semi-serious web proposal: any essential web service must support the Lynx web browser with equivalent functionality
edit: for those who don't know, Lynx is a text-only web browser with no Javascript support
the logic is extremely simple: if your shit supports Lynx, then it is almost certain that any user with any browser capable of browsing the world wide web with HTTPS is capable of using your site
they can pay their taxes, order groceries, check their library holds, look up legal information, all of it
addendum: you must also be able to choose the Lynx version of the site while using non-Lynx browsers
spitballing a Lynx-compatible grocery store web design, long and rambly
all the pages have header text with essential links - aisles, specials, coupons, cart contents, login link
front page has stuff below that, whatever the marketers want to market, but we already have a grocery list so we'd be going straight to aisles
let's say we're getting paper towels, so we go from there to the paper products aisle
there, we're presented with a list of most popular items, but also a link to filter down the list - which we do
now that we're on the page we want, there's a row for each item, with a description and a link to an item image (this would be the image itself on a graphical browser), and there's a box where you can type a number for how many of that item you want
there's also a box at the bottom where you can tell it to show more than the top 20 items, but in this case the paper towels we want are in the top 20 so we type "1" in the box and hit the adjacent submit button
the page reloads, and now instead of starting blank, it starts with a 1 in it
...then we notice another brand of paper towels is on sale, type 0 in the first box, type 1 in the other box, and submit again
it shows a confirmation screen saying that we are changing multiple quantities and listing just the items we're updating quantity on
and we hit confirm
and move on to the next item on our grocery list
so far we have loaded eight pages (plus however many image links we clicked), and assuming those pages took less than ten seconds each, this has been faster and easier than using the actual presumably-professionally-made grocery website we used yesterday
@Packbat *cosigns enthusiastically*
@dmerej no wonder we liked the "classic HTML" mode so much!
@Packbat seconded! (fully serious!)
@Packbat@indiepocalypse.social before reading the edit i thought the Atari Lynx had a web browser addon
@instereo256 we actually still don't know what an Atari Lynx is - I think we had it mixed up in our head with the Jaguar
@Packbat Lynx users should be treated to an alternative version of the page with great ASCII art, optional ads and bbc style navigation.
@Packbat I agree and have always tried to design with this in mind. once you get into the habit of writing accessible HTML it's not really that much extra work anyway.