Non-PPP access/text-only browsing was Re: [thelist] (no subject)

[Ben Henick]

On Wed, 9 Jan 2002, John Eckman wrote:

> At 03:44 PM 1/9/2002, "Syed Zeeshan Haider" <zeeshan_paki at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >Can somebody tell me the names of two or three most popular Text-Only Web
> >Brower, which can run in Windows environment?

I personally am not aware of a text-only browser that is designed for the
PC platform and is still current, but I could be wrong.  KU was developing
a 16-bit version of lynx at one point, but I never was able to figure out
what became of that effort.

> One which is often forgotten is Lynx, running on Unix environments via a
> telnet session or other shell login.

I still use it from time to time - when my connection goes to hell, for
the most part.

The added bonus is that in this environment lynx might as well be
cross-platform, because just about every non-unix-based platform has at
least one flavor of VT100 emulation available (I can think of three right
off the top of my head for Windoze, and two for the Mac).  VT100 emulation
is bundled with 32 bit Windows systems; just type 'telnet hostname' in the
Run dialog and your machine will make a connection via VT100 emulation on
port 23 to the hostname supplied.

Of course, you have to have a user & pass to make use of such things.

Also, I should mention that lynx makes a great testing platform for
evaluating the user experience of visitors who disable {javascript|css|
images} though of course there's no subsitute for a client-by-client test.

> Some universities/community colleges/public secondary schools/community
> non-profits/etc still dialup in a non-ppp way or for some other reason
> cannot use web browsers directly, and instead use Lynx in a VT100 window or
> the equivalent. Think of the folks who use Pine as an email client -- many
> do so for the same reasons.

Well, this is one person who uses PINE for security reasons, and for
simple convenience... this allows me to:
  1.  Read my messages without having to download my entire queue at once
  2.  Stand fearless in the face of (most) viruses
  3.  Manipulate headers as needed
  4.  Get almost-realtime notification of messages received, if I'm in my
      mail client at the time

The downsides are:
  1.  Following Web links can be... difficult
  2.  You can't connect-download-disconnect-read-reconnect-reply, you
      need to stay connected the whole time.

But since I consider both of those liabilities to be assets, I'm a happy
camper.


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> John
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-- 
Ben Henick
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persist1 at io.com                  bmh at digital-web.com
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