lynx-dev Bad HTML on hotbot site (Was: bug in lynx)

[Doug Kaufman]

On Sat, 12 Sep 1998, Stephen Lloyd wrote:

> ok guys, here's how to reproduce the bug.
> go to http://www.hotbot.com
> you'll be prompted as to wether you want to accept a cooky.  press a 
> to always accept.  then you'll be prompted to accept another cooky. 
> hit the a key once again.
> then you'll be presented with a menu of search options.
> change your search so that you can search for the exact phrase
> then enter lewis collins and submit the form.
> once the search is complete, try to click on the next 10 references 
> button.
> you can't. it says no form action defined.
> can anybody tell me why this error occurs and why does it occur with 
> the name lewis collins?

Lynx returns "Bad HTML", which generally means that they really have
incorrect html on the site, so that the form action is not defined.
I took a quick look at the source and didn't see the problem, but I
am not a html specialist. This is, however, a problem which is caused
by the site looking at the useragent string and returning a page for
"lynx" which is inappropriate. If you change the useragent string to
"Mozilla/4.02", for example, then hotbot returns a different page
which is quite usable by lynx. Lycos had also returned unusable pages
to lynx, but worked if the useragent was spoofed. This is clearly a
problem with the hotbot site.

I am forwarding this problem to lynx-dev, where someone can probably
determine what the exact problem is. Maybe we can then get hotbot to
fix their website.
                               Doug
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Doug Kaufman
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