Comment by exikyut
6 years ago
Curious, I installed lynx just to check this out.
I find that I physically cannot navigate to the links in the page except the first few at the top.
But.
On the pages I get, the <a ... href="..." ...>...</a> structure is still 100% intact. It's buried in a table and div soup, but it's there.
So, I argue Lynx parsing bug!
The author of this article would have done well to save and diff the working/not-working HTML they received. :(
Not really a bug more than an outdated browser not being updated for HTML 5.
In HTML 4, <a href="..."><div>...</div></a> is an error and Lynx deals with this by implicitly closing the <a>, turning it into a hidden link (which can still be followed by pressing 'l').
In HTML 5, <a href="..."><div>...</div></a> is valid.
Google actually detects the Lynx user agent and sends an HTML 4 page, but apparently this new code wasn't written with that in mind.
I think it is because in html4 the content of an <a> element is restricted to inline elements, whereas in html5 <a> is transparent so its content can be block elements if its parent allows them.
That would explain why my blog is terribly broken in lynx. The links from my category pages to article pages are usually done with <a href...><figure>...</figure></a>, which breaks the <a> in lynx.
Why should anyone have to do that? If the site stops working for the user than it no longer works.
Should they be expected to make their own ‘re-Googler’ to fix the page so they can use it again?
>Why should anyone have to do that?
When there's a browser bug, someone needs to debug it and fix the browser. Otherwise the browser bug will remain forever.