From Newsgroup: comp.lang.forth

zbigniew2011@gmail.com (LIT) writes:

What about bank account? Can you operate it with JS disabled?

Certainly, and I do that. I don't do any banking through the Web,
however.

- anton
--
M. Anton Ertl http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html
comp.lang.forth FAQs: http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/faq/toc.html
New standard: https://forth-standard.org/
EuroForth 2023 proceedings: http://www.euroforth.org/ef23/papers/
EuroForth 2024 proceedings: http://www.euroforth.org/ef24/papers/
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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.forth

In article <2025Jun9.082717@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at>,
Anton Ertl <anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:

zbigniew2011@gmail.com (LIT) writes:

What about bank account? Can you operate it with JS disabled?

Certainly, and I do that. I don't do any banking through the Web,
however.

I would like to too. How do you do that?

- anton

Groetjes Albert
--
Temu exploits Christians: (Disclaimer, only 10 apostles)
Last Supper Acrylic Suncatcher - 15Cm Round Stained Glass- Style Wall
Art For Home, Office And Garden Decor - Perfect For Windows, Bars,
And Gifts For Friends Family And Colleagues.
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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.forth

On Sat, 7 Jun 2025 12:47:01 -0000 (UTC)
anthk <anthk@openbsd.home> wrote:

I forgot, gutenberg has a gopher client:

gopher://gopher.icu/7/gutenberg

Enter the query and enjoy.

Thanks, that's really good to know :D

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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.forth

albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl writes:

In article <2025Jun9.082717@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at>,
Anton Ertl <anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:

zbigniew2011@gmail.com (LIT) writes:

What about bank account? Can you operate it with JS disabled?

Certainly, and I do that. I don't do any banking through the Web,
however.

I would like to too. How do you do that?

I go to a branch office of the bank and tell them what I want to do.
My bank is closing more and more branch offices for the kind of
interaction I want (with humans). The next step is going to a branch
office, and doing at some touchscreen device what I want. Still no
web needed. On some of those branch offices, I can make an
appointment for the things that one cannot do through a touchscreen.

- anton
--
M. Anton Ertl http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html
comp.lang.forth FAQs: http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/faq/toc.html
New standard: https://forth-standard.org/
EuroForth 2023 proceedings: http://www.euroforth.org/ef23/papers/
EuroForth 2024 proceedings: http://www.euroforth.org/ef24/papers/
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.lang.forth

On 10/06/2025 1:52 am, Anton Ertl wrote:

albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl writes:

In article <2025Jun9.082717@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at>,
Anton Ertl <anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:

zbigniew2011@gmail.com (LIT) writes:

What about bank account? Can you operate it with JS disabled?

Certainly, and I do that. I don't do any banking through the Web,
however.

I would like to too. How do you do that?

I go to a branch office of the bank and tell them what I want to do.
My bank is closing more and more branch offices for the kind of
interaction I want (with humans).

That ended years ago when the bank teller asked me why I couldn't pay
my bill at the machine in the wall. It takes two to tango :)

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.lang.forth

albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl writes:

Certainly, and I do that. I don't do any banking through the Web,
however.

I would like to too. How do you do that?

I'm able to do most of what I need over the phone. I call the bank's
customer service number and a voice prompt system lets me do routine
stuff like check my balance or pay my credit card bill. If I need
something less routine, I can get help from a human who can do most of
the stuff that branch representatives can do. I usually don't have to
wait very long for the human assistance either, and they tend to know
what they are doing. I'm always somewhat impressed by that. Sometimes
I need something they can't handle, so they kick the request upward in
their hierarchy, and I get a return call within a day or so.
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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.forth

anthk <anthk@openbsd.home> writes:

Most of these "web sites" are irrelevant to me.

Can you read sfgate.com? That's a major news site near here.

Interestingly, I'm able to read apnews.com with lynx. With firefox, I'm impeded by Cloudflare Turnstile which is basically a JS-dependent
captcha.

