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I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx

blind.guru

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Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx

#51

Post by normalnorm »

alexis_fr wrote: post #50
SilasX wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Blind enablement also allows easier webscraping , which is what I think Google is more worried about. It has solutions, like Google voicing out the contents, instead of doing a webpage that is so scrappable that screenreaders can parse it.

> It has solutions, like Google voicing out the contents, instead of doing a webpage that is so scrappable that screenreaders can parse it.

The real solution is to find a business model, or a way to organize society, that does not depend on us building nonsensical prisons or restrictions for each other. It's almost as if surveillance capitalism is not the final answer...

Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx

#52

Post by TeMPOraL »

blauditore wrote: post #38
TeMPOraL wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I am serious. Yes, it's true it's easier than ever to create sophisticated websites. But it's also true that almost all this sophistication delivers negative value to users - it distracts them, slows them down, and forces them to keep buying faster hardware. It doesn't have to be like this - but it currently is. It's not even just a problem of explicit business incentives - the technical side of the industry has been compromised. The "best practices" in web development and user experience all deoptimize end-user ergonomy and productivity.

Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx

#54

Post by AdamJacobMuller »

inciampati wrote: post #4

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.

> Another person notes that ddg is inferior

I'll agree with this too. Thing is, 99.XX% of the time DDG works fine. 1% of the time if I can't find a thing, I try with google and probably 50% of the time I can then find what I wanted. E.g. DDG has a 99.5% success rate, Google has a 99.75% success rate. Not too bad by DDG, as I know that last .25% is REALLY hard.

Either way, google is seeing only a tiny % of my search queries, so I'm happy.

Of note, I switched to DDG earlier this year. I've tried to do it in the past and found that the DDG/Google ratios were like 80%/99+% in the past, which is WAY too much of a tradeoff to make. DDG has MASSIVELY improved, I'm using google search <1/day now.

Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx

#55

Post by TeMPOraL »

javajosh wrote: post #32
TeMPOraL wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Modern web has very little to do with providing value to the end-user I disagree strongly with this. The web has moved a lot in the direction of developer experience (ES6, modules) and new capabilities (WebSockets, WebRTC, WebAudio, SVG, canvas...). Yes, most of this happened because it's a side-effect of big surveillance capitalism companies wanting make that sweet sweet digital pollen to be even sweeter, but that…

The capabilities are there. The dev experience is there (somewhat; JS ecosystem is a mess, but I guess that's just a side effect of moving very fast). But the capabilities are not used for end-user benefit. Not much, anyway. Yes, I benefit from Netflix, I benefit from Google products (not as much as I would if they didn't keep on worsening the UX every few months) - and such functionality requires some of the new capabilities. But 99% of other sites I visit don't use these capabilities for anything good. A pizza ordering site shouldn't need a React frontend. An e-commerce store shouldn't use WebSockets. Every other site out there should not ask me to enable notifications. But they all do. I blame a mix of CV-driven development, designers showing off, "data-driven" bandwagon, and surveillance capitalism.

Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx

#56

Post by ppod »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #52
blauditore wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I am serious. Yes, it's true it's easier than ever to create sophisticated websites. But it's also true that almost all this sophistication delivers negative value to users - it distracts them, slows them down, and forces them to keep buying faster hardware. It doesn't have to be like this - but it currently is . It's not even just a problem of explicit business incentives - the technical side of the industry has bee…

The mistake you are making is that you are trying to answer the question of what the average user wants by looking at what you want. Developers are not representative of users.

Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx

#57

Post by caleb-allen »

superkuh wrote: post #35
jrockway wrote: post #7

I feel like many of the text-mode browsers have failed to keep up with changing web standards. We were all mad when IE was holding back the Internet, and I'm not sure we should give lynx and w3m a pass because they're geek tools. (Accessibility is an important concern, but web browsers running under a GUI system support screen readers.) https://www.brow.sh/ is a console-based browser that claims to support modern sta…

> brow.sh Does headless Firefox (what brow.sh is at it's core) even launch if there's no X11 available? Is it that headless?

I've played with it and it works over a headless server instance through an ssh session, so I think it does not require X11

Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx

#58

Post by Arnavion »

superkuh wrote: post #35
jrockway wrote: post #7

I feel like many of the text-mode browsers have failed to keep up with changing web standards. We were all mad when IE was holding back the Internet, and I'm not sure we should give lynx and w3m a pass because they're geek tools. (Accessibility is an important concern, but web browsers running under a GUI system support screen readers.) https://www.brow.sh/ is a console-based browser that claims to support modern sta…

> brow.sh Does headless Firefox (what brow.sh is at it's core) even launch if there's no X11 available? Is it that headless?

I haven't used it, but it works in a Docker container without any device mounting or access to the host X server, so I'd assume that it does indeed work without any X available.

Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx

#59

Post by dotancohen »

ppod wrote: post #56
TeMPOraL wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am serious. Yes, it's true it's easier than ever to create sophisticated websites. But it's also true that almost all this sophistication delivers negative value to users - it distracts them, slows them down, and forces them to keep buying faster hardware. It doesn't have to be like this - but it currently is . It's not even just a problem of explicit business incentives - the technical side of the industry has bee…

The mistake you are making is that you are trying to answer the question of what the average user wants by looking at what you want. Developers are not representative of users.

A faster horse.

People value privacy when made aware of the issue, but very few people are aware of how websites track (and manipulate) them.

Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx

#60

Post by TeMPOraL »

ppod wrote: post #56
TeMPOraL wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am serious. Yes, it's true it's easier than ever to create sophisticated websites. But it's also true that almost all this sophistication delivers negative value to users - it distracts them, slows them down, and forces them to keep buying faster hardware. It doesn't have to be like this - but it currently is . It's not even just a problem of explicit business incentives - the technical side of the industry has bee…

The mistake you are making is that you are trying to answer the question of what the average user wants by looking at what you want. Developers are not representative of users.

That's a cop-out. Being a developer and a long-time computer user biases me, but also gives me a more informed perspective on what's productive and ergonomic, and what's distracting and annoying. I can name the issues I see, instead of writing off the frustration as "this computer must have viruses" or "this is just how things have to be".

Bloat because of inefficient design isn't delivering any value to regular people that a developer is oblivious to. It's just bad engineering. Similarly for distractions, abandoning all UI features provided by default for the sake of making a control have rounded corners, setting the proficiency ceiling so low that no user can improve their skill in using a product over time, etc.

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