lynx-dev problem installing 2.8

[root]

Hi -
Admittedly I'm not the world's best at using Linux, but I have
some experience.  I presently have Linux-2.0.33, lynx-2.5 and
nucurses 1.9.9e.

I downloaded lynx2-8, created a directory to extract it, looked
at the README and INSTALLATION, and typed:  ./configure

I saw a message that I should get a later version of ncurses,
so I stopped working with lynx and downloaded ncurses-4.2.
I extracted it, did make, and ran the tests.  When they were
successful, I did make install.  The README said it would take
care of getting rid of the old ncurses files.

I went back to lynx, and did make clean.  I redid ./configure,
and got the same messages about my old version of ncurses.  
I have no idea what to do about that.  Seems that I took care
of it.  sigh.  
Anyway, I continued and typed make.  Some time later, the 
compilations stopped with a screen full of messages about 
unresolved references to scrollok, so I started over.  no luck.
I downloaded the file again, and found the old one and new one
were the same size, (I was hoping the original was corrupted...)
so I did it all again with the new download.  Same thing.  damn.

Is this a simple thing where you can snap your fingers and
say,  "no problem!  just do this....  "   

Waiting with my breath held.

        -roy-