate to your content (Within reason). If the content is
primarily textual, it should be accessable by text-mode browsers. If the
content is primarily tactile, you'll have to wait until an appropriate
browser is invented. Either way, you need to honestly markup the content,
and let the browser decide what to display to the user, because the
browser, not the author, is in the best position to know what the user
wants/needs.
There's no point denying textual content to people who don't have the
tactile browser.
Jean-Francois Arseneault
You came in pretty late in this thread.
I suggest you check out the rather passionate discussion we had over the
subject. Some good information came out of it...
P.S. If I could only get half of those numbers you randomly quote, I'd be a
happy HTML Author (and rich too!)
--
Jean-Francois Arseneault
ECLECTICA: http://pages.infinit.net/cosinus
eMail: mailto:j...@videotron.ca
Robert Brian maurice <mau...@hsd.utc.com> wrote in article
<3364c401...@newshost1.res.utc.com>...
> Somewhere in this thread someone stated that 1% of the internet
> community is using Lynx or text only browsers. Please consider
> that 1% of 20Million is 200Thousand PEOPLE. (yes I am shouting)
> The PEOPLE on the CLIENT side are YOUR CUSTOMERS, learn
> the addage - "The customer is always right."
snip..snip..let's make this a bit shorter..
> Bob
David Binette
On 28 Apr 1997 08:08:54 GMT, tor...@pvv.ntnu.no (Tor Iver Wilhelmsen)
wrote:
>"Jean-Francois Arseneault" <j...@videotron.ca> writes:
>>
>>It is not that I couldn't care less, it is only that, like many of us out
>>there, thinking about EVERY possible type of visitor and making the site
>>accordingly can become very time-consuming, and I just feel that for many
>>of us, this kind of development is done most of the time on a best-effort
>>basis.
YOU are correct
having to consider the peculiarities of every browser is a pain in the ass.
That is a failing of the standards committees and it is agravated by
monopolistic companies such as netscape and microsoft.
On the other hand, using lynx is a nice way to QUICKLY view pages without
having to wade through thousands of bytes of graphics such as
animated gifs and advertisements, and *that* my friend is a big +
try it some time with an open mind and you'll have another tool in your
web arsenal when you go searching for something.
do you really want to have to load W95 or LINUX or MAC operating systems
just to have access to the web? it is a trap, lynx can run under DOS
msdos, pcdos, whatever.
all you need is some kind of modem and an ISP.
Ok so you spend 3000 $$ on a PC and more on software so you need to justify
it somehow, but don't go cutting your own throat and insisting on
dependence of some bloated, silicon hungry, cycle hogging OS just to gain
access to the global information exchange.
graphics are nice, but I for one am not yet willing to surrender my choices
to the mega companys who want to brainwash us into thinking we *need* the
latest, fastest, whatever.
think of it as an investment in your future,
supporting legacy systems can be a big plus
especially when assholes like microsloth want to control the future.
just think about it.
--
MY DNA and genetic structure is copyright 1957-1997 David J. Binette
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
unauthorised use, duplication, storage or retransmission is strictly prohibited.
http://www.sce.de/~dbin
*/ unmatched closing comment
Michael Ritzert
In article <01bc527a$1199ef80$bc67fdcf@cosinus> "Jean-Francois Arseneault" <j...@videotron.ca> writes:
I don't know how they do it, but their detection code is very accurate in
returning information on the browser I'm using...
check it out!
Well, they are doing something trivial: all this information is passed
between client and server by the http-protocol (which is rather
eloquent).
If You want to do this kind of content negotiation (i mean useful
things like browser dependent formatting of html-pages, not only
displaying parts of the HTTP-environment), it is easy to use
a server like apache and configure it to run a cgi script on every
page requested. The later should be written in a compiled language to
minimize performance problems, and thus eventually be
not-server-passed.
