> Do I have to also support people who prefer to use command line text-based web browsers?

Yes. The web is about linked HTML documents: if you don't support lynx, links, elinks, w3m, emacs-w3m & eww then you're honestly not doing Web development properly.

You have to do more work to not support them, because writing plain HTML + forms is the baseline.

> Before you know it we'll have someone say "Oh I work for a bank, we have HTML disabled here. Can you make it work without HTML?" give me a break.

That wouldn't be using the Web anymore.

Many people aren't building websites. They're building applications which target the cross-platform runtime and APIs provided by modern web browsers.

Many of those people should not be building applications. Boilerplate startup landing pages, blogging platforms and e-commerce sites should be websites, as they always were.

As for those who really are building web applications - well, those are separate beasts. Nobody expects to run Google Docs or Gliffy properly in lynx. But I do expect my banking site to run in a text browser, because there's no valid reason it shouldn't.

(Yes, I understand the business reasons for the current sad state of the web. I also believe those reasons are things one should be ashamed of.)

There is a line: support vs. optimization.

Support everyone with a browser & internet access, optimize for the stuff that has the greatest market share or where you can do the most good and stand a good chance of having your dependencies met.