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Arachne 1.70 is a dos based system, and that can be useful since it has a web browser, email client and other features and very small size. Does very well getting X up with it's small collection of drivers. It's not linux, but worth looking into if you need a gui and don't have much space. (I wonder, however, in this day of big cheap hard drives and fast processors, why such small size is needed.) Arachne 1.70 fits on a floppy but requires a small HDD to run. Can see all hidden files, and can be used to repair Windows in an emergency. It's no tomsrtbt linux, however. Has a graphical text editor that can write web pages, etc. I've installed Arachne on top of caldera opendos and MSDOS 6.21, also used Windows 98 DOS. Very interesting little distro, with full documentation.

Do you game without using a mouse?

*ahem*

Do you browse the internet by tabbing though all your links?

*cough*

Do you invoke the powers of Jesus Christ to double-click icons for you?

Praise the Lord!

Well, you did ask....

That's funny. However, there are some valid reasons for doing this, and it's not just MIT who is looking at it.

FOAD, troll. Take your goatse.cx link (verified with Lynx) and shove it where the sun don't shine.

Tables nearly always work better than frames.

CSS works even better, as long as you use a browser with a decent CSS implementation. (A browser that doesn't grok CSS can still do an acceptable job with the site if the underlying HTML is clean enough...that's why separating content from layout is a Good Thing.)

On my box it has a features like 'prevent resizing of the window' and 'disable pop-ups'. As far as I know, almost everything in X-Window system is a window, so checking this will work. Anyway, there is lynx and links. And now try the full screen ad on my vt100 terminal. ASCII ads anyone?

Popups? What popups? [lynx.browser.org]

It's called Lynx

URL: http://dunkels.com/adam/contiki/links.html

System information and emulators

Commodore 64/128

The Commodore 64 is based on the 6510 CPU, which is a 6502-derived 8-bit CPU. It has 64k of RAM and 16k ROM which includes a BASIC interpreter and some basic I/O services. Graphics is provided by the VIC chip which has 16 colors and a maximum resolution of 320x200 in hi-res mode. It provides a 40x25 raster of characters in character mode. The three voices of digital sound is produced by the SID chip.

The Commodore 128 is an extended version of the Commodore 64 that contains a 8510 CPU which is capable of 2 MHz operation and can address 128k RAM (hence the name Commodore 128). It also has a Commodore 64 compatibility mode which is extremely similar to a regular C64 but with a few minor differences.

The SuperCPU is a 20 MHz 16-bit 65816-based computer that is plugged into the back of the Commodore 64 or 128. It uses the C64 keyboard and joysticks for input and the VIC and SID chips for audiovisual output. The SuperCPU is capable of addressing several megabytes of memory and is usually used together with a 16 megabytes RAM expansion board.

There are no SuperCPU emulators avaliable.

• The VICE emulator is capable of emulating a large number of Commodore machines. It emulates the C64, the C128, the VIC20, most of the PET models, and the CBM-II. VICE runs under Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and a number of other host systems.
  
• Joakim Eriksson's Web C64 emulator, written in Java, runs as an applet within a web browser.
  
• Per Håkan Sundell's CCS64 emulator works under Windows and DOS.
  
• The ec64 emulator is developed for Linux and was originally written entirely in x86 assembler.
  
• An article by Simon N Goodwin about C64 emulators.
  
• The Commodore emulators category in the Dmoz has more links.
  

Commodore 64/128

There are plenty of alternative operating systems for the C64, mostly written in 6502 assembler. Some of them are far from complete, however, and only appear as dark shadows on a few web pages - MagerValp's SMOS and my own osT are among those.

• GEOS from 1986 probably is the most well-known graphical operating system for the C64. It is still sold commercially by CMDKEY.com.
  
• LUnix NG is an open-source multi-tasking operating system with TCP/IP/PPP-support, a *nix-like command shell, and a number of *nix-like utilities such as ls and cp.
• Craig Bruce's ACE is a text-based single-tasking operating system for the 64 and the 128. It provides a *nix-like command shell, a text-editor, a terminal program for the SwiftLink RS232 interface, as well as device drivers for a lot of devices
  
• GeckOS/A65 is a multi-tasking operating system with TCP/IP support and a *nix-like command shell.
  
• Wheels is a version of GEOS that requires RAM expansion to run.

With its 20 MHz and megabytes of memory, the SuperCPU is powerful enough to run fully-fledged graphical operating systems that rival early Machintosh or Microsoft Windows systems.

• Wings is a TCP/IP-enabled graphical operating system for the SuperCPU. It includes a MOD music player, JPEG viewer, web page download utility, etc.
• JOS is an older version of Wings.
  

TCP/IP and PPP connectivity

To surf the web, send or read email, etc., the first step is to actually get in touch with the Internet. This requires both physical access to an ISP, either via a modem and a phone-line or an Ethernet broadband connection, and the TCP/IP software running on the C64.

There are a number of programs that make it possible to reach the Internet with a C64/C128.

