RE: LYNX-DEV Supression of messages in Lynx

[Eric Anderson]

Please do not put words into my mouth. We are not trying to do ANYTHING
to our customers. And we do not see them as Dumb.

We are using Lynx ONLY as an HTML viewer for an HTML based help system
for our product. They will not be attached to any other servers and will
not need any other access other than the help files we provide.
Therefore, Lynx has been "distilled" via every configuration setting I
could find, to prevent users from getting confused, when all they are
supposed to be doing with it is viewing our help documentation. There is
no attachment to the web, or to any servers. All displayed files will be
local. 

We have no speech users. Most of our users are people working in data
entry, order entry and warehouses. The total time they will actually use
LYNX will be a matter of minutes - to look up a help topic, follow any
related links to the info they want, print it(maybe) and get back to our
system.

Therefore I do not see that we are inhibiting our users from seeing the
web. We are also not saying they are, or trying to keep them dumb, but
rather only attempting to make the interface between our product and
Lynx (as help viewer) as seamless and unconfusing as possible.

Thank you.



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Al Gilman [SMTP:address@hidden
> Sent: Wednesday, February 18, 1998 11:04 AM
> To:   address@hidden
> Subject:      Re: LYNX-DEV Supression of messages in Lynx
> 
> to follow up on what Eric Anderson said:
> 
> > For the most part, our users are not computer savvy. Out of sight,
> out
> > of mind. If they see the path and filenames, it's just asking for
> > trouble. If they don't, I'm sure it won't even cross their minds
> that
> > these are all stored in little html files...
> 
> Have you played with the message display time parameters, to make
> them really short?  That is the only hack I can think of short of
> getting into the code.  If you go into the code you can suppress
> any message you care to.
> 
> There is a possibility that some speech users would appreciate
> the capability to quash the most informational of messages.
> There is an awful lot of listening to the spelling of URLs that
> goes into using Lynx with a screen reader.
> 
> On the other hand, it sounds as though you think that not only
> are your users dumb but that they had best stay that way.  It is
> not clear that this policy would achieve consensus support on
> this list.  One of the great things about Lynx is how it exposes
> the way the web works, and provides a learning environment where
> users can gradually take control of a very powerful interaction
> with the internet with an amazingly small amount of study.
> 
> I myself am a convicted user bigot.  So I would offer that if you
> are providing your users with a shell account, you need to
> provide the support that comes with user questions about how that
> works; and be glad you have Lynx on your side so you can tell
> them a reasonably simple way to get done what they need to do.
> Unless the service you are providing is defined as a captive
> account where Lynx provides opaque access to predefined pages, do
> not think you can limit the service you provide to the canned
> clicks that you have programmed into pages.
> 
> It is not clear that what you are proposing to do (technically)
> is not shortchanging your customers, in terms of service profile
> definition.
> 
> Al Gilman