Text-Mode Browser Friendly Search Form

I decided to write a tiny Text-Mode Browser Friendly Search Form because I needed a form which would allow me to run queries fast with my favorite Web browser, Lynx.

The problem arose when Google, which is the search engine that I use the most, changed the layout of its front page. It was then impossible to go there, type a few words and then press enter to get the results; I had to go through two other link before reaching the submit button.

I therefore sent them an email and am now waiting to see if they are going to do something about it (they acknowledge my request):

From hugo@larve.net Mon Oct 23 11:20:56 2000
Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2000 11:20:56 -0400
From: Hugo Haas <hugo@larve.net>
To: webmaster@google.com
Subject: Layout of your home page
Message-ID: <20001023112056.A19117@w3.org>
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Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i
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Hi.

You recently changed the layout of your home page[1], and this change is
not very convenient when using a text browser such as Lynx[2]. Here is
the layout you get:

                                   Google

                       Search 1,247,340,000 web pages
           _______________________________________________________
                              Advanced Search                     
                                 Preferences 
                       Google Search I'm Feeling Lucky

As you can see, the "Google Search" button is not next to the text area,
which means that when you want to do a search, you need to type in your
query, then press down twice, and then press enter.

Is there any chance that you can fix that?

By the way, this page is not valid[3] HTML either. It would be cool to
have it valid. :-)

Thanks.

Regards,

Hugo

  1. http://www.google.com/
  2. http://lynx.browser.org/
  3. http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

-- 
Hugo Haas <hugo@larve.net> - http://larve.net/people/hugo/
Je crois ce que je vois, je vois ce que je regarde et je regarde ce que 
je veux. -- Blaise Pascal (?)

In the meantime, I decided to write my own form whose requirements were:

• it must be easy to use with a text browser: once loaded, you can just type your query and get your answers without having to go through pointless links.
• the form must be as small as possible (less than 1K).
• the mark-up must be valid.

It took the Google team... four days to modify their home page to have easy to use with a text-mode browser! I was really amazed by that and I publicly expressed my gratitude for their fast action.

This form is probably useless now, but I'll leave it as is if people want to use use it anyway because it's really small. Moreover, I might want to change the search engine used at some point or Google might start serving a larger home page.