• LUnix NG contains a TCP/IP stack and a PPP implementation which makes it possible to reach the Internet using a modem and a dial-up ISP.
  
• GeckOS/A65 also contains a TCP/IP stack, but no PPP dialer.
  
• My own uIP TCP/IP stack has been used for some time to run a web server on a Commodore 64. uIP currently does not include a PPP dialer.
  
• Novaterm 10 contains a PPP dialer and enough TCP/IP code to be able to run telnet over the Internet.
  

SuperCPU

All of the above mentioned SuperCPU operating systems have TCP/IP support.

• The Wave is a web browser for the SuperCPU (and not for the Commodore 64/128 as the web page claims) that runs under the Wheels operating systems. Here is another page with information about The Wave (that also falsely claims that The Wave is for the Commodore 64/128). The latter page also includes screenshots of The Wave in action.
  

Small graphical user-interfaces (GUIs)

User interfaces for embedded systems range from the simple buttons on the front of a washing machine to those of fully fledged web browser type interfaces on information stations. The underlying technology varies from simple electronic circuits to full-scale PC compatibles.

• PicoGUI is a GUI architecture designed for embedded systems to desktop machines. It does not require any supporting GUI system and can be used on anything from graphical screens to text based systems. Their smallest target system are handheld terminals and the compiled object code size is on the order of hundreds of kilobytes.
  
• Microwindows/NanoGUI is a graphical user interface system designed to run without support from an underlying system. On 16-bit systems Microwindows is about 64k large.
  

The smallest web browsers are usually specially designed for the limitations of embedded systems and other specialized computers such as car navigation systems, set-top boxes and medical equipment. There are also a few small web browsers for old DOS PCs available.

• Interniche's NicheView Portable Embedded Web Browser is probably the smallest full-featured web browser around with its 35 kilobytes code footprint. There is also an additional JavaScript module available.
  
• AU-systems' AU Mobile Internet Browser supports both HTML/TCP/IP and WML/WAP as well as SSL. It occupies 340 kilobytes of code (plus an additional 190 kilobytes for the protocol stacks) and uses 5 kilobytes of RAM when idle (plus 8 kilobytes used by the protocol stacks). Extra RAM is used when downloading web pages.
  
• The Fusion WebPilot Embedded Micro-Browser supports much of the features found in modern web browsers including frames, authentication, and JavaScript. The web page does not specify memory footprint.
  
• MicroDigial's Graphical MicroBrowser supports tables, frames, images as well as FTP as uses 260 kilobytes of code memory and requires a minimum of 210 kilobytes of RAM apart from that. A demo version is available.
  
• The 2net Alice Web Browser is intended for handheld computers and PC based architectures and requires 400 kilobyte of free RAM and 200 kilobytes of code memory. It includes a TCP/IP stack.
  
• WebBoy is a fully-fledged browser with SSL support intended for 386 DOS boxes with more than 4 megabytes of memory. Includes a TCP/IP stack.
  
• The Arachne web browser runs under MS-DOS or Linux and requires at least 1 megabyte of memory. Does not include a TCP/IP/PPP stack.
  
• Lynx is probably the most well-known text-based web browser around. It is ported to many different operating systems and architectures including MS-DOS.
  
• The Off by One Web Browser has been labeled as the smallest web browser ever, but is quite large in comparison with other small web browsers. It is 1.1 megabytes large and requires support from an underlying Windows operating system.
  
• Mirko Sobe's BOSS-X HTML browser for 8-bit Ataris is not a full web browser, but an off-line HTML viewer with hyperlinking abilities written in three days.
  
• The pre-alpha v0.3 GEMWeb browser supports 640x480x16 VGA.
  
• The Atari Phoenix Web Browser is a non-existant vapor-ware web browser project intended for the 8-bit Ataris.
  

info b10\/\/z3rz

hT/\/\1 r00lz

00 lynx

This brings up a question which I'd like to see discussed either here, or in a new topic. I do not have a disability that prevents me from accessing the web via traditional means. However, I'm curious to ask people who use assistive devices: what is your experience going online like? How much content can you access? How do you feel about it? I know these questions have been generally answered by the document, but I'm curious about personal stories.

Well they're probably not going to answer 'cause slashdot isn't exactly the most accessible site! Try reading /. in Lynx for example, and you'll see how difficult it as. Now imagine a screen reader reading all of that, without the option of skipping it, it's going to get cumbersome very quickly.

I think a good start to understanding accessibility would be Mark Pilgrim's site - more specifically his Dive Into Accessibility site. While this concentrates more on weblogs (hence the "30 days to a more accessible weblog" slogan), it's still very useful.

Mark focusses on accessibility by using fictional (but perfectly plausable) character sketches of five people: Jackie, Michael, Bill, Lillian, and Marcus.

Quoting the site:
These people have several things in common:

1. They all have a combination of physical, mental, and technological disabilities which make it more difficult to use the Internet.
2. Although fictitious, they all represent real people with disabilities, and they use the Internet in ways that real people with disabilities use the Internet.
3. They all have difficulty reading your web site.