I get a 403 from this with lynx: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13768935/1/Harry-Potter-and-A-Galaxy-Far-Far-Away

That site also uses Turnstile. Turnstile is becoming extremely
widespread across the net, to push away AI scrapers.
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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.forth

On 2025-06-10, Paul Rubin wrote:
anthk <anthk@openbsd.home> writes:

I'm admittedly conflicted on responding to an off-topic thread,
and two months after the discussion has concluded at that.
Still, it mentions Lynx, and... Well, I'm going to cross-post
to (little-used) comp.infosystems.www.misc and set Followup-To:
on the odd chance someone might be interesting in discussing
this further there.

Most of these "web sites" are irrelevant to me.

By the by, I'd like to note that the lifestyle argument works
both ways. I've started using web c. 1998, and within a few
years, settled on Lynx as my primary browser. (I have a Lynx
"bookmarks" file dated August 2001, for example.) I doubt indoor
plumbing is a suitable comparison, but driving a car perhaps is.

And indeed, switching to, say, Chromium now feels like a big
lifestyle change to me. Not unlike starting to drive a car.
Sure, it has its benefits, but it also has its costs, both in
terms of responsibility, and in terms of buying gas (for a car)
or new hardware (for Chromium.)

Being somewhat of a retrocomputing enthusiast (from whence
interest in Forth), I'd say relying on Lynx fits my lifestyle
better anyway.

Can you read sfgate.com? That's a major news site near here.

I can read it via Wayback Machine [1] at the least; e. g.:

After November flop, California Forever launches new city concept

An aerial rendering of where the original planned community by
California Forever would fit into Solano County.

A California city tried to triple in size. Then came the rebellion.

[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20250730/http://sfgate.com/

(FWIW, I have this cheap China-made radio that I listen to news
broadcast locally on UHF/FM on. And every once in a while, I can
catch shortwave CRI broadcasts on it, too.)

Interestingly, I'm able to read apnews.com with lynx. With firefox,
I'm impeded by Cloudflare Turnstile which is basically a JS-dependent captcha.

The "solve-to-read" captchas generally are JS-based, IME.
(Unlike those for posting comments or registering an account.)

I haven't noticed sites skipping a captcha for non-JS browsers
myself, TBH, though I have noticed sites skipping JS-based ads
for Lynx. Can't say I feel disadvantaged by it.

I get a 403 from this with lynx: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13768935/1/Harry-Potter-and-A-Galaxy-Far-Far-Away

Years ago, I've got an impression that Fanfiction (and some
other servers) reacted badly to "libwww" in Lynx' User-Agent:.
I'd venture to guess it might be related to an unrelated Perl
library (libwww-perl AKA LWP), presumably at one point popular
among bot writers, also having "libwww" in User-Agent:.

I /think/ Fanfiction acquired a bunch of restrictions on top
of that over the years, though. Generally, I'd suggest using
Wayback Machine here as well, but that particular story doesn't
seem to be archived.

FWIW, I've been able to read most of "Darth Vader: Hero of Naboo"
that way last year; see (URI split for readability):

https://web.archive.org/web/20240914132402/ https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11730208/1/Darth-Vader-Hero-of-Naboo

That site also uses Turnstile. Turnstile is becoming extremely
widespread across the net, to push away AI scrapers.

FSF has recently commented, if tangentially, on that in [2].
(They've pointed out that Anubis captcha might be free, but
it's still essentially malware.)

I believe I understand, to a degree, the issues involved
in running a website this day and age, but this particular
solution gets no sympathy from me. If anything, it seems
like a web counterpart to hostile architecture [3].

[2] http://fsf.org/blogs/sysadmin/our-small-team-vs-millions-of-bots
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_architecture
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.lang.forth

For your reference, records indicate that
Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> wrote:

On 2025-06-10, Paul Rubin wrote:
anthk <anthk@openbsd.home> writes:

Most of these "web sites" are irrelevant to me.

