I use Lynx for reading the message board sometimes. With the old software, it automatically inserted “alt” text in the image tags for the smilies, so I could tell when posts used a smiley (fairly important for picking up sarcasm and jokes). However, the new software doesn’t seem to include the “alt” tag. Is there an easy way to add this?
Thanks.
Errr… huh?
I don’t think I get it. Are you saying the smilies have some sort of Alt-code that can be used as well, besides all the combinations of ;, :, p, ), (, and whatnot? And you want to be able to see these codes?
I think he means that the generated HTML for the page has an ALT tag defined for the image, i.e.:
<img=“smashie.gif” ALT=“Smashie”>
This would cause a little box saying “Smashie” to appear if you hover over the smilie image.
Useful if you surf:
a) without graphics turned on.
-or-
b) if you’re visually impaired and use a special browser which will read the ALT tag image info to you.
Oh, I didn’t explain very well; sorry about that. In HTML, the image tag (<img>) has an additional field labeled “alt” which can be used to specify alternative text that shows up if a browser doesn’t show images. For example, the line
<img src=“happy_smile.gif” alt=“This is a happy smile”>
is used to show the image “happy_smile.gif”. In Lynx or any browser with images turned off, the words “This is a happy smile” will appear instead of the image. Right now, when a smiley is used, the alt field in the image tag is left blank (alt=""), so without images, nothing shows up at all.
That sounds to me like a change that would require a “hack” to the source code, and we don’t do those changes. However I could be wrong. I will find out.
P.S. Now you’ve made me curious. Do you even see threads in any kind of useful format in Lynx? I think cygwin has a Lynx browser, I’ll have to try it out.
I find that Lynx works fairly well in viewing threads. It was a bit better with the old software, since some of the formatting is a little different, but it’s quite usable. It does look different from a “normal” browser, so it takes getting used to and since I don’t post much (okay, I don’t post at all), I don’t know how easy or hard that is. I’ve tried to log in from Lynx a few times without much success, but I never accept cookies either so that could be it. (I’m posting these messages from IE on my Mac at home.) Trying to follow links offsite can be annoying, since pages with more graphics generally don’t display well. But it’s especially handy at work, since displaying the page in Lynx is virtually indistinguishable from a normal xterm window. 
Bad news I’m afraid. I don’t think we can fix it without “hacking” the code, which, as I said before, we are not prepared to do. Sorry, but kudos to you for using Lynx! Keep alternative platforms alive, I say.
Uh, Lynx is a text-only browser. It has been ported to many platforms, most of them Unix variants, although there is a Lynx for Win32.
Lynx Viewer. Get an idea of what your webpage looks like to the text-only crowd.
I suppose that the word “platform” shouldn’t be used to describe a web browser. Let me rephrase that: kudos on using GNU software!
I tried some things, Arnold, and found that there is a non-hacking way that would work for most cases. But that’s the rub - most, but not all cases. So I guess you’re going to be a little out of luck.
Anthracite - watch for an e-mail coming your way.
Was it titled “Hot Asian Sluts in Your Inbox”, “Make Money Fast”, or “You are a F***ing Whore”? Because that’s all I got. 
After conferring with Anthracite it seems that there is no magic bullet. Sorry Sparklo.