Curious About Lynx?
It's a fast, text-base alternative to Netscape and Internet Explorer.
By: The Essayist | 31December2000
 This is a screen capture of Lynx, running in the KDE environment under Linux. The page being viewed is here. [Use this link if you want to open another window, so you can compare.] Lynx runs under UNIX, Linux and VMS, and has been ported to Windows 95/98/NT and 2000. Since it only views text, it is extremely fast. Navigation is performed via the keyboard, which only takes a few minutes to learn. (Most navigation in graphical browsers can be done with the keyboard, if users take the time to learn the shortcuts.) If you are on the Web to find textual information (not pictures) Lynx may be a nice option to have, particularly if you have a slow Internet connection. The primary disadvantage of using a text-only browser is that not all web sites are designed correctly. Coders don't take the time to write their pages so that text only browsers (or graphical browsers with images turned off) can get around. For example, image buttons that are links work within Lynx, but if the image doesn't have an ALT tag to indicate where the button leads, the Lynx user is unlikely to follow the link. JavaScript and most other flashy programming gewgaws don't work either. (For example, it doesn't open new browser windows, just because some web designer doesn't want you to leave his/her site.) You may consider that to be an advantage. Scroll down farther to see what this page looks like using Lynx, with a slightly different schema than I used above. Resources: (Opens in a new browser window...unless you're using Lynx.)
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