Michael
Michael Ritzert
In article <33612F...@olemiss.edu> Warren Steel <mu...@olemiss.edu> writes:
I actually and frequently use lynx to search for and retrieve
advanced graphics software (for unix). Why shouldn't I? Warren already
said it --- if i think i need to see a screen shot (how often is it
really meaningful?) i select the link and lynx spawns of my favorite
graphical viewer to display it.
> Some of the people are so adamant about
> backward-compatibility that they seem to refuse to admit that browser
> choice could be related to the makeup of their audience. If I sell
> image-processing software or the latest natural media paint program, I
> couldn't care less what people on UNIX terminals see. My program
> isn't for UNIX, it's not text-based...I mean, aren't there sites, even
> of a purely informational nature, where the audience is "people who
> rush out and get the latest version of everything"? I think so. And
> I think if you have reason to believe that's true, it's OK to write
> your pages to please those folks, even if it means the page is a
> little broken for others....
Which in most cases is not at all necessary so why should You?
That's too bad. Some people go out and get the latest
everything, including Lynx 2.71 (released this month), and
then go on to use the appropriate tool for the task. I see
nothing strange about using a fast, efficient, text-mode
browser with a dazzling set of command-line options for
locating and retrieving advanced graphics software. And,
yes, blind users browse the web and order merchandise from
illustrated online catalogs, if only the author has taken
even minimal care to make the site accessible. Too bad your
own imagination can't encompass the possibilities of the
Web.
> As
> long as it gets the point across to the target audience (in this case
> probably people with the latest-greatest everything), then I say it's
> fine to skimp on backward-compatibility.
If you say so.
See above. Maybe lynx users are overrepresented especially in this
audience. Do You really know? If yes, how?
Michael Ritzert
Rich Adams
Pete Cooper (pe...@trenham.demon.co.uk) wrote:
:
: Ken Riley wrote in article <3361bd7b...@news-s01.ca.us.ibm.net>...
: >>2) What does [INLINE] mean and why is it scattered throughout your
: pages?
: >>different places on the same page for no apparent reason.
: line
: >>and run together.
: >
: >Come on, Yoda. Why not just tell the guy his site isn't friendly to
: >Lynx or whatever text-only browser you're using? I thought Yoda was a
: >teacher; your post didn't teach him anything.
: Good point. Besides, the use of Lynx isn't very high anymore. Most people
: dont even consider Lynx when producing a site. People want their sites to
: impress and to look good (formatted text, logos, some graphics), the sites
: aren't designed just to be a big bundle of text.
I put a tremendous amount of effort into producing a website for
informational purposes, and even went the further step to support lynx.
As an information provider I'm not about to dictate what browser method
the user must have. Even a brief local poll found several users of lynx,
myself among them.
The last home computer I bought still isn't set up for any better than a
vt100 screen. I'm not as wowed by graphics as I once was, even needing to
take a couple aspirin after flipping though Computer Shopper. There is
such a thing as too much hype. The commercial with the two geeks checking
out web graphics, is probably closer to the truth than some web designers
would like to imagine.
I support the school of thought that web pages should be informational
first. If the content of the page isn't focused exclusively on a need for
graphics, animation, interactivity, or sound, (not for forget some of
these require keeping browsers up to date, which not everyone does) the
assumption of glitz over functionality is already crossing off potential
viewers. If I have a product or service to sell, I'd already be limiting
my market with such gimmicks.
--
|Rich Adams [DNRC] | "The time has come", the Walrus said, "To talk of |
|ri...@alpha.delta.edu | many things: Of shoes--and ships--and sealing wax-- |
| | Of cabbages--and kings--And why the sea is boiling |
| | hot--And whether pigs have wings." - Lewis Carroll |
Tero Paananen
In <01bc5442$e1fab550$bd68fdcf@cosinus> "Jean-Francois Arseneault" <j...@videotron.ca> writes:
>> Hehhe, try Lynx 2.7, it supports quite a lot of more HTML than the
>> popular browsers.