If you design pages for a living, or even if you've just got a personal blog I'd highly recommend that you read Dive Into Accessibility, you'll be a more accessible person because of it.

Cheers,

Dude, go read your homework.
It's what the site says: "Lynx-like text WWW browser with tables".

Links just happens to be much better than Lynx ...but what the hell. I'm just waisting my time writing to you.

*lbrt

Here's a link: http://lynx.browser.org/. There's a win32 version. I used to use it, back when I did a significant amount of browsing on that platform.

Got Lynx?

What about Links?

So while the site looks fine with CSS, without CSS you get maybe stark gray...

Very few web sits voluntarily chose a grey background. In fact, that glorious grey is the browser's default background color. If fact, if you visit webstandards.org without CSS support, you're getting the colors, fonts, and layout you asked for. Don't like it, take a trip to Edit > Preferences > Appearance > Colors. Click the button for "Background" and change it to something you like. See, control in your hands.

So what's actually going on here is not a case of these developers adhering to web standards, but rather, they are picking and choosing the standards they want to use, such as by not making use of HTML completely and correctly.

Actually, they're making use of the latest version of HTML completely and correctly. Using the various color tags and techniques from previous versions would in fact be violating the correct use of HTML. When you break standards you end up having to do dozens of special cases for the quirks of each browser. If you stick to baseline modern HTML with CSS, all modern browsers will display the same thing looking good, older browsers will degrade gracefully.

You argue that by not supporting out of date HTML you're somehow discriminating against people with older computers. That's a bizarre claim. By using out of date HTML, you're making it harder for anyone to use it. Modern HTML makes it easier to render a web page in lynx, or on your WebTV, or on a braille display, or be read aloud by a text to speech program. CSS makes it easier to keep your HTML small, speeding up the browsing experience for people with lower quality phone lines or working over an expensive wireless link. Modern HTML degrades gracefully. The old hackery HTML turns into a mess when forced to degrade. The webstandards.org page you complain about may not look pretty, but it's sure as hell usable. It'll work fine under lynx and a text to speech reader will easily and accurate speak the page for a blind person. As someone who occasionally must fall back on extremely low end systems and extremely slow connections, I appreciate how well webstandards.org degrade and curse how poorly most "old HTML" sites do.

Zeldmanistas...intentionally set it to something different than what is set in CSS. ... So while the site looks fine with CSS, without CSS you get ... black with black text over it.

Actually, anyone playing this sort of game is most certainly not a believer in Web Standards. Setting the background color at all in HTML (instead of CSS) is not invalid by the standard. No, those people are just assholes.

LYNX

It would be maybe nice to have possibility in browsers to set whether referer should be actually sent and what should be sent inside. In fact, I know only about ELinks and Links now having this - you're free to set referer to "fake referer" (some string you're going to write down there is going to be sent), "normal referer" or referer containing URL of the page being loaded ("self-pointing referer" ;-). The "self-pointing referer" is set as default, and it helps workarounding most of the "protection" mechanisms, while effectively disclosing no possibly private information. Would be nice to see this in other browsers as well..

(Well, maybe Lynx is dead, it's web page seems to be down...)
Or maybe you could check your links instead :-)

I switched over to links [mff.cuni.cz] a long time ago...

Doh.

And second, the sourceforge link in my original post is for Links :)

Yes, I submitted a story on this to Slashdot, but apparently it wasn't considered "newsworthy".

Nevermind that it's probably the biggest milestone for XHTML and CSS supporters yet. Nevermind that it proves that a large, popular, high-traffic website can successfully design and implement a site that makes itself accessible and easy to read in Lynx, that doesn't need to use tables for layout, needs less bandwidth to run, with less server load, will be easier to maintain, and will be viewable in every browser, whether Netscape 1 or a Pocket IE. Nope not newsworthy. Instead we get articles telling us how duct tape can remove warts, great... Alright, alright, I'll stop whining now!

There's a couple more comments on the Wired changeover at the Web Standards site and CSS guru Eric A. Meyer's site (both excellent examples of XHTML themselves BTW).

Cheers,

• a browser that only browses, small, lean and fast

Yes, I use one of those. Give it a try, it's a great way of filtering the content rich wheat from the over-interfaced chaff.

Just make sure that your site is browsable with lynx. That's a pretty good indication that you've placed content and usability above presentation.

Hmm, I wonder how text-to-speech handles the <blink> tag?

Personally, I almost solely use the keyboard as input device

Even for web surfing??

Is it so shocking? I often use Links, w3m, or even the old standby Lynx for browsing. These fine console browsers have almost no mouse support and are plenty usable.

All of the major browsers support full navigation with the keyboard, and I use them frequently. (Galeon even supports vi-like keybindings, bringing me endless glee.)

For various reasons it sometimes makes sense to keep your fingers on your keyboard. If I'm in the middle of hard core coding, it's faster to Alt+Tab to Galeon to reference something, scroll down the page, and chase a link than it is to grab the mouse. Grabbing the mouse can break my concentration, my zone, when deeply engaged in code. For skilled users who are familiar with the system, a keyboard can be a significant speed win, even when referencing something on the web.

