From: Chad Perrin <perrin@...>
Date: 2007-07-06T03:33:15+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] flatulent-0.0.1 ascii captcha for the masses

On Thu, Jul 05, 2007 at 11:02:21PM +0900, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> Chad Perrin wrote:
> > 
> > I'd be worried about the JavaScript and CSS requirements.  In fact, I
> > won't use a system for validating humanity that doesn't work in Lynx,
> > unless some other necessary functionality of the website absolutely
> > cannot work in Lynx (such as Flash animations).  Even then, I'd probably
> > avoid something that won't work in Lynx, since (for example) a Lynx user
> > could navigate to YouTube and do a search to find a particular video,
> > then use youtube-dl to download it to the computer and play it using
> > MPlayer.  No in-browser support for Flash video needed.  YouTube can be a
> > useful website for a Lynx user -- so mine should be, too, since I don't
> > even provide Flash videos as the main content of any of my websites.
> 
> I was once a proud member of the "This Web Site Best Viewed With Lynx"
> club. Ah, the good old days, when a dollar was worth a dime, Netscape
> was more popular than Internet Explorer and nobody's cat had a web page.
> ;). I learned HTML by editing that web page by hand and generating code
> with Perl 4 on an HP100 Pocket PC.

I don't think any website I've put together in the last six or seven
years is *best* viewed in Lynx, but they degrade gracefully enough so a
Lynx user can still get at the content without too much trouble,
generally.  I use CSS pretty exclusively for styling these days, and
sometimes use JavaScript too, but I don't use either for core site
functionality without an alternative means of getting at content (like
the way Google Maps has a static version in case your browser can't
handle AJAX).

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
McCloctnick the Lucid: "The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your
time waving your hands and hopping when a rock or a club will do."