Re: lynx-dev Lynx suggestion

[Klaus Weide]

On Sat, 6 Feb 1999, The Vrana Family wrote:

> I'm an avid Lynx user, using 2.7 on my ISP all the time, as well as the PC
> version of 2.8.  Thanks so much for a great program.
> 
> I have a suggestion for a feature that would really help me out.  I enter
> some contests which require you to enter from an image map on a particular
> page.  Lynx can only generate a 0,0 coordinate when you "click" on an image
> map.  How about enabling a keyboard command that would let you enter any
> coordinate the user wanted.  For example, you'd type C (I know that command
> is already taken) and lynx would then ask what coordinate to send (rather
> than the default).  Ideally, it would tell you what the image size of the
> map is, so that you know the largest allowed coordinates.  A typical
> example is the contest at www.treeloot.com/game/moneytree.html.

You can do something like you want by selecting the ISMAP link, then use 'E'
(ELGOTO, which may not be available in 2.7) to append the "?x,y" you want
manually.  However, Lynx will then not send a referer header, since it
never does that for user-entered URLs.

> If this is not possible for some technical reason, how about the following
> alternative.  Some maps when you click on them, expand into a menu (not the
> one at treeloot, though).  You can then move to the link you want and press
> enter.  However, if the site requires the "click" to come from the prior
> page, it won't accept it properly.  It thinks (rightly so) that you're
> coming from an invalid page - the temporary page with the image map.  I
> suspect it's looking for the document.referrer to be the correct page. 
> Could lynx be modified to give the site the document.referrer of the
> original page, rather than the locally rendered map?  A typical example is
> at www.successmarketplace.com/shops/benchmark, when you click on the Free
> Vacation banner.  (This one will work, but if you then enter another one at
> www.successmarketplace.com/shops/nmc, it's supposed to also work because
> it's a different site, but it isn't accepted, since it thinks you came from
> the same page again - and you did come from the same page, the locally
> rendered map.  This is not a cache issue - same thing happens if you quit
> lynx and start over.)

First, did you try 'x' to force getting a new copy?

You seem to be talking only about server-side (ISMAP) image maps, not
client-side (USEMAP) ones.  In that case, What you call the temporary
page is really what the server has sent, not something constructed by
Lynx.  It would be wrong to send the wrong Referer header, Lynx does
what it is supposed to do as far as I know.  It's the server that
provides the text fallback listing, If it then does not really deal
with the expected client behavior in that situation, that is the service's
fault.

That successmarketplace thing also uses a cookie, maybe there is some
dependence there.

Actually, you can skip the text listing as described above with 'E' (choose
x,y different from 0,0), but I don't know whether that gets you much further.
I regard services that rely on Referer for navigation as pretty much
broken anyway.

I imagine that the cernrules file mechanism from the latest devel code can
be used in some way to effectively redirect to the URL you want while
still having a Referer header - you may want to play with that.

   Klaus