LYNX-DEV Whose fault? (www.washingtonpost.com search problems)

[Jason F. McBrayer]

I have been having trouble accessing news articles brought up with the
search page on www.washingtonpost.com, or rather, my wife has.  She's
using Lynx 2.6 on a Unix system of some sort (a free-net), but I've
reproduced the problem on Lynx 2.7.1 on OS/2.

The form causing the problem (and I apologize for the long lines) is
at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/searches/mainsrch.htm.  The
problem is that the URL returned (e.g.
http://search.washingtonpost.com/cgi-bin/../../wp-srv/WPlate/1997-07/14/051L-071497-idx.html)
is not correct, and returns a 404 (not found) error.  In Lynx 2.7.1 I
can edit this URL ('G') to remove the section from cgi-bin to before
wp-srv (that is, yeilding a URL like
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1997-07/14/051L-071497-idx.html)
to actually get the article.  This, of course, is impossible in Lynx
2.6, and the best I can do is go to the information page and manually
enter the correct URL.

My gut feeling is that this is due to something horribly wrong with
the Washington Post's search mechanism, and not due to something in
Lynx, despite the fact that it works in Netscape and Opera.  I wanted
to make sure that it's the Post's fault before I write them a polite
e-mail informing them of the fact that their search engine is
non-functional.


-- 
--------------------------------------------------------+
Jason F. McBrayer       address@hidden |
Cosmic indifference sure is a drag. -- Akbar (or Jeff)  |

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