Lynx Browser

tdowling at lib.washington.edu tdowling at lib.washington.edu
Wed Oct 4 13:39:28 EDT 1995


Lynx duly ignores the <CENTER> tag because that isn't an HTML tag--it's a
Netscapism, which Windows Mosaic has opted to support as well, probably
along with other browsers.  The comparable technique written into the HTML
3.0 draft is: 

<h1 align="center">This Is A Centered Heading</h1>
<p align="center">This is a centered paragraph.</p>

Since this is already supported in most up-to-date browsers (including
Netscape), some of which also understand align="right" (exluding Netscape)
I strongly recommend this over <center>. 

That said, Lynx doesn't handle this centering technique either. 
Understandably, IMO, the people working on Lynx are trying to keep it
*functionally* up to date (like how in the world to support tables); the
finer points of HTML formatting will always be lost, in a large degree, in
an 80x24 environment.  For example, Lynx already centers H1 tags, because
that's one of the few ways it can differentiate a top-level heading from
paragraph text. 


Thomas Dowling
Networked Information Librarian, Public Services
University of Washington Libraries
tdowling at u.washington.edu


Note from:  "Douglas W. Cornwell 813-449-2761" <CORNWED at mail.firn.edu>
Wed, 04 Oct 95 09:49:19 PDT----------------------------------------
 % One of the answers received on my question about "character entities" 
 % mentioned about the use of Lynx to recognize HTML.  I have discovered, 
 % since I use Lynx quite a bit, that most of the HTML commands are 
 % recognizable by Lynx.  However, every once in awhile I have discovered that 
 % Lynx ignores an HTML command (i.e., the <CENTER> tag).  Can anyone 
 % recommend a site to consult that provides the proper specifications for 
 % HTML use on different browsers?  Also, that tells the differences between 
 % the different versions of HTML?
 % 
 % By the way, thanks to everyone that responded to my questions.  I 
 % appreciate the response time.
 % 
 % Thanks.
 % 
 % Doug Cornwell
 % 


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