By the by, I'd like to note that the lifestyle argument works
both ways. I've started using web c. 1998, and within a few
years, settled on Lynx as my primary browser. (I have a Lynx
"bookmarks" file dated August 2001, for example.) I doubt indoor
plumbing is a suitable comparison, but driving a car perhaps is.

Well, by that analogy, what do you think would happen if you tried to take
a Ford Model T on to the Autobahn? The modern web is a “kitchen sink” mess of technologies (well beyond JavaScript) that is going to be heavy
lift for any browser to support:

<https://www.w3.org/TR/>

For example, I have sites that make extensive use of server sent events
(SSE). While JavaScript is the main way to pull the data, the format *is* just text that any browser could display. But give `lynx` that URL and it just *sits* on the result, displaying *nothing* until the connection is closed.

Interestingly, I'm able to read apnews.com with lynx. With firefox,
I'm impeded by Cloudflare Turnstile which is basically a JS-dependent captcha.

The "solve-to-read" captchas generally are JS-based, IME.
(Unlike those for posting comments or registering an account.)

I haven't noticed sites skipping a captcha for non-JS browsers
myself, TBH, though I have noticed sites skipping JS-based ads
for Lynx. Can't say I feel disadvantaged by it.

The thing to shoot for (i.e., what a modern “text” browser should target) is *accessibility*. That’s what standards are geared towards these days, and that’s what sites are *supposed* to support. Often time the weight
of law and/or public opinion can be brought to bear against large organizations that do not accommodate disabled people. Try those sites
with something like a screen reader and complain if they still don’t work *that* way.

I believe I understand, to a degree, the issues involved
in running a website this day and age, but this particular
solution gets no sympathy from me. If anything, it seems
like a web counterpart to hostile architecture [3].

The web itself is hostile. Much of what *was* The Internet has gotten
locked up by it, including Usenet. Instead of complaining that you can’t get modern sites to work on some old HTML browser, maybe question whether
or not it was wise to have tried jamming everything into HTML in the
first place.
--
"Also . . . I can kill you with my brain."
River Tam, Trash, Firefly


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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.forth

On Sat, 9 Aug 2025 19:53:24 -0000 (UTC)
Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> wrote:

Well, by that analogy, what do you think would happen if you tried to
take a Ford Model T on to the Autobahn?

...you'd get passed by everyone going faster than 42 MPH but otherwise everything would work normally enough because the operating principle
of a roadway hasn't changed since the Neolithic, conventions for motor
traffic have been broadly consistent since the '40s, and fundamentally
people just want to get wherever it is they're going and aren't weirdly
fixated on controlling what anyone else does...?

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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.forth

For your reference, records indicate that
John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, 9 Aug 2025 19:53:24 -0000 (UTC)
Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> wrote:

Well, by that analogy, what do you think would happen if you tried to
take a Ford Model T on to the Autobahn?

...you'd get passed by everyone going faster than 42 MPH but otherwise everything would work normally enough because the operating principle
of a roadway hasn't changed since the Neolithic, conventions for motor traffic have been broadly consistent since the '40s,

Then I should have used a better analogy; the lesser highways around where
I live have higher minimum speeds posted, and are full of people who would
not be polite to someone puttering around in traffic going 2x or 3x
faster. The “roadway” in the analogy would be maybe TCP/IP; that’s not the layer that’s causing the problems.

and fundamentally
people just want to get wherever it is they're going and aren't weirdly fixated on controlling what anyone else does...?

And yet we still come full circle back to people misunderstanding what the modern web is, which *is* about being fixated on controlling every aspect
of the browsing experience (or at least *trying* to). The only-static-
HTML web is about as lively as a non-binaries Usenet turned out to be.
--
"Also . . . I can kill you with my brain."
River Tam, Trash, Firefly


--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.lang.forth

On Mon, 11 Aug 2025 21:51:09 -0000 (UTC)
Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> wrote:

And yet we still come full circle back to people misunderstanding
what the modern web is, which *is* about being fixated on controlling
every aspect of the browsing experience (or at least *trying* to).

It's not misunderstanding, it's rejection.

