Lynx-Friendly Web Pages

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There is one very good reason to have lynx-friendly web pages: there are a lot of lynx users. Lynx is actually a very fine little web browser, and perhaps the first one written. In fact the command
“lynx -dump [URL] > [filename]”
is a great way in unix to get a web page stripped of html code.

But lynx is a text-only browser, and some web pages are downright lynx-hostile. This is a shame, because there are many more people who would read your pages if you made it easier for them.

The quickest and easiest way to have lynx-friendly pages is simply to make an alternate page of text-only html code, and put a link to it very early in your main page. This is probably most important if you have frames and/or tables, as lynx has trouble with both of these features - sometimes severe troubles. Some webmasters supply text-only pages already, and they have my gratitude.

Another easy way to help out lynx users is to use the "alt =" command when referencing a picture. For example, instead of simply using:

<img align=left src="pirate3.gif">

which shows in lynx as:

[INLINE]

use:

<img align=left alt=" [Pirate Picture] " src="pirate3.gif">

which shows up in lynx as

[Pirate Picture]

This lets me know if it's worth coming back later when I have access to a graphical interface browser. (The answer, by the way, is yes, since I have an interest in pirates ...)

Even more important than mere pictures are those cute little graphic buttons that you have to click on to go to another page. If you don't use the “alt” command with them, it simply tells a lynx user that there is a link there - not where the link goes. Very annoying, and not friendly enough to make me want to come back.

There is nothing more distressing for a lynx user than to come to a web page that reads (actual example from the web follows):

[USEMAP]
[INLINE]

[LINK] [INLINE]
[LINK] [INLINE]
[LINK] [INLINE]
[LINK] [INLINE]

[INLINE] [INLINE]

_________________________________________________________________
[LINK] [INLINE]

This is less than useful, and to be honest, I'd rather go to a different web page than spend my time wondering what on earth all those links lead to. I have better things to do than check out each link looking for the ONE I want.

Here's an example of a page that uses those little buttons, yet is lynx-friendly:

<A HREF="http://www.sjgames.com/"><IMG SRC="http://www.sjgames.com/img/button/home.gif" ALT="[SJ Game Home Page]" WIDTH=112 HEIGHT=20></A>

This is beautiful. Notice the (ALT="[SJ Game Home Page]") in there. That shows up to a lynx user as a clickable link to the SJ Game Home Page, clearly labeled as such. My congratulations to Steve Jackson Games for being so lynx-friendly! There's no reason you can't do that, too.

In fact, it's so nice, I'll provide the link here:

Oh, and one more thing: COMMENTS! Comments in code can be very useful, telling you when you wrote what and where you got it, etc. Unfortunately, if you do not balance comment delimiters correctly, lynx can't read a word on your entire page.

That is, a comment should ideally look like:

<!-- This is a valid comment - created Dec. 24, 1996, with vi. -->

Specifically, the number of hyphens at the beginning of the comment should balance the number of hyphens at the end, and the white space after the initial hyphens should balance the white space before the final hyphens.

But some people create comments in the form of:

<!-- This is a bogus comment.->

which makes lynx on a unix machine choke and it can't read anything on the entire web page at all!

However, do not balance the exclamation mark! lynx chokes on these comments, too. That is,

<!--- This is another example of a bogus comment ---!>

Comments are easily fixed by changing the comment style to the valid comment style shown above: balanced hyphens and white space, with no final exclamation mark. Lynx reads that comment format with no problem.

Enough of my ranting. If you care enough to put up a web page, why not care enough to make it readable to more people?

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