(Yes, yes, yes, the all knowing Tognazzini has told you that the mouse is always faster. Unfortunately Tog has only shown this for novice or adequately skilled users. He doesn't seem interested in studying heavy duty users. If I'm going to be using a piece of software for eight hours a day, five days a week, fifty weeks per year, perhaps it makes some sense to investigate an interface that keeps your hands on a keyboard. I was particularlly struck by the importanance of this while checking into a convention several years ago. Each attendee gave several pieces of information to a staff member which the staff member entered into a form on screen. After each piece of information, each staff member would cast about for their mouse, slowly navigate to the next entry, click, then slowly reset their hands on the home row. Repeat this for 10,000 attendees and you have some serious time wasted. Teen years ago every one of those staff members would have been familiar with using Tab to switch between fields and would have been able to enter information limited by their typing speed. Wow, this parenthetical comment really got off track, huh?)

So I'm surfing on over to Netscape's browser page to have a look at the new monster when...OH MY LORD!!!! Jumping out from behind my desk I run to the wall and yank my network cable from the wall jack.

It seems as though Netscape has been spying on me while I surf the internet, how else could they produce a browser for the way I use the web? I must say that I feel torn by the obvious intrusion into my personal space and the fact that Netscap 7.0 must now be a Lynx clone. It sure would be nice to run a text only browser with a Netscape interface.

Maybe when I get brave enough to go back on the web I'll give it a try...

Who needs web-based email?

Toolkit for doing things that you aren't supposed to do at work:

• ssh
• screen
• lynx
• mutt
• epic
• ncftp

SSH to Linux box at home and "screen -r -d".

The best thing is it's all text, so it's indistinguishable from actual work to most people. And it's all encrypted.

Why doesn't anyone ever complain about OpenBSD's integrated Browser? They bundle it in the OS even if you don't install X.

Damn slashdot hippies.

Not when you're using a browser that doesn't come with flash...

Lynx will rock!!!

... this is why I'm still using Lynx. I'll maybe give one of these new fangled "GUI port 80 telnet clients" a whiz once they're robust enough to deal with ten year old technology.

If you like Links, try Links-2, a fork that adds graphics (X11, AtheOS, framebuffer and SVGALib!) and javascript support.

It seriously rocks. Even the original Links author contributed code to this fork. Finally, a great graphic browser has arrived to the console. I use X much less often now...

For a list of alternative browsers (over 200 in fact) have a look at: www.browserlist.browser.org.

This list is a bit old (it hasn't been updated since June 2000), but it gives you a good idea of what sort of stuff is out there.

There have been command line web browsers since like, forever.

But, you must supply the same information in an accessible format, and that is not Flash, especially for the audience your site will have. Go ahead and use Flash, but make sure you supply the same information in an accessible format. Navigation and interactivity must be usable from both keyboard and mouse. All the text must be readable by text readers. Users must be able to have the ability to stop the animation and be given an unlimited amount of time to interact with the information (e.g. automatic slideshow should have a "manual" option).

I don't know if you've taken all this into consideration, but here are some links that will help you address accessibility issues:

• W3C WAI: Web Accessibility Initiative
• Section 508: Government Accessibility Laws and Guidelines
• UseIt.com: Jakob Neilsen's Usability Site
• Usable Web: Links about Web Usability

I'm a geek. I think Flash rocks (I don't use it myself). Sometimes the browser I am using is not the latest greatest Mozilla/Netscape/IE/Opera -- it's Lynx.

You need mod_perlbox.

That way you can access your desktop through lynx at a speed increase of 800%. Just format your urls like this:

http://localhost/desktop/?action=leftclick&xcord=3 21&ycord=567

Arachne? I never had a hard time viewing sites in dos! *snickers* download it here and let your msdos/drdos/freedos browsing fun begin!

I was going to mod you up, but you could have quoted this:

Now adapts rendering method for big images. When the number of pixels in the image exceeds the value set by image-bigness-threshold (as set in config file or on command-line, defaulting to 2 million pixels), it's drawn piece-by-piece on demand rather than all-at-once. The all-at-once behaviour is worth keeping around for smaller images, as it gives much nicer scrolling - but for big images it's just impractical, hence this feature.

Which sounds like just the ticket. You could also have linked to the website.

Here ends sydb's lesson in karmah whoring.

Long live Links! (Not Lynx)

Seriously if you've never used Links, you don't know how cool (let alone useful) texted based web browsing can be.

The problem with websites is often much more serious than with small monitors. It's easier to set up a text editor or xterm to display large fonts, but with websites things are much more difficult, thanks to incompetent web designers, that's why I'll focus on websites. There are thousands of webmasters out there, for whom a good website looks like this:

...
<body>
<font size="-1000000">
everything goes here
</font>
</body>
...

This is a serious problem. You can't set your default base font size to 1000 points, just to have 30 points fonts on most websites, because the correctly designed websites (i.e. those which use the default, user defined font size for main text) will have fonts larger than a screen. Sometimes even the website is nearly unusable when you're using larger fonts, because you have to horizontally scroll reading every line of text.