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.lang.forth

For your reference, records indicate that
John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, 11 Aug 2025 21:51:09 -0000 (UTC)
Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> wrote:

And yet we still come full circle back to people misunderstanding
what the modern web is, which *is* about being fixated on controlling
every aspect of the browsing experience (or at least *trying* to).

It's not misunderstanding, it's rejection.

Well, then I’d say they need to *reject* it if they’re going to reject it, not try to use some browser that hasn’t added any new feature support
since the 1990s and act shocked that things don’t work like they used to. The problem remains that everyone gets “the web” pushed as the one-stop shop for all their online needs (even for things like writing mobile
apps), and that has resulted in the kitchen sink that is the modern web browser. Support other solutions if you don’t like the current state of affairs; I certainly do.
--
"Also . . . I can kill you with my brain."
River Tam, Trash, Firefly


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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.forth

On Wed, 13 Aug 2025 18:43:07 -0000 (UTC)
Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> wrote:

It's not misunderstanding, it's rejection.

Well, then I’d say they need to *reject* it if they’re going to
reject it, not try to use some browser that hasn’t added any new
feature support since the 1990s and act shocked that things don’t
work like they used to. The problem remains that everyone gets “the
web” pushed as the one-stop shop for all their online needs (even for things like writing mobile apps), and that has resulted in the
kitchen sink that is the modern web browser. Support other solutions
if you don’t like the current state of affairs; I certainly do.

No, I think I'll stick with active scorn and spite towards web
designers who can't be bothered to do their job properly. The attitude
that it should be considered acceptable for web designers to dictate
people's choice of browser was contemptible in the '90s-'00s and it's contemptible now.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.lang.forth

John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> writes:

No, I think I'll stick with active scorn and spite towards web
designers who can't be bothered to do their job properly. The attitude
that it should be considered acceptable for web designers to dictate
people's choice of browser was contemptible in the '90s-'00s and it's contemptible now.

There's a web standard (HTML5) and it includes all those features that
you (and I) dislike. We could agree that it's a BAD standard. Some
people feel the same about ANS Forth. But it's there, and the big
browsers implement it, and web developers for the most part follow it.

I write C++ code sometimes. C++11 introduced a lot of new features that weren't in earlier versions. They were refined further in C++14 and
later. Am I irresponsible or not doing my job if I use those features,
instead of writing C++98 code in 2025?
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.lang.forth

For your reference, records indicate that
John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> wrote:

No, I think I'll stick with active scorn and spite towards web
designers who can't be bothered to do their job properly. The attitude
that it should be considered acceptable for web designers to dictate
people's choice of browser was contemptible in the '90s-'00s and it's contemptible now.

Who are you to say how a job you don’t pay for is properly done? Who gave you the authority to dictate that the world use *your* pet browser? It doesn’t sound like you know how “choice” actually works.

I feel the opposite way. Web designers are nothing without the software developers that enable them to march forward as technology progresses.
The onus lies there. If some software isn’t being updated to handle the modern web, it stops being a “web browser”. It may be a perfectly fine HTML viewer, though. Enjoy *your* choice.
--
"Also . . . I can kill you with my brain."
River Tam, Trash, Firefly


--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.lang.forth

On Fri, 15 Aug 2025 15:14:50 -0000 (UTC)
Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> wrote:

No, I think I'll stick with active scorn and spite towards web
designers who can't be bothered to do their job properly. The
attitude that it should be considered acceptable for web designers
to dictate people's choice of browser was contemptible in the
'90s-'00s and it's contemptible now.

Who are you to say how a job you don’t pay for is properly done? Who
gave you the authority to dictate that the world use *your* pet
browser?

I'm not dictating what anyone else should use, or even what they should specifically work to support. I'm simply expressing contempt for the
view that it's acceptable behavior for web designers to dictate what I
or anyone else use. As far as citing authority, I'll hand the mic over
to Tim Berners-Lee, a.k.a. The Guy Who Invented The Web:
"Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on
a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web,
when you had very little chance of reading a document written on
another computer, another word processor, or another network."
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.lang.forth

For your reference, records indicate that
John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm not dictating what anyone else should use, or even what they should specifically work to support.

