Re[2]: Accessibility

     I know everyone's experiences may vary, but I was completely surprised 
     a few months ago by our stats.  Lynx ranked up there somewhere in the 
     top ten browser types, way over the numbers below.  I still use it 
     from time to time, especially over telnet when I can't be bothered to 
     start up a heavy GUI.  I also like to validate with it since it covers 
     both text-based browsers AND the many people who browse with images 
     off.
     
     Just as GUI browsers serve us, Lynx has been serving non-GUI's for a 
     long time, and IMHO doing a helluva job.
     
     I don't want to start any wars or "I see.0005%""No I get %10", what's 
     the point?Lynx does its job very well.  It needs to try to catch up 
     somewhat in certain areas but I think they are rather challenging 
     ones.  We are talking about implementing graphical organizational 
     devices in an extremely limited environment.
     
     I also see Lynx as providing us with a rather solid foothold in HTML's 
     portability.  Keeps us from using AVI's as links and reminds us to use 
     ALT when we do :)  By keeping a path for Lynx users, we help keep the 
     path open to those with disabilities as well as automated processes.
     
     with that in mind, Lynx will never be obsolete, and yes, I do play 
     with Linux withOUT xwindows :P
     let's not lump all browsers together and start tossing some variations 
     away.  Lynx will always have one feature that Netscape and IE will 
     NEVER have, it will work through a telnet or shell!  If you're then 
     going to tell me that those are obsolete, well....
     
     -Adrian






On Tue, 2 Jul 1996, Ka-Ping Yee wrote:
     
> Chris Serflek wrote:
> > 
> > You are correct.  We do have many keyboard shortcuts, but saying "first" 
> > is ignoring early browsers like Lynx.
> 
> Careful.  Lynx is not "early" in the sense of "ancient";
> it is currently used in many, many places, and development 
> continues.
     
Don't fool yourself. Lynx has been losing market share ever since Mosaic 
came out. My numbers currently put it at around one percent of the market 
- and still falling. This is *after* correcting for the bias of graphics 
on hit counts - before the correction lynx is down to one-sixth of a 
percent. For the record - NCSA Mosaic is doing even worse - it is down to 
a mere one-half of a percentage point even though it does support 
graphics. I suspect that outside the .edu domain it is much lower than 
even that (you can see a bias in the .edu domain towards NCSA servers too 
- com domains use Apache at nearly the 39% level while edu domains use it 
at a mere 12%). I would make a heavy bet that outside of the edu domains 
lynx is below one tenth of one percent. I'll collect some numbers to 
verify that. 
     
What lynx needs more than *anything* else right now is table support - 
because many people have ceased to even consider how a non-table browser 
will render something. As long as the concensus of lynx-dev is represented 
by <URL:http://lynx.cc.ukans.edu/lynx-dev/9601/0193.html>, lynx will 
remain below the minumum feature level for me to even worry about. Even 
_AOL_ supports tables now. 
     
Without tables - lynx *is* obsolete (which is what I think you actually 
meant when you said 'ancient'). 
     
-- 
Benjamin Franz

Received on Tuesday, 2 July 1996 18:27:41 UTC