DosLynx Quick Start Home Page

DosLynx v0.24b finally contains an initial installment of forms support! Other enhancements in this version include support, in the news client, for yEncoded data. And an additional push button, in the Navigate|Find... dialog box, for selecting a case insensitive (loose) search. A few more bug fixes make this the strongest running version of DosLynx, ever.

So far, I've implemented the HTML <FORM METHOD=get . . . and <INPUT . . . tags -- for input TYPEs checkbox, hidden, password, radio, reset, submit, and text. These won't be enough to use a Web Mail service. But, they should provide you with everything you'll need for most search type dialogs.

Checkboxes will look like and and will toggle upon activation. Radio buttons will look like and . Unpushed radio buttons will react just like checkboxes, while popping out the already pushed button, to maintain exactly one pushed button per radio button group.

Reset and submit buttons will look like . When you activate a submit button, the Form's present data content will be appended to the <FORM tag's ACTION= . . . URL and sent. Just as if an equivalent ordinary link had been activated. With one difference. The response to a Form submission will be presented in a new window. That will keep the Form content you've entered available, in the previous window, where it can't be freed from memory until you allow that. Form content you've entered will be lost if you follow an ordinary link from the page containing it, however.

The Window|Clone Window and Hotlist|Add Link To Hotlist menu entries may both be used to make short term or long term copies of your Form content. And, the Navigate|Show Destination URL menu entry has been extended to show upto 804 octets of a submit button's equivalent URL. That display may be printed from the screen. The password/text line input dialog will provide a submit button, as well as an OK button, if and when an HTML <Form doesn't provide one. In that case, the Hotlist|Add Link To Hotlist and Navigate|Show Destination URL menu entries will copy and report the line input dialog submit button's present equivalent URL.

There are a couple other readme files for DosLynx. One is the again updated README.HTM which still tells about the original features, command line parameters, and other important stuff. There is also a history file which describes the major changes I've made in bringing Doslynx from v0.22b to v0.24b. The history file also contains known bugs or missing features. If you find one that isn't there, or don't like something about the way the Forms support is shaping up, please email me at fmacall@nccw.net. Finally, Wayne S. Buttles has provided a little cheat sheet of the key commands to run Doslynx from the keyboard. It includes ones he added.

Remember that you can navigate with your numeric key pad by putting Num Lock ON.

DosLynx no longer contains a built-in graphics viewer. That has been replaced with a swap out and call to DLXVIEW with a parameter naming the .BMP, .GIF, .JPG, .PCX, or .TIF file to be viewed. You may edit DLXVIEW.BAT to invoke your favorite viewer. The DosLynx v0.24b package contains a sample DLXVIEW.BAT which invokes LXPIC (requires CGA+).

As Wayne said: "I have enhanced DosLynx for my own personal enjoyment. It will never be as good as the ['386+ based] versions of Lynx, but at least it is better than nothing. . . . I am just releasing my changes to the general public in hopes that it will help some other Dos User. I have made every attempt to keep it compatible with the lowest IBM-Compatible computer so that the greatest number of people can benefit and I will continue to do so as long as I play with the code."

Good luck, and happy browsing.

Fred C. Macall
15 March 2003