But you are. You just *think* you’re being sly about it by pretending
that it’s the oh-so-evil people running web sites that are making it hard for the oh-so-good people making their 8 billion different choices.
Sorry, no, you’re just trying to reframe “the other” as the dictator so *you* can be the dictator of what a *true* web site should be.

As far as citing authority, I'll hand the mic over
to Tim Berners-Lee, a.k.a. The Guy Who Invented The Web:

"Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on
a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web,
when you had very little chance of reading a document written on
another computer, another word processor, or another network."

I sure hope that was something he naively said back in the 1990s, because it’s disingenuous bordering on signs of senility if it is more recent. I ask you to think about that quote critically. It’s basically saying he
got everything *perfect* on Version 1.0 (technically, HTML 2.0/HTTP 1.0). That nothing was interoperable before he came along with the one, true “document”.

Yeah, propriety data formats do suck, but there were plenty of open
formats that existed before the web tried to make them all vanish in a
puff of HTML. I’ll still take a common CSV file over trying to tease
some data out of a page with an embedded <table>, and countless other not-invented-here choices that got us to where the web is today.

You can not like change all you like, but rapid change is pretty much
the hallmark of our technological world. Like I said, the real
complaint to level against that change is not that the web isn’t just
HTML any longer, but that shoving everything into HTML was ever a good
idea in the first place. I take non-mainstream browsers seriously
when they approach the modern web from *that* perspective.
--
"Also . . . I can kill you with my brain."
River Tam, Trash, Firefly


--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.lang.forth

On Sat, 16 Aug 2025 23:36:57 -0000 (UTC), Doc O'Leary , wrote:

For your reference, records indicate that John Ames
<commodorejohn@gmail.com> wrote:

As far as citing authority, I'll hand the mic over to Tim Berners-Lee,
a.k.a. The Guy Who Invented The Web:

"Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on
a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web,
when you had very little chance of reading a document written on
another computer, another word processor, or another network."

I sure hope that was something he naively said back in the 1990s,
because it’s disingenuous bordering on signs of senility if it is more recent. I ask you to think about that quote critically. It’s basically saying he got everything *perfect* on Version 1.0 (technically, HTML
2.0/HTTP 1.0).

He was saying no such thing.

That nothing was interoperable before he came along with
the one, true “document”.

Considering he invented the WWW, yes it is fair to say nothing was “interoperable” because nothing *existed* along these lines before him.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.lang.forth

On Sat, 16 Aug 2025 23:36:57 -0000 (UTC)
Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> wrote:

I'm not dictating what anyone else should use, or even what they
should specifically work to support.

But you are. You just *think* you’re being sly about it by
pretending that it’s the oh-so-evil people running web sites that are making it hard for the oh-so-good people making their 8 billion
different choices. Sorry, no, you’re just trying to reframe “the
other” as the dictator so *you* can be the dictator of what a *true*
web site should be.

I will clarify for the sake of being clear, though I doubt it'll keep
you from firing back with another "no u" - I'm *not* demanding that
anybody specifically work to support Browser XYZ. What I *do* expect out
of Web designers is some bare minimum of thought put into designing
with an eye towards graceful degradation, which (while never perfect)
has been possible since the beginning and remains so today.
I'm talking about basic, *basic* stuff here - things like not depending
on Javascript to load and display static page content, not hiding all
your site navigation behind a hamburger button and CSS pop-over, and
for the love of all that is good and holy *not* redirecting unfamiliar
user agents to a screw-you-for-not-using-an-Approved-Browser page.
These are *not* hard things - in fact, it usually takes more work to do
the Bad Behavior than to *not* do it. They don't require designers to
spend hours fiddling with their site design to work around Browser XYZ's esoteric CSS support or tendency to choke on emoji glyphs or whatever;
they just require designers to *not* do things that they shouldn't be
doing anyway.
It's not dictatorial to expect that of Web designers; it is (or ought
to be) a basic qualification of the profession, in the same way that,
if you build a chair that falls apart the moment someone sits a little
too far to the left in it or clunks the occupant with a clown hammer
because they didn't do a little dance first, you're objectively a bad
furniture designer.
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On Mon, 18 Aug 2025 10:45:55 -0700, John Ames wrote:

I will clarify for the sake of being clear ...

