Re: invisible border (was background problems in Netscape 4.7

Actually, Fuzzy, the term 'CSS' seems a bit vague...:).  Are you
SURE that setting font sizes using CSS will not show up in the
vast majority of browsers?  Or perhaps you are simply referring to
those aspects of CSS that are not yet widely supported...?  It
makes sense to me, for instance, to use font formatting and
general font/background color setting using CSS, even if I can't
reliably use it to position page many block-level document
components yet.

3.2 is certainly more reliable for block-level stuff, and we still
have to use tables to get what we want, but I am afraid there are
two excellent reasons to spend hours on CSS work:

1) It does make the docs cleaner and lighter when used to handle
the more widely supported formatting, such as font size,
background color, font color and a few other things.  Of course
the pages don't look identical in different browsers...they won't.
Opera is a different software company than Microsoft, and so they
can interpret things a bit differently (although, hopefully, not
*radically* differently!)...ever seen the difference in the way a
spreadsheet displays from Excel to Star Office?  Additionally, it
is quite acceptable to use gracefully degrading designs to handle
situations where 85% of one's audience will see the intended
display...my criteria for making the judgment revolves around
whether the content is accessible.  If I can use CSS, get the
effect I want in the vast majority of displays and still have the
information available with minor display differences in something
old like  NN4, then it works for me...:).

2) Style sheets will continue (MHO) making inroads in the
community and the time spent now learning them will pay off.  Of
course, it may not be all that useful in 2 years to know fixes to
make a document display right in NN4, but researching all these
things while learning CSS now can't help but make the designer
more involved with he learning process...

I agree that you have a good point considering the support for 3.2
vs. the turmoil of CSS, but let's not throw the baby out with the
bathwater.  Just switching to CSS for basic formatting has
lightened our pages considerably as well as easing maintenance.
There are many current uses one can safely put CSS to.

D


----- Original Message -----
From: "Captain F.M. O'Lary" <ctfuzzy(at)canopy.net>

At 06:11 PM 3/18/01 -0500, Darrell King wrote:
[ . . .]
To validate strict and also worry about every little
>detail in NN 4.x seems like a sure course to higher stress
>levels...:)
[. . . ]

Isn't using CSS (at this time) productive !?!?!?!?

This is fun . . . . right? I sure couldn't think of any other
reason to
spend so much time and effort on something one KNOWS is not going
to show
up as designed on the HUGE vast majority of browsers likely to be
visiting.

Fuzzy

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