Re: lynx-dev Searching for info about lynx accomodation of javascript

[Patrick]

In "lynx-dev Searching for info about lynx accomodation of javascript"
[12/Jan/2001 Fri 06:35:49]
Larry W. Virden wrote:

> I know that lynx doesn't do javascript.  What I was surprised by this morning
> was to see lynx outputting javascript attributes (an onmouseout) from an A 
> tag .
> 
> Does lynx insert all unknown/unsupported attributes of a tag into the
> text output?  I hadn't noticed this before today.  

I think like any well-behaved browser [very few of those, I'm
sorry to say. . .], Lynx ignores HTML attributes it doesn't understand.
Try seeing how Netscape [not well-behaved, but a fair example
here] handles <TAB ID="foo"> and <TAB TO="foo">.

> Here's a part of an internal page display:
> 
>    [1]Title,
>    Keywords,
>    Author,
>    ISBN,
>    Owner,
>    Notes,
>    Personal Copy,
>    Location,
>    Department,
>    Year,
>    Volume,
>    and
>    Copies')" onmouseout="hidetip()">Search/Maintain
>                                [2]Add a Book
>                                   [3]Help
>    [4]the powerful Verity Search Language,
>    detailed help on Verity Seaching is found here.')"
>    onmouseout="hidetip()">Verity Search Help
>         [5]for your use at CAS')" onmouseout="hidetip()">Order Book
>                       [6]You currently own 49 Book(s)
> 
> 
> Here's the portion of html that generated the above:
> 
> <Table Border="10" BGCOLOR="99FFFF">
> <TR>
>         <TH align="center">
>                 <font size="+3">
>                 <A href="Search.cfm" style="text-decoration:none" 
> onmouseover="showtip(this,event,'Locate Books 
> via<br>Title,<br>Keywords,<br>Author,<br>ISBN,<br>Owner,<br>Notes,<br>Personal
>  Copy,<br>Location,<br>Department,<br>Year,<br>Volume,<br>and<br>Copies')" 
> onmouseout="hidetip()">Search/Maintain</A>

[snip]

It's all the <br> tags embedded in the <A> .  It reads the first
">" character as the end of the tag, and begins rendering what's
left over as visible text.  The other BRs are treated as normal
tags.

That's also why this trailing bit was visible:

    Copies')" onmouseout="hidetip()">Search/Maintain

> Also, I'm looking for current pointers for some web sites which deal
> in detail with proper web site design to accomodate both javascript
> actived and javascript inactived web browsers.  For instance, is

That page is not one of them.  ;-)

> there some way for a page to be written properly so that people with
> Javascript gets the functionality intended while those without Javascript
> get a clean interface as well.

Plenty, like <NOSCRIPT> content, but very few people use them.
Those same people often forget to put ALTs on their images.  All
the JS tutorials I've seen -- from "tips and tricks" kinds of
things to technical papers -- recommend these provisions but few
authors bother.  They're not hard to do really.


                             Patrick
                   <mailto:address@hidden>
                <http://www.island.net/~pboylan/>

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