All

I was having trouble with Netscape 6 display but discovered that tiny errors
in CSS coding were responsible: there appears to be absolutely no error
trapping for CSS in browsers. There are still some bug issues with Netscape
6 since the final release is supposed to be in October. It has steadily
improved over the last couple of months.

Also the public beta of Opera 4.0 is available for Windows 95/98/NT/2000
and it is doing quite well with XML. The XML files and CSS I have been
working on display similarly in all three browsers although there are some
differences. http://www.opera.com/download.html (scroll down a bit and
download the 4.0 Beta 3)

These two browsers are attempting to fully implement CSS1, HTML 4.0, XML 1.0
and other W3C recommendations, and provide partial, but correct CSS2
support.


Internet Explorer has implemented CSS fairly well but incompletely in
Windows. The Web Standards Organization (http://www.webstandards.org/)
praised Internet Explorer 5.5 for the Macintosh but blasted the upcoming
version of Internet Explorer 5.5  for Windows for undercutting Web standards
by incompletely implementing CSS1, HTML 4.0, and XML 1.0 and implementing a
number of proprietary extensions.

FROM THE WEB STANDARDS ORG DIATRIBE:

On 10 April, we flamed Microsoft for previewing IE 5.5/Windows, a browser
that strikes out on complete support for any standard. Instead, using that
"freedom to innovate" that Microsoft spokesmen praise on the courtroom
steps, IE 5.5 takes a bold leap toward the future by implementing colored
scrollbars.

In IE5/Mac (in Standard mode), absolute font-size keywords are done right,
per CSS-1. "Medium" means "medium size" and "small" means "one size smaller
than medium." Not exactly rocket science. Over in Windows-land, "medium"
means "large," and "small" means "medium." Confusing? You bet. What does
this mean in the real world? It means your text is guaranteed to be
wrong-sized on one platform or the other.

One more example. In 1998, the WaSP's CSS Samurai began testing browsers for
CSS compliance. Among the challenges our wizards devised was a "Box Acid
Test" which no browser handled correctly at the time. Today, IE/5 Mac
handles the Box Acid Test like a charm. You'd think IE5.5/Windows would do
likewise. Think again. The browser fails.

How about HTML 4.0? Microsoft got it right in IE5/Mac. In Windows, it's
still unfinished.
Microsoft claims that they don't know what we mean by support and by
standards. For instance, that they don't know what we mean by XML.  Here's
what we mean: reading XML 1.0 syntax (stable since February 1998),
displaying it using CSS level 1 (December 1996), and maybe as an optional
extra level 2 (May 1998), programming access through the DOM Level 1
(October 1998), and embedding HTML using Namespaces (January 1999). Note
that all of these recommendation are over a year old, with many older than
two.

Terence de Giere
Human Factors International, Inc

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