"Bye bye mainstream, hello ghetto."
Yes, because your use of deprecated software is no longer supported is TOTALLY the same thing as being relocated into the Ghetto in Warsaw.
I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx
241–250 of 333 posts
Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the regular version, not the lite. Here's my URL after searching for "asdf": https://duckduckgo.com/lite/ In the search form, it uses POST instead of GET to perform the searches.
Even if the search form uses POST, the server does read the parameter if it's specified in the querystring. That is, https://duckduckgo.com/lite/?q=asdf works, so adding it as a search engine with URL .../?q=%s should work as well.
That's nice I guess. Still a shame the text input can't be used without forgoing the history.
Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see this like supporting DOS in 2019 or somesuch. There might be an esoteric reason to do so but when 99% of the userbase has left and the old thing can't support new technologies, saying that we need to support the old thing forever because a tiny subset of users still use it stops meaningful progress. If there weren't plenty of good, modern options I would be all for Links but there are, so I'm not. At some point…
> If there weren't plenty of good, modern options I would be all for Links but there are, so I'm not. What are the good, modern alternatives to Lynx?
Firefox and Chrome both have mature accessibility API implementations at this point. Edge is also at least okay. Internet Explorer has worked forever. You then couple those with a screen reader--most commonly Jaws or NVDA--and you get something that very much resembles Emacs or what have you: there's around 50 or 60 keystrokes I use on a regular basis. It's like a local client-server model (indeed documentation on this topic uses those terms). You couple something implementing the server with a client, i.e. a screen reader, a one-switch controller, speech recognition, what have you, and those consume exposed semantic information. Browsers then map web pages to the platform's accessibility model for consumption.
NVDA offers scriptability for the web and otherwise in Python as well, so anything it can't do can probably be added. For instance there's an add-on for using your local screen reader to control a remote machine, provided that both run it (not the most applicable to accessibility, but a good example of how far you can take NVDA's scripting). Jaws also does much of this but is much more proprietary including an only half documented scripting language.
The quickest way to get some idea is to probably look at the NVDA user guide: https://www.nvaccess.org/files/nvda/documentation/userGuide....
iOS is also good. unfortunately Apple very much dropped the ball on OS X and hasn't picked it up again, but my brother (also blind, it's genetic) did an entire business degree on an iPhone because he didn't want to be bothered learning a laptop. That's a loss in efficiency, but even the lesser options are now sufficient enough that a non-programmer can pick them up and go get a college degree.
There is an idea that goes something like "Obviously screen readers have to struggle to present information, therefore dedicated text-based browsers are better". That was true in 1995 when we didn't even have MSAA. I know people from that era and they had to hook APIs in other processes at runtime. But in actuality, once you expose the accessibility tree and hand it over to the people who want to use it, good things happen.
Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
DDG has been getting better. I've switched my browsers search to it and only occasionally go back to Google for something specific.
DDG's results are very bad still, and they will likely always be terrible. It's not hard to find a query that is objectively much worse than what Google has. DuckDuckGo will never be able to catch up to Google's search quality results. It doesn't have Google's data, Google relies on the search behavior of most of the people of the internet to guide its results along with its vast human and hardware resources to creat…
Googles results are getting steadily shittier, so they're a bad benchmark to beat.
The behavior based searching is crap which has been usurped by people seeking profits. Optimizing the dopamine feed of users and ad impressions of publishers isn't a good thing or something to aspire to.
Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx
#245There 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/
How would I get into such accessibility circles?
A good starting point:
Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx
#246Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx
#247This appears to have been fixed since the posting. Links in the search results work again in lynx.
Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps I spoke a little too broadly. What I meant is that the bulk of blind users don't use lynx. This particular one appears to -- sometimes? -- but this usage is not typical.
...in your circle
But Google has the access logs to their own website to know how frequent use of any particular browser is, regardless of circles.
Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx
#249Solution: Use alternative HTML parser
lynx -tagsoup https://www.google.com/search?q=whatever
Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx
#250Earlier 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…
This sounds like the kind of argument that would have said that the algorithm for rounded rectangles in the Mac OS toolbox was superfluous fluff.
The world is bigger and more interesting than screens and screens of uninterrupted plaintext.