A quite obvious solution would be to use text mode Lynx browser in xterm window (or dos box in MS-Windows), using 40x20 characters, with very large fonts, so the window takes the whole screen. Unfortunately, most of websites don't work in text mode, not to say about being usable using lines shorter than 80 characters.

Read My own web design rules (my comment to What Makes a Good Web Design Slashdot article, which was not very popular when I wrote it, but is in my opinion very important), especially the points entitled:

• Remember about people with disabilities
• Fonts
• User defaults

Those are in my opinion the most important points to this discussion, but take a look also on:

• Valid HTML
• HTML is not a typesetting language
• Remember about other browsers than yours
• Colors

If webmasters while making their websites were only following these few simple rules, there would be no problem. Even the 14 inch screen is big enough to display very large and readable characters using e.g. 40x20, or even 20x10 characters, full-screen windows. The problem is that most of the Web becomes completely unusable in 20x10 characters text mode.

Let me quote to sentences of Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web:

• "The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect."
• "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."

Unfortunately, most of web designers don't understand that at all. They are one of the main reasons, why people with poor eyesight have to buy gigantic, expensive monitors.

- lack of decent free porn (only 12 yo boys can come in 8 seconds)

The hun

- grotesque and prolific advertising including massive fucking banner and pop up ads

Lynx

- spam, in all it's mutations

- FLASH

Lynx

- JavaScript

Lynx

- Abuse of Registration practices (forced to register for everything, even WAITING IN LINE hint hint FILEPLANET)

can't help u there

- lack of decent free porn (only 12 yo boys can come in 8 seconds)

The hun

- grotesque and prolific advertising including massive fucking banner and pop up ads

Lynx

- spam, in all it's mutations

- FLASH

Lynx

- JavaScript

Lynx

- Abuse of Registration practices (forced to register for everything, even WAITING IN LINE hint hint FILEPLANET)

can't help u there

- lack of decent free porn (only 12 yo boys can come in 8 seconds)

The hun

- grotesque and prolific advertising including massive fucking banner and pop up ads

Lynx

- spam, in all it's mutations

- FLASH

Lynx

- JavaScript

Lynx

- Abuse of Registration practices (forced to register for everything, even WAITING IN LINE hint hint FILEPLANET)

can't help u there

Any site that requires you to have flash usually isn't worth visiting.

lynx is so 1996, man.

links is the current state of the art in console web-browsers.

If you didn't spend all your time being a condescending ass, maybe you'd know.

Damn, that was a good post. I'm keeping a copy of it.

Thanks, that's nice to hear. :) I'm keeping a copy too, and maybe one day I'll make a website from it. It's good to know that people actually find it interesting. These are all important things, but unfortunately most of web designers don't care about them. When my Lynx or Galeon can't render a website which I absolutely have to see (and it's the only place with the information I need), I can always use Netscape and everything is fine (except for microsoft.com which usually crash my Netscape for some reason). But there are people who can't use Netscape or Internet Explorer on their Braille terminal or speech synthesiser and they are effectively unable to use most of the Web. That's very sad. We have 21st century, all the informations they need are there on-line, but they can't reach them because of web designers ignorance. There are no borders for them other than ignorance of web designers.

Web Pages That Suck is a great site for learning about good design through bad design.

Very good one, I didn't know it before. It reminded me ESR's HTML Hell Page: How not to design junk Web pages. I see it has changed a lot in the last few years since I last saw it. Now there are many things from my post (or maybe in my post there are many things from HTML Hell), but I'll still tell you about it even if it makes my comment less insightful. ;) So, the HTML Hell Page is surely worth reading, there are also links to other similar websites:

Here's a list of gripes similar to this one. And there's a fine rant about web page design by C. J. Silverio. Horrible Examples of bad technique are listed at Web Pages That Suck. Jakob Nielsen's column Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design is very good. The Yale Style Guide is worth reading.

I haven't seen all of the above links yet, but I'm sure they're interesting.

Regarding disabled access, try Bobbie as your automatic checker.

Thanks. I knew about it, but I forgot the name. It's a great tool. But there's one thing I don't like about Bobby, it's the license:

"No Reverse Engineering. Licensee shall not modify, adapt, translate, prepare derivative works from, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble or otherwise attempt to derive source code from the Licensed Software or documentation therefor, except and only to the extent that such activity is expressly permitted by applicable law notwithstanding this limitation. Licensee shall not remove, obscure, or alter any copyright notices, trademark notices, or other proprietary rights notices affixed to or contained within the Licensed Software or documentation."

"License Fee. Licensee shall pay CAST or its designee a license fee for each simultaneous user of the Licensed Software ("Single User License Fee") or each server on which it shall install the Licensed Software ("Server License Fee") as set forth at http://www.cast.org/bobby/DownloadBobby316.cfm."

They say on the main page:

"Bobby was created by CAST to help Web page authors identify and repair significant barriers to access by individuals with disabilities."

