On Wed, 01 Mar 2000 12:58:58 -0600, Martin McCormick wrote:
> What is the advantage of using lynx under Windows? I am not
>asking this in an argumentative mode, just curious. As a computer
>user who is also blind, I like lynx because it works with other
>text-based technology and does not require the expensive and buggy
>access software required to make Windows kind of talk. Since Netscape
>Navigator and INternet Explorer are there and badly-built sites will
>usually appear to work with one or the other of these browsers, what
>advantage is gained by using lynx? I believe that one can turn off
>graphics in Netscape and IE which should make them kind of like lynx.
>
> Again, I am just curious because I have seen several messages
>on this list from people who are using lynx under various vintages of
>Windows.
>
Until we had MSAA access to Internet Explorer 5 using Artic,
Window-Eyes, Windows Bridge or JFW, MS IE and Netscape were rather
clunky, even with the graphics turned off. Even with IE 5 working as
well as it does, Lynx can bring up a 50K or 100K page perhaps 50 times
faster than Window-Eyes can. W E version 4 is supposed to fix that,
but at the moment, my 55K Lynx bookmarks takes over 10 seconds for
Window-Eyes to parse. The IE-screen reader combinations really Lynxify
a web page, although some details such as Javascript handling are
different.
I use Lynx with Vocal-Eyes in a DOS box, both at work and at home. I
think one could run Lynx with no Windows screen reader on the system,
but only a DOS screen reader. There are times when Lynx renders a page
in a more understandable manner, and other times when IE and
Window-Eyes does better. But only a year ago I would have said that
Lynx was the clearly superior browser for a blind user of Windows 95.
I like the flexibility of sharing bookmark files between Lynx and other
browsers on the same PC. Lynx does a better "print to file" than IE
does; on some frames pages, IE's Save to file option produces a single
line of output with none of the frame's content. Lynx forces you to
understand a little more of the technicalities of the WWW. Its status
line messages are still better than those of the competition. It's
definitely worth having on your system.
73, W3IUU
Lloyd Rasmussen, Kensington, Maryland
home: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <http://lras.home.sprynet.com/>
Work: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <http://www.loc.gov/nls/>
