Re: [Lynx-dev] can Lynx be used today ?

[David Woolley]

> Can a text-based web browser like Lynx really be used in 2004 with web
> sites powered by Javascript, XML, ASP and the like ?  A local freenet that

I never understood "powered by"; what's wrong with "using".  ASP is
a server side technology and therefore irrelevant to the question.
As Internet Explorer doesn't support XML well and certainly doesn't
support XHTML (you have to serve it as HTML and rely on its HTML error
recovery to tolerate the syntax changes necessary for it to be XML)
I would say XML is unlikely to be an issue for several years, and is
mainly a look good on CVs issue.

Javascript (i.e. ECMAScript plus public and proprietory document
object models and proprietory browser object models) is a problem for
commercial "web" sites, which in reality are neither web sites nor
designed as HTML.  They are not web sites because they generally don't
link outside themselves and they are not HTML because they are really
just instructions to produce a graphical display on Internet Explorer,
by any means possible.  Such sites, which unfortunately may well be in
the majority, generally fail many accessibility rules as well, as being
designed for visual effect only, they are a complete travesty of HTML.

> Lynx be updated or something to make it run current websites ?  I remember
> a few years ago some websites had a 'text only' link so you could see
> their site in a text-only mode.  I wish more did this.

I would say that the prevalence of text only (or low graphics) links is
increasing.  Maybe it is just that the number of new company web sites is
increasing; it is generally only the long established sites that are aware
of their legal obligations, and apart from a few, mainly academics, and
long established amateurs, it is legal obligations that result in 
text only sites.

Generally what the web authors may claim to be progress is really regression
to the state of the world before HTML.

In my view, support for de facto browser object models would be a major
rewrite and one would be better off using Gecko as a starting point.