"Center for Applied Special Technology, CAST is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to expand opportunities for people with disabilities through innovative uses of computer technology."

"Above, you can test a Web page using our server version of Bobby Worldwide. This server version gives you a preview of the downloadable version of Bobby Worldwide."

But the downloadable version costs:

Single User copy: $99.00
Site License of server version: $3,000.00 per server
Multiple server site license: $2,000.00 per server for 5 or more servers

I think it's exactly the kind of software which should be released as a free software. Yes, I'm a free software freak, so in my opinion every software is exactly the kind of software which should be released as a free software...

But this is software made by "a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to expand opportunities for people with disabilities through innovative uses of computer technology".

I could tell my employer:
-- Hey, maybe we could install Bobby on the servers?
-- What's that?
-- It's a program to expand opportunities for people with disabilities.
-- Does it cost anything?
-- It's free-as-in-beer.
-- Sure, why not.
but when I tell him that it'll cost him $3k per server... You know what the answer would be even if we only need a single user copy for 100 bucks.

Bobby would serve its purpose much better if it was released as a free software. I'd be proud to contribute patches to Bobby, as I'm sure would lots of other people, and best of all, much more people would use Bobby. If there is any place for proprietary software, it's not software which "was created [...] to help [...] identify and repair significant barriers to access by individuals with disabilities."

In other words: great idea, fatal license.

Keep graphics content (hence download time) low, and always compress images using Gifbot or something similar.

Good point, it's a very important thing which I didn't say about at all. I noticed that I wait the same time for the average website to load today on 768kb/s DSL, as I waited few years ago on 28.8kb/s modem.

I didn't know Gifbot. It's great, because people who don't understand the image compression techniques (i.e. most of people making personal webpages) can improve ther graphics and save time and bandwidth. It only lacks PNG output which is important to me, not only because of the GIF problems, but because it's a great format, even recommended by The World Wide Web Consortium and it has Adam7 interlacing feature for great progressive loading on slow connections, very good for the WWW (see this image or this one if your connection is to fast to notice the effect), read more about Adam7 interlacing on stl.caltech.edu Introduction to PNG.

What I would add about the graphics is to first of all, always use JPEG for photographs, and always use PNG for computer generated graphics (logos, headers, text, screenshots). Of course there are sitiations when it's better to use PNG for photo or JPEG for something generated (like rendered landscapes), but for most of situations (especially for usual homepages) this rule works great: JPEG for photos, PNG for logos.

People sometimes use JPEG for flat few-color logos, which looks terrible on the hard edges and solid color areas. People also (however not so often) use PNG or GIF to save photos, and they are ten times larger than JPEG of the same quality.

My personal choice for editing web graphics is The Gimp, it's a great tool especially for web designing purposes. It has a great JPEG saving dialog, where you can set different quality values and see the real-time preview, so you can save at the lowest quality (highest compression) when you don't see the difference, You can also set subsampling type or DCT method and restart markers for more advanced users.

I almost forgot! See the Cooltext.com:

"Cooltext.com is an online graphics generator for web pages and anywhere else you might need an impressive logo without a lot of work. We provides real-time generation of graphics customized exactly the way you want them.

Simply choose what kind of image you would like to create. Then, fill out a form and you'll have your own images created on the fly.

Cooltext.com will always be available for use free of charge."

They use Gimp as the backend so it's a great introduction to Gimp power as a web graphics authoring tool. Everyone should check out Cooltext, you can make great logos in few seconds. Great for lazy webmasters who want to have nice websites with no effort. Great preview of Gimp.

Speaking about the software, another great tool I use daily is ImageMagick. The best set of programs I've seen for conversion, optimizing and compression of lots of pictures at the same time. Once I used it to automatically scale, stretch contrast, add logos, compress and save over 10,000 pictures. It took over two days to my PC back then, but it was two days of rest for me. It would've taken me weeks if I'd had to do it manually.

Important links: PNG home, PNG at W3C, JPEG home, JPEG at W3C, The Gimp, Cooltext, ImageMagick.

Great, I wrote another comment for ten screens, while I should work instead... But what can I do, when I have a subject which is one of the main areas of my interest? Actually I didn't realize that I have so much to say about web design, maybe I should write a book, teach or something... It reminds me a funny situation I had few months ago:

A friend of mine phoned me once and asked:
-- Tell me, how do you make websites?
I saw all of my life scrolling before my eyes. I was trying to figure out where to start my answer, and after ten seconds of my silence, he said:
-- But hurry up, I'm using a cell phone.
Here I started to laugh like a mad man, and I couldn't explain him why I laughed when he kept asking me, because I couldn't stop laughing.

He really thought that I could explain everything to him in few minutes... Later I told him, that I had been learning how to make websites for many years, and now he's proud that he's the man who asked me to summarize many years of my life in few minutes. I tried to give him few books but he thought it'd be faster and even when I suggested Netscape Composer, it wasn't worth the effort for him... :) Great story, I always laugh when I remember it.

