Trying out Lynx; pages difficult to read

[Alpheus Madsen]

Dear Lynx Development Group,

I was trying Lynx today to see if it could be a practical alternative to
Firefox. I tried going to "www.google.com"...but I found the page
difficult to navigate, and the page difficult to read.

This has caused me to wonder: would it be possible to fix these problems?
With regards to the "difficulty to read" problem, I think it's because a
lot of Google's formatting, as simple and stark as it is, is lost, making
it difficult to see where one search result ends and the other begins.
This makes me wonder if having a "Render HTML as ReStructuredText" or
ASCII-Doc, or even a variant of Markdown, would be highly useful.
Apparently there's a GPL project called "Pandoc" (
http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/) that would be able to handle this, or at
least, serve as an example of how it could be done.

My second issue--navigability--is probably a greater challenge. Tabbing
from link to link is rather painful, especially even when even a page as
simple as Google's now has a lot of links! And it doesn't help that SSH
and PuTTY don't always play nice with the mouse. One idea that came to
mind would be to divide the screen into 10x10 character squares; then arrow
keys can go from square to square, and shift+arrow_key could navigate
within the square.

I hope you will find these ideas at least somewhat useful. In any case,
even if Lynx is somewhat difficult for me to use, I'm glad it's available
if the time comes when I need to use it!

Sincerely,
Alpheus Madsen.

[fa-ml]

Post by Alpheus Madsen
I was trying Lynx today to see if it could be a practical alternative to
Firefox. I tried going to "www.google.com"...but I found the page
difficult to navigate, and the page difficult to read.

It's a bit messy indeed. Have you tried duckduckgo.com ? It is friendlier
with Lynx/text based browsers.
If you were find a workaround for even messier sites (e.g. online newspapers),
let us know!

Post by Alpheus Madsen
My second issue--navigability--is probably a greater challenge. Tabbing
from link to link is rather painful, especially even when even a page as
simple as Google's now has a lot of links!

Try checking setting keypad_mode to:

keypad_mode=LINKS_AND_FIELDS_ARE_NUMBERED

in lynxrc. It allows you to select links by number (i.e. 132<enter> to follow
the hyper-link or 123g<enter> to just move the cursor on it without following).
This helped my browsing experience with Lynx a lot; I liked it so much I
downloaded a Firefox extension to have a similar feature in my graphical
www-browser.

-F

[Thorsten Glaser]

Post by fa-ml
It's a bit messy indeed. Have you tried duckduckgo.com ? It is friendlier

+1

Post by fa-ml
keypad_mode=LINKS_AND_FIELDS_ARE_NUMBERED

+1

Also remember:

Scroll two lines with Insert and Delete.
Scroll half a page with ( and ).
Scroll a full page with space and b.

This also skips over links rather efficiently. And cursor keys
are often easier than Tab.

bye,
//mirabilos

[Stefan Caunter]

On Sat, Feb 1, 2014 at 10:59 AM, Alpheus Madsen

Post by Alpheus Madsen
Dear Lynx Development Group,
I was trying Lynx today to see if it could be a practical alternative to
Firefox. I tried going to "www.google.com"...but I found the page difficult
to navigate, and the page difficult to read.
This has caused me to wonder: would it be possible to fix these problems?

There are a number of ways to customize lynx so you get a result you like.
Use the options page. Type the letter 'o'. Adjust and save.
Edit /usr/local/etc/lynx.cfg if you have permission.
Use command line options; type 'man lynx' to see them.

Post by Alpheus Madsen
With regards to the "difficulty to read" problem, I think it's because a lot
of Google's formatting, as simple and stark as it is, is lost, making it
difficult to see where one search result ends and the other begins. This
makes me wonder if having a "Render HTML as ReStructuredText" or ASCII-Doc,
or even a variant of Markdown, would be highly useful. Apparently there's a
GPL project called "Pandoc" (http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/) that would
be able to handle this, or at least, serve as an example of how it could be
done.

Learn how to use the lynx browser on your system. You can make it
extremely readable and fast, if you take the time.

Post by Alpheus Madsen
My second issue--navigability--is probably a greater challenge. Tabbing
from link to link is rather painful, especially even when even a page as
simple as Google's now has a lot of links!

If you are used to vi or emacs, turn those key bindings on, and enable
text field activation.

And it doesn't help that SSH and

Post by Alpheus Madsen
PuTTY don't always play nice with the mouse. One idea that came to mind
would be to divide the screen into 10x10 character squares; then arrow keys
can go from square to square, and shift+arrow_key could navigate within the
square.

I understand lynx works with a mouse, (I do this on win32), but again,
it probably requires customization.

Post by Alpheus Madsen
I hope you will find these ideas at least somewhat useful. In any case,
even if Lynx is somewhat difficult for me to use, I'm glad it's available if
the time comes when I need to use it!

Perfectly reasonable and understandable (sounds like a new car driver
asking for spherical wheels and a z-axis of movement) ;)

Post by Alpheus Madsen
Sincerely,
Alpheus Madsen.
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