Screenshot of Lynx 2.8.4 rendering of client-side redirect

About the page from which the screenshot was made.

1. URI: http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/lynx.html

2. markup used to "force" redirect:

<META HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH"
CONTENT="25;URL=http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/weave.html">

in user agents that support automatic refreshing, this markup should result
in the loading of the referenced URL 25 seconds after the rendering of the
page is complete...  (i hope that HTML-aware email clients ignore the markup
embedded in this document!)

3. versions of Lynx tested:
3A) Lynx 2.8.4dev14 (3 November 2000)
3B) Lynx 2.6 (released in 1996)
[Note: Although i couldn't track down the exact release in which handling of
client-side redirection using the "http-equiv" attribute value "refresh" in
the manner described below was introduced, i know that this functionality
was available as far back as release 2.4.2]

4. how Lynx handles this markup

4A. since Lynx does not support client-side redirection using the
"http-equiv" attribute value "refresh", it appends the following user
agent-generated content to its rendering of the page's content (note that i
have used underscores to symbolize the begining and end of hyperlinked
text):

   REFRESH (25 sec): _http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/weave.html_

thus, Lynx informs the user: (a) that an automatic refresh has been defined
for the page currently being rendered; (b) the time interval set by the page
author; and (c) the URL to which the author intended to redirect the user
(agent)

as for why Lynx provides this information, 1) it does not support automatic
refreshing or redirection; 2) many, if not most, redirect pages contain very
little to no content, consisting only of a HEAD--in which the REFRESH is
defined--and an empty BODY; 3) in the case of CGI-scripted content changes,
the user can use the timing interval displayed by Lynx to orchestrate manual
refreshes of the content according to the user's preference (i.e., every N
seconds or whenever the user feels like it)

so, aside from alerting the user that the page is intended to automatically
REFRESH and the timing interval between refreshes (i.e., that it is set to
automatically REFRESH every N secondshas), Lynx's implementation also makes
it possible for the user to manually refresh, and, in the case of redirects,
provides the user with both the URL of the page to which the author intended
the user to be redirected, as well

finally, a note on the page from which the screen-shot is derived -- when i
changed the name of a document at Camera Obscura a couple of years ago, i
replaced the renamed file with this redirect page...  i set the time
interval to 25 seconds because that time interval was sufficient to allow
for the complete audiblization of the contents of the page when i slowed my
screen reader down to 75% of the rate at which i normally listen to the web,
and was the average time it took the 10 sighted individuals i asked to test
the page to read the contents (or enough of the contents) of the page to
know (a) that they were being redirected, (b) the new name of the page, and
(c) that they needed to update their bookmarks in order to avoid ever having
to see/hear/feel the redirect page again...

gregory.

Received on Thursday, 10 May 2001 14:19:33 UTC