That's about it. I say again, Damn that was a good post. 5++ (Moderators please mod original post up).

Thanks once again. It's good to know that there's someone who likes it more than the moderators. :)

From the last minute: I just found The greatest WWW page ever!

• Content

  If you don't have anything interesting to say, don't even bother.

• Animations

  Do not use any animations or blinking text on a page, when there's any text to read, especially if they can't be turned off by simply pressing Escape or clicking Stop. I don't mind ads, as long as they don't interfere with reading, and animations do interfere.

• Valid HTML

  Don't publish invalid HTML. Always use W3C HTML Validator and CSS Validator on your pages online. Always use HTML Tidy before your new pages are online. If you don't write HTML but you use a WYSIWYG Web authoring tool instead, and its output gives any errors or warnings when tested with HTML Validator, complain to the vendor of this tool you use asking to remove the bugs.

• HTML is not a typesetting language

  HTML or XHTML are for the logical informations about your document. CSS is for defining the look and feel.

• <NOSCRIPT> tags

  The <NOSCRIPT> tag is not for writing "Your browser is bad, come back when you install better" but for providing the same functionality for browser without JavaScript or with JavaScript turned off.

  (By the way, texts like "If you can see this text, that means you have no JavaScript" are as stupid as "If you can see this text, that means you have a kernel panic")

  If your website is unusable without JavaScript, it needs a redesign. Don't use <a href="javascript:..."> links if you don't have equivalent <a href="http:..."> links inside a <NOSCRIPT>.

• Remember about other browsers than yours

  If your website is best viewed with any specific browser, or in any specific resolution, you're not a good web designer and worst of all, you don't understand what the Web is all about. See the Any Browser Campaign. Install Lynx (a text-mode browser) and see how your website looks like. If it's unusable, it's poorly designed. Remember to always use ALT property in IMG tags, aspecially in navigation buttons.

• Remember about people with disabilities

  See the Web Accessibility Initiative and always try to meet the Triple-A, Double-A or at least Level A Conformance. Use Web Accessibility Initiative logos on your website, or just a text information about your level of conformance.

  "The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect." - Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web

  People may access your website using Braille terminals or voice synthesis. Testing your website with Lynx is always a good idea.

• Colors

  Remember that 10% of your visitors are color-blind in some degree. Remember that black text on white background is the best combination for any text longer than few lines. Try to learn from the good old books, not from the magazines about the latest celebrity gossips.

• Fonts

  Remember that the best font for text longer than few lines is a serif, variable width font, like Times. Try to learn from the good old books, not from the magazines about the latest celebrity gossips.

• User defaults

  You should always use the default font face and default font size for the normal text content on your website. Just don't define the face and size, and it'll be ok. Remember that when you use size "-2" for the whole text on your page it means: "For the text on this page, use the font two levels smaller than what the user has chosen as his/her default and favorite size of font".

  Use your own font faces, sizes and colors other than black on white, only for logos, headers etc., but not for the main text to read, longer than few lines and especially longer than a paragraph. Soemone has set a bigger size as a default for a reason - maybe he/she has a small screen, maybe he/she has problems with eyes, maybe he/she just likes big fonts - respect this decision.

• Accept-Language

  If your site is multilingual, use the Accept-Language HTTP header. My browser sends Accept-Language in every single request and it's stupid that I have to click English version links, after I've already told it in my HTTP request. See the RFC 1945 - HTTP/1.0 (May 1996)

  D.2.4 Accept-Language

  The Accept-Language request-header field is similar to Accept, but restricts the set of natural languages that are preferred as a response to the request.

  It's nearly 6 years old feature, still most of people don't use it. RFC 2616 - HTTP/1.1 (June 1999) defines much richer Accept-Language header (See section 14.4), but please, use HTTP/1.0 functionality at least. See www.debian.org which is a great example of this feature functionality.
• See good websites and learn from them
  • debian.org
  • gnu.org
  • google.com
  • dmoz.org
  • w3.org
• Try to learn from the good old books

  Try to learn from the good old books, not from the magazines about the latest celebrity gossips.

• Hire an expert, like me

  Contact me and I'll fix your broken website or supervise your webmasters for very affordable prices.

• Content

  If you don't have anything interesting to say, don't even bother.

• Animations

  Do not use any animations or blinking text on a page, when there's any text to read, especially if they can't be turned off by simply pressing Escape or clicking Stop. I don't mind ads, as long as they don't interfere with reading, and animations do interfere.

• Valid HTML

  Don't publish invalid HTML. Always use W3C HTML Validator and CSS Validator on your pages online. Always use HTML Tidy before your new pages are online. If you don't write HTML but you use a WYSIWYG Web authoring tool instead, and its output gives any errors or warnings when tested with HTML Validator, complain to the vendor of this tool you use asking to remove the bugs.

• HTML is not a typesetting language

  HTML or XHTML are for the logical informations about your document. CSS is for defining the look and feel.

• <NOSCRIPT> tags

  The <NOSCRIPT> tag is not for writing "Your browser is bad, come back when you install better" but for providing the same functionality for browser without JavaScript or with JavaScript turned off.

