Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx

blind.guru

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 333 posts

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

#131

Post by rdiddly »

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.

Many "average" users don't know what they want, don't even realize the options that are available to choose from (i.e. the different ways an app can be built), and/or will accept whatever is offered.

Though it wasn't patently insulting, you have gone ad hominem - "to the man" - rather than the idea. Whether one is a developer or not, doesn't have any bearing on whether economy and efficiency are worthwhile values in a computer application. Although it so happens that developers tend to also be users. If they ARE users, then they represent users. Also in the sense of acting as an advocate of sorts for the user, developers represent users.

"Average" users having never been offered the thing being proposed here (faster and ad-free versions of the same apps, with the same network effects etc.), I don't see how you can state with any confidence that they wouldn't have chosen them, were they available.

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

#132

Post by Avery3R »

patmcguire wrote: post #120

Did they also remove link wrapping with this? The HREF goes straight to the destination for me now on Chrome, where previously it went to some Google domain redirect. It's there on the first HTML load too, it's not a JS thing after the fact. Is there a different response for Lynx or are they formatting it in such a way that Lynx doesn't pick it up?

They're using the ping property of the element now, the only good thing to come out of this

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

#133

Post by TeMPOraL »

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…

You're conflating a couple of things here. It's true that users don't like change - and for good reason; messing with UI invalidates their acquired experience, and even if you know you've changed only one small thing, they don't know that. It quite naturally stresses people out.

Two, I'll grant you that you sometimes have to use a custom control, because web moves forward faster than browsers, and so you can't count on a browser-level or OS-level calendar widget being available. But then the issue is, how do you do it. Can the user type in the date directly into your custom field? Is the calendar widget operable by keyboard? Such functionality doesn't interfere with first-time use, but is important to enable users to develop mastery.

A lot of my dissatisfaction with modern UI/UX trends comes from that last point: very low ceiling for mastery. Power users aren't born, they're made. And they aren't made in school, but through repeated use that makes them seek out ways to alleviate their frustrations. A lot of software is being used hours a day, day in, day out by people in offices. Users of such software will be naturally driven towards improving efficiency of their work (if only to have more time to burn watching cat photos). If an application doesn't provide for such improvements, it wastes the time of everyone who's forced to interact with it regularly.

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

#134

Post by jordigh »

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…

> I feel like many of the text-mode browsers have failed to keep up with changing web standards

Yeah, web standards such as images and video and audio. Not keeping up with those standards is kind of the point.

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

#135

Post by thegeekpirate »

nope96 wrote: post #87
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…

Speaking of recent Google changes - Has anyone else noticed Google has removed the 'sign out' link? Before, you could click the upper right corner icon and "sign out", but that is now gone and I cannot find any way to sign out of Google, anywhere!

When I click on my profile icon at the top-right, I have a sign out button at the bottom of the menu (well, technically it's "Sign out of all accounts" since I'm logged into multiple), fwiw.

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

#136

Post by duskwuff »

jordigh wrote: post #134
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…

> I feel like many of the text-mode browsers have failed to keep up with changing web standards Yeah, web standards such as images and video and audio. Not keeping up with those standards is kind of the point.

How about tables, or frames? Lynx doesn't even support those.

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

#138

Post by Pete_D »

dredmorbius wrote: post #115
earenndil wrote: post #53

Try googler https://github.com/jarun/googler

A fundamental principle of the Web is that site-specific clients or apps shouldn't be necessary. That they are only underscores Google's massive blunder here. Yes, there've been CLI wrappers around web queries before. Until the past few years, these simply addressed search format, URI arguments, and namespace. They launched in the user's choice of browser, text or graphical. Surfraw is the classic, I've written a few…

> A fundamental principle of the Web is that site-specific clients or apps shouldn't be necessary.

I think this ship, if it hasn't sailed already, is at least starting its engines and getting ready to leave the harbour.

User agents and servers are increasingly trending towards an adversarial relationship, where the user doesn't want to do much of what the server is asking of it. This has been true from the first pop-up blockers, through to modern adblocking and anti-tracking measures (the situation now being so bad that tracking protection is a built-in default feature in some browsers).

Eventually, a "filter out the crap" strategy becomes too onerous, an "extract what looks good" strategy starts to look better, and you end up with tools like Reader Mode. Custom clients are a natural next step - when someone gets desperate enough to write an article-dl to match youtube-dl, we'll be there.

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

#139

Post by dmos62 »

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…

> Creating sophisticated web pages is massively easier than 10 or 20 years ago.

Well if talking progress, we can also compare, say, energy efficiency of information transmission, or the number of well maintained Web clients. That doesn't look so good, does it? The question is what problem are we solving, or, in your words, what is "sophistication"? According to some measures we did achieve impressive things. But a lot of us experience heartache, because we think we didn't do all that well.

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

#140

Post by duskwuff »

dredmorbius wrote: post #112

There used to be a saying in a11y circles, "Google is a blind user".[1] Now Google are manifestly anti-blind-user. Shouldn't be anything a major ADA lawsuit couldn't fix. Meantime, DDG is actually pretty damned good. For console users: https://duckduckgo.com/lite ________________________________ Notes: 1. https://www.w3.org/2006/Talks/06-08-steven-web40/

Blind users do not, as a rule, use Lynx. This is a common misconception. The Lynx interface is, in fact, very poorly suited for visually impaired users, as it relies heavily on visual layout, color, and cursor positioning to convey information.

The majority of blind users use standard desktop web browsers with screen reader addons like JAWS or VoiceOver.

Post reply on HN