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Internet With Your Commodore 64.


If you want to use your C-64/C-128 to get on the World Wide Web to see the eBay auction and its Commodore listings, maybe I can offer some helpful tips to get you there in six easy steps. These suggestions are for Commodore users with shell accounts which have online access to the Lynx (text-only web browser).

Before you start, you can open a capture buffer and later, off-line, review where you've been. If your results are anything like I get using Desterm, it won't be a lot of help. Still, I would suggest you go ahead and open a big buffer in your term program. Then proceed as follows:

1. Log onto your ISP and from any menu select or type: "!lynx" and RETURN. (Type only the things inside the quotes, not the quotes themselves.) This gets you onto the Web. (Ed. note: Some ISPs will have a menu selection for Web access.) While browsing, you will see things like "[INLINE]" and other non-familiar prompts, but they are not for Commodore users, so just ignore them. The several lines of commands at the bottom of the screen are the Lynx text browser commands.

2. To access any web site using Lynx, type go or just "g" and you will see, highlighted: URL to open: Enter the site address and RETURN. In this case it is, http://www.ebay.com (all lowercase). This will bring up the eBay auction, with a list of categories, beginning with antiques. Cursor down to Computers (#####) and press RETURN.

3. You will then have a chance to search for a sub-category. Type "commodore" on the blank line and RETURN. (Lynx isn't very case-sensitive, so lowercase for everything usually works.) Below that will be a couple of options to search only in computers, or search titles and descriptions. For now ignore these options and just press RETURN when the highlight is on Search. This will bring up the first group of 50 or so Commodore items.

4. At the upper right corner of the screen you'll see (page 1 of xx). Each page contains a group of listings. The listings may not start on the first page. You may see Search Results and some headers for the listings near the bottom of page one: i.e., Item# Item Price Bids Ends. Jot down or keep these headers in mind as you use the space bar to go to the 2nd page, where the listings will begin. (There may be several hundred Commodore items listed, so expect to see a lot of them!) At the end of each group of listings, you will see these options: Go to top of page gets you to the beginning of that group, and Next brings up the next group. Highlight your choice and press RETURN.

5. Generally, you can use the following keys for browsing: Up and Down cursors to get around on the screen and move the highlight bar. Use Return or Right Cursor to select a highlighted item. Lower keyboard cursors work fine. The minus key (-) lets you go back to previous page when you're reading beyond page one of a multi-page section. Space bar to go to the next page. Sometimes there's a prompt at the bottom of the screen to remind you of this, but not always. There is no need to cursor, or move the highlight, to the bottom of a page before going to the next page. Inst/Del key to bring up your History page, which helps if you get lost while browsing. This will show every link you've used to get where you are, and lets you go back to any previous branching place just by highlighting it and pressing RETURN. It is a very useful feature.

Type "q" at any time to quit Lynx and the WWW, and get back to your ISP's main menu.

Happy browsing and good luck on the Web!


Resolving Problems with LYNX

Question: When using LYNX, when I go to certain web sites, I get the following message: "Alert!: This client does not contain support for HTTPS URLs."
Any idea what this means, and is there anything I can do about it to gain access to the site?

Answer:

HTTPS denotes a secure site. Unless you're using Billy's Bonus pkg (or similar) you won't be able to access it. In fact, the other day I hit such a site and couldn't get in. (Probably didn't pay my dues.)

What it means is that the version of Lynx you're using doesn't have the added ability to visit secure web pages.

Lynx can be compiled so that it will let you visit secure pages, but it involves having an additional library online (Open SSL), and patching Lynx before compiling it. Every time I update Lynx I do this for our users, and while it used to seem quite involved, the people making Lynx keep making this part easier and easier.

To access the pages, you'll either need to ask your system administrator to update Lynx so it will work with secure pages, or find a provider that offers Lynx in this format. (Of course, you could also use either Netscape or MS Internet Explorer, but I'm assuming you want to access the pages with your Commodore, not with another computer).

It was because not all browsers have this ability that I set up our web store so instead of only offering secure orders, it has two buttons - one for normal orders, and one for secure. That way if the secure doesn't work, there's always something to fall back on.

As of February 2000 Maurice Randall is finishing a graphic browser for Commodore (The Wave). See here - https://github.com/mist64/thewave

(by Marge W.)