  (By the way, texts like "If you can see this text, that means you have no JavaScript" are as stupid as "If you can see this text, that means you have a kernel panic")

  If your website is unusable without JavaScript, it needs a redesign. Don't use <a href="javascript:..."> links if you don't have equivalent <a href="http:..."> links inside a <NOSCRIPT>.

• Remember about other browsers than yours

  If your website is best viewed with any specific browser, or in any specific resolution, you're not a good web designer and worst of all, you don't understand what the Web is all about. See the Any Browser Campaign. Install Lynx (a text-mode browser) and see how your website looks like. If it's unusable, it's poorly designed. Remember to always use ALT property in IMG tags, aspecially in navigation buttons.

• Remember about people with disabilities

  See the Web Accessibility Initiative and always try to meet the Triple-A, Double-A or at least Level A Conformance. Use Web Accessibility Initiative logos on your website, or just a text information about your level of conformance.

  "The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect." - Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web

  People may access your website using Braille terminals or voice synthesis. Testing your website with Lynx is always a good idea.

• Colors

  Remember that 10% of your visitors are color-blind in some degree. Remember that black text on white background is the best combination for any text longer than few lines. Try to learn from the good old books, not from the magazines about the latest celebrity gossips.

• Fonts

  Remember that the best font for text longer than few lines is a serif, variable width font, like Times. Try to learn from the good old books, not from the magazines about the latest celebrity gossips.

• User defaults

  You should always use the default font face and default font size for the normal text content on your website. Just don't define the face and size, and it'll be ok. Remember that when you use size "-2" for the whole text on your page it means: "For the text on this page, use the font two levels smaller than what the user has chosen as his/her default and favorite size of font".

  Use your own font faces, sizes and colors other than black on white, only for logos, headers etc., but not for the main text to read, longer than few lines and especially longer than a paragraph. Soemone has set a bigger size as a default for a reason - maybe he/she has a small screen, maybe he/she has problems with eyes, maybe he/she just likes big fonts - respect this decision.

• Accept-Language

  If your site is multilingual, use the Accept-Language HTTP header. My browser sends Accept-Language in every single request and it's stupid that I have to click English version links, after I've already told it in my HTTP request. See the RFC 1945 - HTTP/1.0 (May 1996)

  D.2.4 Accept-Language

  The Accept-Language request-header field is similar to Accept, but restricts the set of natural languages that are preferred as a response to the request.

  It's nearly 6 years old feature, still most of people don't use it. RFC 2616 - HTTP/1.1 (June 1999) defines much richer Accept-Language header (See section 14.4), but please, use HTTP/1.0 functionality at least. See www.debian.org which is a great example of this feature functionality.
• See good websites and learn from them
  • debian.org
  • gnu.org
  • google.com
  • dmoz.org
  • w3.org
• Try to learn from the good old books

  Try to learn from the good old books, not from the magazines about the latest celebrity gossips.

• Hire an expert, like me

  Contact me and I'll fix your broken website or supervise your webmasters for very affordable prices.

What the hell are you talking about? Lynx is the de facto text web browser. It's older than time.

Anyway, what I want to do is run linux on my k6-2 333 or heaven forbid my p1-100 and still be able to browse the web.

This is what I like the most about open source software; the diversity that is a natural consequence of the open-source model has resulted in a number of browsers:

• Mozilla
• Galeon
• Konqueror
• SkipStone

There are also some proprietary browsers:

• Netscape. All of the browsers can be freely downloaded, and Netscape Communicator will work fine on the Pentium 100 machine.
• Opera

- Sam

If you want some graphics and multiple windows, X11 is actually not that heavy-weight, although Gnome and KDE are. Consider running plain X11 with "twm", "fvwm", or Oroborus. Of those, "twm" is ubiquitous, while oroborus is a little more modern. For minimal graphical web browsing, consider the "dillo" web browser, although it won't work on complex sites. You could also download Opera, although it's commercial.

If you want some graphics and multiple windows, X11 is actually not that heavy-weight, although Gnome and KDE are. Consider running plain X11 with "twm", "fvwm", or Oroborus. Of those, "twm" is ubiquitous, while oroborus is a little more modern. For minimal graphical web browsing, consider the "dillo" web browser, although it won't work on complex sites. You could also download Opera, although it's commercial.

I use...Netscape 4.77 to browse the web. I do not depend on non-free software for anything.

Netscape 4.x is non-free software. Consider using Mozilla, links, Konqueror (to name just a few) if you want to live completely in the free software world.

Now to your point about what DrinkOrDie was thinking: I don't know. I'm not saying I can defend their actions (I use only free software as much as possiblemy PC's BIOSes are not yet free software, for instance) but I don't know why they did what they did. I don't think what they did is stealing and I'm not convinced the genuine loss in income for the copyright holders of the duplicated software is in the billions because I'm not convinced all the people who have unauthorized copies would have paid for them anyhow. However, I'm still not privvy to why DrinkOrDie did what they did.