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Subject:Re: Conbsider Non-GUI browsers From:"Jeanne A. E. DeVoto" <jaed -at- BEST -dot- COM> Date:Fri, 3 Jul 1998 17:18:56 -0700
At 7:50 AM -0700 7/3/98, Dave Whelan wrote:
>Actually, the reason I replied to this post in the first place was not to
>champion text browsers over graphics browsers, but to ask a question. When I
>code HTML, I use a text editor and check the code using different browsers.
>I used to use the freenet Lynx to check my code in a text browser, but
>recently the local freenet closed down. I have not managed to successfully
>install a Lynx browser compatible with Windows 95 on my PC, has anyone
>downloaded and successfully installed and used such a browser?
Another respondent has mentioned going to <http://lynx.browser.org/> to
find versions of Lynx. If your ISP offers shell access, it very likely has
a version of Lynx installed, and this may be another way to get Lynx access
(of course, if you use the ISP's browser, the pages will need to be on the
Web - you can't view pages on your own machine before uploading this way).
One quick-and-dirty method I sometimes use is to go to the page in Netscape
and save it as text. The saved file contains the text content, alt text (if
provided) for the images, and uses various plausible layout compromises to
fit the graphic layout into a monospaced-text format. This will not give
you results identical to Lynx, but it will give you some idea of whether
your page is usable with only text.
----
One ironic note: the original poster, katav -at- YAHOO -dot- COM, suggested that
<noFrame> support was needed for Lynx users. However, current versions of
Lynx do support frames. ;-)
BUT older versions of Netscape and MSIE do not - and many users,
particularly those who aren't technically sophisticated, still use them.
Some versions of MSIE and Opera additionally support an option to turn
frames off - I use this option myself because of the difficulty of
navigating most framed sites.
The point here is that, while accomodating text-only users is a good idea
and so is accomodating non-frames users, these sets are not identical.
--
jeanne a. e. devoto ~ jaed -at- best -dot- com http://www.best.com/~jaed/
Morning people may be respected, but night people are feared.
