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Re: lynx-dev Problem with parameters sent in Lynx

From: David Woolley
Subject: Re: lynx-dev Problem with parameters sent in Lynx
Date: Sun, 29 Dec 2002 19:43:20 +0000 (GMT) 
> REFRESH(0 sec): http://www.udgaard.com/New/dvd_db/login_screen.cgi

Refreshing with a 0 delay is explicitly identified as bad practice in
the HTML 4.01 specfication.  The correct way of redirecting is to
send an HTTP status 302 (or 301) response, with the correct URL in
the Location: header.  Amongst other problems, 0 delay refreshes can
break the Back button on GUI browsers.
> 
> and the file http://www.udgaard.com/New/dvd_db/index.html presently has this:
> 
> <META HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" CONTENT="0; URL=login_screen.cgi">
> <HTML>

This is invalid HTML; the meta element implies surrounding HEAD and HTML
elements and therefore implies HTML and HEAD tags before the META tag, so
the explicit HTML tag is illegal when encountered.  Put in another way,
HTML must be the very first tag, if present, and must precede all text
content.

> </HTML>

If this is the whole document, it is missing a mandatory element, TITLE,
and is violating accessibility guidelines that apply even to properly
done redirects, i.e. the body of a redirect should provide a manual means
to get to the redirected destination.

> 
> Also here I can say that it works fine with Mozilla1.*, Netscape6, Opera6 
> and IE5, but not with Lynx 2.8.5dev12.

To some extent this is because of another HTML error, in that you don't have
a DOCTYPE, which is required for HTML 4, which in turn is required before
you can use META elements.  The lack of DOCTYPE forces many modern GUI 
browsers into a "quirks" mode, in which they reproduce the buggy behaviour
of earlier browsers.

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