>I use Lynx 2.7 (the port to Win32) and I would like you to tell me in which
>way this browsers "supports quite a lot more HTML than the popular
>browsers." (I suppose you are thinking about NS and MSIE?).
>Looking forward to your answer on this one...
In addition of supporting nearly every feature (including frames and
client side imagemaps) of HTML in MSIE and Netscape versions v3.0x
Lynx v2.7 also supports at least these features:
<TAB>
<LINK REL>
<BANNER>
<FN>
<UL|OL PLAIN>
<FIG>
<OVERLAY>
Somebody else list some more.
-TPP
Daniel Ford Sohl
In article <33643278...@news.canuck.com>, ande...@canuck.com
(Andersen) wrote:
+ Some vocal techies (*some*) use Lynx friendliness as a benchmark for
+ cross-browser viewability of content. Many of the average folks the
+ likes of which are fueling the growth of the Web are drawn to online
+ content in the first place out of a desire to "keep up" with the
+ current technology (e.g. "fetish"), and have far greater an
+ appreciation for the "bells and whistles" than some "Web authors"
+ would care to admit. It's a real paradox, in a sense, which never
+ ceases to perplex me.
Thank you, Rick. You've just demonstrated the entire problem. Most of the
"high-tech" crowd (and I do use the term somewhat loosely, not least
because we're all high-tech, since we're all here) have the impression that
using the latest technology ipso facto means that they can't be "backwards"
compatible.
This just isn't so.
Consider Dostoevski. He wrote many novels in Russian, which is not only a
different language than English, but uses an entirely different alphabet.
Yet today we can read all of his works in English, thanks to the hard work
of translators. Now, many experts will tell you that Dostoevski's works
lose something in the translation, and this is so. But should this stop us
from reading them in English, from following the characters through their
trials and tribulations, from hearing what Dostoevski had to tell us, from
the very ideas he penned on paper more than 100 years ago? Nobody's telling
us we have to go out and learn Russian to read him...
Web pages are much the same way. Web browsers are our translators. Now, no
matter what browser (language) you use, you should still be able to get the
idea of a web page. I'm well aware that, if I use lynx, I will miss out on
your Java applets and Shockwave thing-a-ma-bobs. But your images which
convey a meaningful concept, well, that concept can be put in words, and
those words can be put in the ALT tag of an image. It isn't as hard as
people make it sound.
In short, I may not see the exact presentation that you would have me
see on graphical browsers, but is there any reason I shouldn't understand
the content, the information you are trying to disseminate?
I've been putting together a page to fight e-mail spam which I think
illustrates these principles as well. It doesn't have many graphics at all,
but it *does* involve tables; yet it still comes out quite well on lynx.
<http://www.netspace.org/users/ford/complaint.html>
--
_______________<http://www.netspace.org/users/ford/>_______________
|Daniel "Ford" Sohl |"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,|
|Fort...@brown.edu| the on that heralds new discoveries, is |
| The ____est Man | not 'Eureka' (I found it!) but 'That's |
| on the Net | funny...'" -- Isaac Asimov |
|TO REPLY, SIMPLY REMOVE THE WORD "ANTISPAM" FROM MY EMAIL ADDRESS|
Jeff Wellemeyer
>> Some of the people are so adamant about
>> backward-compatibility that they seem to refuse to admit that browser
>> choice could be related to the makeup of their audience. If I sell
>> image-processing software or the latest natural media paint program, I
>> couldn't care less what people on UNIX terminals see. My program
>> isn't for UNIX, it's not text-based...I mean, aren't there sites, even
That's an intersting statement. But is it really the case? I
recommend software purchases for a variety of platforms (Windows,
MacOS, Unix, AIX, MVS). But I do it all from a Wintel Box running
Widows 3.1
The browsing platform being used by the person with the purchasing
decision is not necessarily the same as the platform of the software
that is potentially being purchased.
