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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

#121

Post by thegeekpirate »

dessant wrote: post #11

The redesigned version of Google Search that is being A/B tested no longer shows links. Despite being a developer, I'm anxious to click search results, especially because when results are filtered to be from the last day or week, they are full of phishing sites and pages with scraped content that immediately redirect to malware. This change can't possibly be beneficial to users. It makes people even more ignorant abo…

This happened to me after I had formatted (new PC), and since I had just started using Firefox as my main browser and did not see this change on Chrome, I believed that Firefox had been gimped by Google in this specific manner.

Needless to say, this was the straw that made me switch to DuckDuckGo instantly, and I've been happy with it, especially with the ability to use the Google bang (!g) in the infrequent case it's required.

This has taught me a valuable thing about A/B testing though—don't make an experiment any longer than it needs to be, and a refresh should bring them back to the old behaviour, just in case it's bad enough to make them switch completely.

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

#122

Post by globuous »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #23
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.

DDG results are so much worse for me, especially anything longer tail or in Spanish, that I switch to Google when I'm actually getting work done. I find myself adding "!g" to an important search just to check for any results that DDG doesn't know about and it's almost always an upgrade to see Google's results. Search is hard. I don't like to chime in to say something negative about an underdog like DDG, but I see thi…

Sure, but 90% of the time, I and most people I know don't do very sophisticated searches. I'm actually mostly using google as a billion dollar search engine for wikipedia / stackoverflow / arch wiki / bbc / nyt / ft / whatever big site there is in a given domain. Because these sites happen to have 90% of what i'm looking for. For the rest, we all have our own little forums we follow: fb, hn, email etc.

So instead of trying to beat google on full web searches, the trick might actually be to index all 100 best ranking websites according to some metric (alexa rank for instance) and do it better than google. Then, maybe you can grab over 50% of the search traffic. For broader queries (in the search knowledge graph sense), in this scenario, people would fallback to google.

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

#123

Post by dredmorbius »

leesalminen wrote: post #86
TeMPOraL wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peop…

In my experience (years of talking IRL with thousands of users of my B2B SaaS product), there exists a large cohort of users that don't want to improve their computer skills. They want the software to make things as absolutely "user friendly" as possible. As an example, I tried standardizing on across our product (hundreds of fields). Within 24 hours we logged >1,000 tickets with users saying they disliked the change…

Extending Web capability by building in features to HTML, such as calendar-based date-pickers (sometimes useful, often tedious), is one thing. Those standards can either be retrofited into a console-mode browser (it is possible to display a calendar in plain text, see e.g. cal(1)), or degrade gracefully to a text-based input field of, oh, take your pick, YYYY-MM-DD, YY-MM-DD, DD-MM-YYYY, MM-DD-YY, etc.

Better forms inputs could very well be useful, I agree.

The recent MSFT + GOOG snogfest announcing major improvements to HTML by ... improving form and input fields in their (GUI-only) browsers strikes me, in light of rather ominous icebergs looming on the HTML horizon, of rather gratuitious deckchair-rearanging. No matter how fine those arrangements might be.

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

#124

Post by dredmorbius »

catalogia wrote: post #118
jandrese wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone got really worked up over text appearing when they moused over an image, and broke accessibility because of it?

jwz has a... strong personality.

And several more in ready reserve!

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

#125

Post by AmericanChopper »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #114
AmericanChopper wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believing that you’re more qualified to have a user experience is pretty arrogant imo. Online communities like HN are always full of puritans who hate all sorts of stuff that ordinary users often like.

It's analogous to the "should you listen to parents or childless people on the topic of parenthood/children issues". Parents are strongly biased, but they also know much more about the issue. Or: when seeking driving advice, would you reject a priori the opinions of professional drivers, just because they're not representative of the general population? You would be justified in rejecting their views when considering…

It’s nothing like that at all. Those are opinions influenced by technical expertise and experience. User interfaces and design that people like is completely based on personal preferences and tastes. It’s more like the driving instructor telling the pupil that they are factually incorrect for liking Ford cars because of some technical inferiority the instructor believes they have over some other car.

Your technical insight doesn’t make your user experience any more or less valuable or important.

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

#126

Post by zamadatix »

exergy wrote: post #40
jedimastert wrote: post #29

> 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.

Perhaps you could contribute better by citing examples where Google does care about blind people instead of calling an actual blind person's argument ridiculous.

Perhaps we could contribute ourselves instead of asking if others can.

Google seems to be heavy users of https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/A... which offers a lot more power and flexibility towards accessibility compared to plain text by enabling accessibility to full featured web interfaces instead of basic versions.

See other methods https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/accessi...

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

#127

Post by dmos62 »

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.

I think there's a faulty premise in there somewhere. An architect or an engineer is not a candy salesman. A candy salesman really shouldn't have a say in what flavor, texture, sweetness, etc. is appropriate for any given client.

However, the way the poster you're replying to sees this issue is not as a candy salesman; but, as a public engineer. There's a problem, like "what should web be", "how should web work", which is akin to "how to build a railway over this valley", "how to minimally disturb the ecosystem", etc. That's not a realm of likes and dislikes, but of practicality.

One of the realities of today is that the average user is extremely distanced from the technicalities of Web, whether that's desirable or not. That puts a lot of burden on the informed and on the developers, which are often the same people. The few are obligated to make decisions for the many.

Do you deliver a box-shadow, but increase technical debt? Do you migrate to a more energy efficient platform, but alienate some users? Do you broaden the scope of your system, in turn increasing system complexity, or do you delegate to a dedicated third-party system, having the user possibly learn to use that third-party system?

It's a question of which compromise best serves the user. It shouldn't be a question of likes and dislikes. This is a complex situation rife with miscommunication, ignorance, conflict of interests, and inertia. Any simple solution, such as disregarding the opinions of developers, should be regarded with great suspicion.

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

#128

Post by thegeekpirate »

shpx wrote: post #108
dessant wrote: post #11

The redesigned version of Google Search that is being A/B tested no longer shows links. Despite being a developer, I'm anxious to click search results, especially because when results are filtered to be from the last day or week, they are full of phishing sites and pages with scraped content that immediately redirect to malware. This change can't possibly be beneficial to users. It makes people even more ignorant abo…

The URL is right there, above the search result title. Just the / has been replaced by a > and it's been made a more human readable. To the average person it's even more prominent now. I'm looking forward to this change. It will incentivise websites to make their URL paths more human readable because now their example.com > cgi > html > static > actually_human_readble_part.html noise is seen by everyone not just weir…

You should take another look at the image—there's no domain suffix, and they've also removed any arguments in the URL, both of which are _incredibly_ important.

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

#129

Post by pkaye »

dessant wrote: post #11

The redesigned version of Google Search that is being A/B tested no longer shows links. Despite being a developer, I'm anxious to click search results, especially because when results are filtered to be from the last day or week, they are full of phishing sites and pages with scraped content that immediately redirect to malware. This change can't possibly be beneficial to users. It makes people even more ignorant abo…

Is there a feedback button near the bottom? Maybe you can voice your concerns.
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