Re: LYNX-DEV lynx on www.microsoft.com

[Drazen Kacar]

Laura Eaves wrote:
> > Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 01:28:07 +0200
> > From: Drazen Kacar <address@hidden>
> >...
> > I sometimes do the same thing for Lynx only. Some pages I wrote contained
> > links to ASCII animations, which were made invisible to graphical
> > browsers.
> 
> Out of curiosity, how do you make a link invisible to a graphical browser?
> Put up a null or blank picture I suppose...

Yes, usually it's one pixel transparent gif and text in ALT attribute.
It would be much better to generate somewhat different pages on-the-fly,
but that means big trouble with HTTP/1.0 proxies.

Links with ASCII animations should have been visible only if the browser sent
application/x-vt-animation in Accept header. That's not a problem on the
server side (since I usually configure my server with "vi *.c" :) and
it isn't a problem with Lynx either. Mailcap file should contain

   application/x-vt-animation; cat %s

If it isn't received, the page would contain normal content and instructions
for adding that line. I didn't do it that way because the page could not
be made cacheable and it was a major concern at the time.

So that little gif was used. Even if the graphical browser didn't support
transparency, single pixel is not very visible.

I know, the mailcap line should actually be something like

  application/x-vt-animation; cat %s; test=testvt100

where testvt100 is a program which tests if the terminal accepts VT100
escape sequences.

-- 
 .-.   .-.    Life is a sexually transmitted disease.
(_  \ /  _)
     |        address@hidden
     |        address@hidden
;
; To UNSUBSCRIBE:  Send a mail message to address@hidden
;                  with "unsubscribe lynx-dev" (without the
;                  quotation marks) on a line by itself.
;