Gee, I wonder what other reason there might be for wanting to “clarify”, given that it means “make clear” ...

I'm talking about basic, *basic* stuff here - things like not depending
on Javascript to load and display static page content ...

Funny, I did an example of that just the other day. A friend had put
together a formatted table of data in a web page that was close to a
megabyte in size. I knocked it down to a small fraction of that -- a bit
over 100K -- by using JavaScript to generate the table layout from the raw data (which I included in the page).

I also added functions to sort the display of the data on selected
columns. That only added about 3K to the page size.

... not hiding all your site navigation behind a hamburger button and
CSS pop-over ...

Bear in mind the point of CSS is precisely to separate document structure
from layout. If the semantics of the page can be gleaned from an
examination of the HTML structure without regard to the styling, then what
are you complaining about?

It's not dictatorial to expect that of Web designers ...

Feel free to show us examples of your way of designing the Web.
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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.forth

On Mon, 18 Aug 2025 23:25:22 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

It's not dictatorial to expect that of Web designers ...

Feel free to show us examples of your way of designing the Web.

I'd point to Wikipedia as a very reasonable example - while it's
distinctly styled in a modern browser, the styling doesn't get in the
way of readability or usability (for the most part - not a fan of the
floating contents bar they added in recent years, but that's a fairly
minor nitpick) and it degrades very gracefully indeed; perfectly
readable in ELinks, lynx, and even w3m.
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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.forth

For your reference, records indicate that
John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> wrote:

I will clarify for the sake of being clear, though I doubt it'll keep
you from firing back with another "no u" - I'm *not* demanding that
anybody specifically work to support Browser XYZ. What I *do* expect out
of Web designers is some bare minimum of thought put into designing
with an eye towards graceful degradation, which (while never perfect)
has been possible since the beginning and remains so today.

NO U! :-)

Seriously, you’re laying blame on the *wrong* people. Web pages work/
look like they do because someone in management (and/or marketing)
*told* the designer to make it that way. It’s fundamentally the “culture” argument I’ve been making.

I'm talking about basic, *basic* stuff here - things like not depending
on Javascript to load and display static page content, not hiding all
your site navigation behind a hamburger button and CSS pop-over, and
for the love of all that is good and holy *not* redirecting unfamiliar
user agents to a screw-you-for-not-using-an-Approved-Browser page.

All culture. At least to a point; there is the technical angle that
I’ve brought up: there is no “graceful” way to degrade what JavaScript does. There is no alternative in the standard to replace just part
of a page, no support for a “reference implementation” of CSS that
would universally give you site navigation how *you* want it, no
ethical rules of publishing that intrinsically require a request to
get a uniform response. Ironically, though, someone *could* build a
browser that tried to “sandbox” the whole web through a user-centric interface with support for things like that (which is *kinda* what
screen readers aim to do), and *that* would get complaints for being
“best viewed in” dictatorial!

It's not dictatorial to expect that of Web designers; it is (or ought
to be) a basic qualification of the profession, in the same way that,
if you build a chair that falls apart the moment someone sits a little
too far to the left in it or clunks the occupant with a clown hammer
because they didn't do a little dance first, you're objectively a bad furniture designer.

The modern web is not designed for you, but the dictator that pays the
team to put the site together. If *they* use Lynx, yeah, the site
would work well in Lynx. If they give a damn about accessibility,
that’s what the site will be. Most *want* you smacked by the clown
hammer, though . . .
--
"Also . . . I can kill you with my brain."
River Tam, Trash, Firefly


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