Re: Core CSS commands?

There is a mastergrid out there that covers this in some detail. Also, a
book that covers CSS, like Cascading Style Sheets, 2nd Edition, Lie and
Bos, has little indicators off to the site that indicate what browser
version supports what attribute.

Another way is to confine your usage of CSS to CSS1 that was supported
by MSIE 3.0 (yep, that old), and avoid positioning using CSS2, using
tables instead for layout of a web page.

Remember that for the 4.x series of Netscape, the cascade does not work
reliably, and that the a:link, a:hover and the like do not work.

A methodology that I have found works is the in the content of the page,
where you have tables, headings, lists and the like, is to be consistent
in how you lay stuff out using simple block level elements.

For instance, if you have a heading for each page and subsections below
those, then  use one of the h1 to h6 elements to "outline" and organize
your content. Then go an apply some simple CSS like:

font-family
font-style
font-size
font-weight

Then below each heading, use block level elements like:

P
UL, OL, DL
TABLE
BLOCKQUOTE

Again, using the font-???? listed above.

Then, inside that, use logical markup. For instance, use STRONG instead
of B, and the like.

You can easily create some rather elegant pages keeping it simple.

The other nice thing is that if you turn off the style sheet, you will
discover that the page still works. No, it no longer looks as elegant,
but it will still work reasonably well.

I'm lucky in that it is easy for me to see how different browsers to see
different pages, with and without style sheets. I have multiple copies
of Windows installed, and can easily check out how a page looks with
MSIE 5, 5.5 and 6.0 by simple starting up a Windows session in a window
on my Linux desktop. Then I have a very old, and seldom used version of
Netscape 3.x, then a just retired Netscape 4.7, and my primary browser
is Galeon, which is a lightweight interface to the gecko rendering
engine which is at the heart of the Mozilla/Netscape line of browsers. 

I'm also lucky in that I grew up writing web pages B.C. (Before CSS). To
me, what does and does not work seems very automatic and rather hard to
put down into ascii. The closest thing I have to documenting what does
and does not work are the macros I've programed into my web page editor,
emacs.

So, CSS1 a la MSIE 3.0, tables for positioning and find the CSS
mastergrid (it's somewhere out there on the web.





>>>>
Someone mentioned that one couldn't go too far wrong with just using the
"core" CSS commands/tags, that would not choke browsers. What might
those be? (I know, I haven't been paying attention...)
<<<<
-- 


Jim Tom Polk -:- jtpolk(at)texas.net -:- http://camalott.com/~jtpolk/	
	''You might as well fall flat on your face as 
	  lean over too far backwards.''      --James Thurber--
   "The Universe is run by the complex interweaving of three 
          elements: energy, matter and enlightened self-interest." 
 		- G'Kar  "Survivors"                                  

HTML: hwg-basics mailing list archives, maintained by Webmasters @ IWA