41–50 of 333 posts
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Lynx is niche now? Low user count, yeah, but it’s a standards complaint browser.
The definition of niche is literally "appeals to a small, specialized section of the population" so, er, yes.
> However, being a blind person, I guess I have to accept that Google doesn't care anymore. Jumping from "this isn't working on my incredibly niche browser" to "Google don't care about blind people" is completely ridiculous.
I don't feel that's fair -- yes, Lynx is not really updated much anymore and at this point very niche. But it must work for their workflow, and I feel like something as critical as search should have fallback to work with very 'primitive' browsers and older W3 standards. (FWIW I work at Google, but not on the search team. I might go looking at internal discussions to see if this is being looked at at all)
[0]: Couldn't find a quick source on this
[1]: https://theintercept.com/2019/03/04/google-ongoing-project-d...
Another person notes that ddg is inferior. Maybe people get used to a certain way of searching with Google that doesn't translate to ddg. Haven't noticed a drop in quality myself and I think I might have been retrained to use different patterns and techniques in structuring my queries.
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The definition of niche is literally "appeals to a small, specialized section of the population" so, er, yes.
Perhaps, but in this case Google would just have to comply with the standards, which are not niche at all.
There are no standards that say that e.g. your page can't be all dependent on JS.
In other words, Google could be 100% standards compliant, and not work in Lynx.
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I'll be the first (EDIT: third) of six. > If all that stuff works for everyone, why did we invent new stuff? Just because? Or perhaps it wasn't really as amazing as well all remember. To better track people and push ads. It's really mostly just it. Modern web has very little to do with providing value to the end-user; any utility that's provided is mostly a side effect, and/or a vector to lure people into situations…
Come on, you can't be serious about this. Creating sophisticated web pages is massively easier than 10 or 20 years ago. Yes, HTML of plain simple text-only pages is still pretty much the same, but most users actually prefer visually fancier content with pictures and colors. Yes, companies presenting themselvses online profit of more capabilities. And yes, presenting ads is probably easier too. But if you think those…
Serious question, why search Google in your terminal with Lynx as opposed to `googler`? The actual result pages can still open in Lynx but the experience of navigating the results is very nice.
> However, being a blind person, I guess I have to accept that Google doesn't care anymore. Jumping from "this isn't working on my incredibly niche browser" to "Google don't care about blind people" is completely ridiculous.
Defaulting to simple HTML allows one to support all incredibly niche browser. That is the beauty of protocols and standards. This is particularly relevant when it comes to accessibility. Google search results are literally lists of web links, so this is absolutely doable. They don't do it because they are more preoccupied with extracting data about their users than they are about accessibility, and yes, this includes…
(Extreme apologies for any implied equivalence between myself and the blind.)
w3m works fine for me. Any reason people prefer lynx over w3m or eww?
Moreover, fuck Google and non standard practices in general.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps, but in this case Google would just have to comply with the standards, which are not niche at all.
The standards just describe what to do to make a standards compliant HTML page, what tags are allowed etc. There are no standards that say that e.g. your page can't be all dependent on JS. In other words, Google could be 100% standards compliant, and not work in Lynx.
The same with standards, and you are misunderstanding on purpose.
If Google chooses to not support simple HTML, then they are choosing to not support countless accessibility tools, and they know it. Some blind people will have a more miserable life because Google attained a de facto monopoly, but does not recognize some of the moral obligations that people like me feel should come with such a position. "With great power comes great responsibility", or maybe not.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Defaulting to simple HTML allows one to support all incredibly niche browser. That is the beauty of protocols and standards. This is particularly relevant when it comes to accessibility. Google search results are literally lists of web links, so this is absolutely doable. They don't do it because they are more preoccupied with extracting data about their users than they are about accessibility, and yes, this includes…
Yep. Following standards has great side-effects all around. The same things that break sites for the blind also break it for UX-enhancement extensions like Tridactyl, which lets you click elements from the keyboard, so long as sites don't go out of the way to make clickable buttons undiscoverable. (Extreme apologies for any implied equivalence between myself and the blind.)
It has solutions, like Google voicing out the contents, instead of doing a webpage that is so scrappable that screenreaders can parse it.