Voting Issues with Lynx (and other browsers)

I realise that few of you use text-based browsers to view the PerlMonks site, but something happened to me a couple of days ago that made me think of a suggestion for the site that would be useful regardless of browser.

I had the misfortune a few days ago of having a powercut which caused several errors serious enough to have to reinstall (Currently using Mandrake, waiting for Debian 3 to be mailed to me). I was able, however, to view the site using Lynx.
I'm going to take a moment to congratulate the PMDevs for the accessibilty of the Perl Monks site. It is good to see that the layout and functionality is not diminished regardless of what you use to access it.
Now, I noticed that every node I'd yet to vote on already had a positive vote placed there, which I could change to a -- vote if I so wished. This made the system break down slightly here, as I was forced to cast votes for every reply to a question even if I only wanted to up/downvote one reply.

I realise that this might not be possible to fix, and seeing as Lynx users are in the minority it may not be worth the effort in seeing to this problem. However, I wondered whether it would be possible to add a small button somewhere, maybe next to the "vote!" button, that clears all of your choices. I've often been in the situation where I've only had one vote left, and I see two nodes worthy of upvoting, and wish to not vote on a node that I've marked -- (nodes worthy of upvoting are more important than nodes I want to downvote - if the node is that bad it will be considered or deleted anyway). I'm sure this happens to a lot of other Monks too, especially those at low levels who have few and precious votes.

Would this be possible, and what do others feel about this?

--
Rozallin

Comment on Voting Issues with Lynx (and other browsers)

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Voting Issues with Lynx (and other browsers) by Zaxo (Archbishop) on Sep 27, 2002 at 18:52 UTC
I've cast a few unintended ++'s with lynx, too. It will still be awkward, but if you select 'Null Vote' in your user settings, you will get a third radio button for cancelling votes. That is handy in any browser, but is essential with lynx. After Compline, Zaxo	[reply]
Re^2: Voting Issues with Lynx (and other browsers) by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Sep 27, 2002 at 19:40 UTC
Maybe an additional option to also have +=0 selected by default would be helpful in that case. Makeshifts last the longest.	[reply]
Re: Voting Issues with Lynx (and other browsers) by abell (Chaplain) on Sep 27, 2002 at 19:37 UTC
According to the HTML 4.01 Specification: If no radio button in a set sharing the same control name is initially "on", user agent behavior for choosing which control is initially "on" is undefined. ... Since user agent behavior differs, authors should ensure that in each set of radio buttons that one is initially "on". As to the button clearing all choices, as far as I know it would require using javascript, which is not supported by lynx. Cheers Antonio __ The stupider the astronaut, the easier it is to win the trip to Vega - A. Tucket	[reply]
Re: Re: Voting Issues with Lynx (and other browsers) by rjimlad (Acolyte) on Sep 29, 2002 at 14:13 UTC
You're absolutely right. In fact, what ideally should be used is not checkboxes but <select> elements eg: `<select name='vote_XXXXX'> <option value='' selected='selected'></option> <option value='1'>++</option> <option value='-1'>--</option> </select></option>` [download] ...which would have the minor extra quirk that the resultant form argument would be passed to the script even if nothing had been selected, but it would get the job done. And lynx is absolutely fine with handling <select>s. Note: In the above example, I've used "" rather than '0', as "" (the empty string) can usually be considered to be (effectively) undefined, in the context of HTTP form contents.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Voting Issues with Lynx (and other browsers) by BigLug (Chaplain) on Oct 02, 2002 at 05:57 UTC
I've often thought similarly and was going to post a similar problem. Sometimes I'll read a post and hit (++) then realise I don't really want to vote it up after all. I'm left only with the option of reloading the page to remove my vote. It would surely be a simple patch to just add a third radio button that just returned a zero (or, maybe a null string: some browsers might not bother passing the vote's name if it has a null value ... anyone know?) `<input type="radio" name="vote__XXXXXX" value="1" />++ <input type="radio" name="vote__XXXXXX" value="1" />0 <input type="radio" name="vote__XXXXXX" value="-1" />--` [download] or looking better: `-- <input type="radio" name="vote__XXXXXX" value="-1" /> <input type="radio" name="vote__XXXXXX" value="0" checked /> <input type="radio" name="vote__XXXXXX" value="+1" /> ++` [download] Which would look like: `-- ( ) (•) ( ) ++`	[reply] [d/l] [select]
THE ABOVE POST WAS WRITTEN BY AN IDIOT by BigLug (Chaplain) on Oct 02, 2002 at 06:01 UTC
THE ABOVE POST WAS WRITTEN BY AN IDIOT Hey! That was ME! I just noticed that that's what the 'null vote' option is for in the preferences. :)	[reply]


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