Re: lynx-dev User Agent

[mattack]

On Sun, 8 Aug 1999, David Woolley wrote:
>Most site accessibility problems are not the result of discrimination
>against Lynx, but of the use of SSL or of the use of frames, images

To use both my bank and stock account sites, I have to change the user 
agent, otherwise they think that the (paraphrase) 'security isn't high enough'.
Both officially only support Netscape and IE.

So to gain accessibility to them at all from home, I must fake the user
agent string.

Yes, I wish they would support Lynx, and I even officially suggested this to
the bank, but they didn't take it very seriously.

There are valid reasons for needing to change this.  Unfortunately, the 
amount of badly written sites is larger than the amount of well written sites,
and unfortunately one cannot do the "absolutely correct" thing in this case
if one wants to actually _use_ useful web sites.  Is it tacit approval of 
badly written sites?  Technically, I guess it is.  But access is better than
no access.

I did run into something strange with netflix.com the other day.. I was trying
to access it with Lynx, and I get a bunch of JavaScript crud spat at me 
when I try to log in..  Using their 'non-secure' server, I was finally able
to log in even though I still got the JavaScript crud..  I think I could
have eventually actually made a purchase (I got 10 free rentals with my DVD
player).  I just tried again, making sure that the useragent was lynx.. same
problem.  Yet this other browser, iCab, which doesn't support JavaScript,
DOESN'T get the javascript crud printed..  I just tried it again, making
sure iCab had its own useragent set (nuked old cookies too).. same thing.

Basically, I realize that's not pertinent to the main point but I wonder
why the behavior is different in the two browsers that appear to be
similarly "handicapped" according to the other site.