From brg Mon May 29 13:34:46 2000 Return-Path: Received: (from brg@localhost) by soda.csua.Berkeley.edu (8.8.8/) id NAA09956; Mon, 29 May 2000 13:34:14 -0700 (PDT) env-from (brg) Date: Mon, 29 May 2000 13:34:14 -0700 From: Brian Gaeke To: Jakub Kotrla Cc: brg@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU Subject: Re: ?-best viewed with telnet... Message-ID: <20000529133413.A2465@soda.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU> References: <20000517092056.C3C28C23C4@rs.cesnet.cz> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2i In-Reply-To: <20000517092056.C3C28C23C4@rs.cesnet.cz>; from jkotrla@JOSEPH.GJK.CZ on Wed, May 17, 2000 at 11:18:22AM +0000 Status: RO Content-Length: 3953 Lines: 86 And then spake Jakub Kotrla, as follows: > I've found your page about your initiative Best viewed with telnet to > port 80. I think that is a very good and funny idea but I have one > question. While you are using your "browser" can you see images? > Or rather do you want to see them? Mostly, I don't want to see images. This doesn't necessarily result in a loss of information, because of ALT attributes on IMG elements, which are supposed to contain text-based descriptions of graphical page elements. These are good for people who can't see (and are forced to have a digitized voice speak the text on the page, for example), or simply don't want to waste time downloading the images (on a cell modem link or a wireless connection, for example) or don't have the memory to deal with the images (on a palmtop or other embedded device, for example.) > It probably possible that you use any other program to view images > which you get with telnet but do you do it? You could easily run ElectricEyes, gimp, xloadimage, etc., to view images that you download from web sites; however downloading an image can be difficult, because of Telnet's handling of line-mode input/output. An easier way would be to use a small client program like netcat (nc) to make the connection and save the HTTP response to a file, then trim the headers off of it. An even easier way would be to use a command line browser such as lynx with its -source option, wget, or curl to save the http response with the headers already trimmed. As an example, you can say something like % lynx -source 'http://web.server.com/some.image.jpg' > some.image.jpg % ee some.image.jpg & to look at an image whose URL is . > The reason of my question is that you have one image (logo) at the > top of your page. I am probably going to support your initiative so I > want to know if I can use images. A valid point indeed. If you don't want to use the logo because it is hard to view with conventional Telnet to port 80, you can use the direct link as it appears on my home page: [Best Viewed with Telnet to Port 80]
Or, alternatively, you can use the logo with an ALT attribute so that it can be read by people using a graphical browser AND by people who are not able to see the graphic. That would look like this: [Best Viewed with Telnet to Port 80] Please note that I have recently converted the logo to patent-free PNG format. > If you've created the pages about your initiative as a good joke and > you find my questions crazy, please tell me it too. Well, the intent of the pages was partly as a joke, and partly to make people realize how much time is wasted with fancy browser features, broken servers and bad HTML. Some things that you can do to support the initiative include * understanding how browsers do what they do (the HTTP protocol and HTML standard), * understanding what browsers are supposed to do (standard HTML vs. incompatible browser "extensions"), * building web pages so that they are more accessible to people running command line browsers, non-graphical browsers, non-standard browsers, people who cannot see well, etc. (appending an ALT attribute to every IMG element, and supporting full-featured "text-only" versions of sites, for example.) Some other good resources include www.anybrowser.org (the Best viewed with Any Browser initiative) and www.w3.org (the W3C standard committee.) Hope this helps. -Brian -- Brian R. Gaeke, UC Berkeley -- brg@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU "the iguana / in the petshop window on St Catherine Street / crested, royal-eyed, ruling / its kingdom of water-dish and sawdust / dreams of sawdust" - Margaret Atwood, "Dreams of the Animals"