Brian Jonnes
On Fri, 25 Apr 1997 20:47:26 +0200, gala...@htmlhelp.com (Arnoud
"Galactus" Engelfriet) wrote:
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>
>In article <01bc513b$66d66c20$8168fdcf@cosinus>,
>"Jean-Francois Arseneault" <j...@videotron.ca> wrote:
>
>> And if I go to YOUR site, will I see "Better experienced with Lynx lame
>> GIFs"?
If you think about it, that would be daft, wouldn't it?
Cheers,
Brian
---
*e-mail: jon...@dbn.lia.net
*Home page: http://www.dbn.lia.net/users/jonnes/
BrYan Westbrook
Only coming through in waves, "Jean-Francois Arseneault" <j...@videotron.ca>
wrote:
>You will all be very happy to know that I just downloaded the Win32 port of
>Lynx to give it a spin!!!
Could you please tell me where to find this port? I've searched for it, but
never found anything.
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/6663/index.html
Woody Allen FAQ, Drew Carey, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome,
Famous Arkansans, Poetry, Classic Rock
Mike Naylor
Jean-Francois Arseneault wrote:
>You will all be very happy to know that I just downloaded the Win32 port of
>Lynx to give it a spin!!!
west...@hsnp.com (BrYan Westbrook) wrote:
>Could you please tell me where to find this port? I've searched for it, but
>never found anything.
I found it. It's here: <URL: http://www.fdisk.com/doslynx/lynxport.htm>
I'm downloading it right now, so I can't tell you anything more as yet.
-
Mike Naylor - myfirstname...@mail.serve.com
Play 5 X 5 Poker at http://www.serve.com/games/
Jean-Francois Arseneault
Warren, I'm impressed...
You seemingly know your HTML very well.
I was cocky in my last sentence, and I admire the respect and dedication
with with you've answered my "challenge". Although it won't make me a
lynx-fanatic, it's already installed and I use it now to test my site. Your
answer would most likely enlighten many NS & MSIE newbies...
Thanks,
--
Jean-Francois Arseneault
ECLECTICA: http://pages.infinit.net/cosinus
eMail: mailto:j...@videotron.ca
Warren Steel <mu...@olemiss.edu> wrote in article
<33657A...@olemiss.edu>...
> Jean-Francois Arseneault wrote:
> > ... I would like you to tell me in which
> > way this browsers "supports quite a lot more HTML than the popular
> > browsers." (I suppose you are thinking about NS and MSIE?).
> > Looking forward to your answer on this one...
>
Decklin Foster
(ken:)
>>Come on, Yoda. Why not just tell the guy his site isn't friendly to
>>Lynx or whatever text-only browser you're using? I thought Yoda was a
>>teacher; your post didn't teach him anything.
(galactus:)
>So? Do you mean that they're doing the _right_ thing? It is not that
>hard to write a site that can be used by Lynx, even though it may not
>look as visually pleasing as in a graphical browser.
I don't see any reason why it would need to look any less pleasing in a
graphical browser. What are you referring to? Could I have an example of how
mozilla hacks make something look _better_?
(pete:)
>> People want their sites to
>> impress and to look good (formatted text, logos, some graphics), the sites
>> aren't designed just to be a big bundle of text.
And yet..... they're using HTML. that's odd.
(galactus:)
>No one said they should be designed like that. It's just that in Lynx,
>you only see the text, not the images.
Sort of, not really. As some smart individual posted here, (as close as as i
can remember it) "Lynx knows there's a whole shitload of programs out there
that are much better at displaying non-textual information." And so, Lynx will
call on the assistance of helper applications to do that. Netscape, on the
other hand, wants a plug-in for every possible function in the world, so it
can display *any* kind of information. You have to know when to stop. Then
there's IE, which not only will try to display any kind of information like
Mozilla, but also become the mechanism for rendering your *file-system*. Way
too far. My lynx setup launches ACDSee whenever *I* want to see one of Pete's
"impressive" and "good-looking" graphics. but only when I want to. And of
course, I make that desicion based on the alt text. Same thing in my graphical
browser too. And yet everyone seems to have a fear of ALT.