RE: ummm...

At 11:58 AM 12/06/00 +0100, you wrote:
>Hi,
>
>At 04:22 PM 08/06/00 -0400, St=E9phane Bergeron wrote:
> >Netscape 6 has indeed dropped some of the elements it supported before
> >With the coming of NS 6 and Opera 4 as well  as the already released Mac=
 IE
> >5, I believe that the days of coding pages with duct tape-like hacks,
> >fudges and workarounds are really drawing to a close.  NS 6 will be a lot
> >stricter about how it renders invalid code
>
>I've been avoiding using CCS as it doesn't seem to be consistently
>implemented yet and I design sites that are often viewed in older browsers
>(NN3 especially). But this means I need to change! If I use CCS and the old
>deprecated (especially <FONT>) tags, will older or newer browsers choke on
>the unrecognized code?
>Thanks.

Hello Adrian,

It's true that CSS is not consistently implemented in the browsers that=20
support it to varying degree but older browsers are really not the=20
problematic issue here.   Browsers who do not understand CSS simply ignore=
=20
it and fall back on the default browser settings for font faces and sizes=20
if no FONT tags are present.   That's what is called graceful=20
degradation.  If font tags are there then NN3 will use them.  On most pages=
=20
or sites I design I made a personal but conscious choice to drop font tags=
=20
altogether.  I find them messy, they bloat the code and make it harder to=20
read so I stopped using them period.  If you keep using FONT tags yourself=
=20
to format your text then it will render fine in older browsers.

The only major obstacle I find to the use of CSS now is its spotty and=20
sometimes downright atrocious support in some browsers, namely IE 3.x and=20
Netscape 4.x.  IE 3 has the excuse that it came out before CSS level 1 was=
=20
even a solid W3C recommendation back in '96 and it's now fading into=20
oblivion (at least on the sites who's  logs I have access to).  Netscape=20
4.x on the other hand is a much bigger problem and doesn't have any excuse=
=20
in my opinion to justify its extremely buggy CSS support.  If I need to use=
=20
CSS that's beyond the very basics then I sniff out Netscape 4.x on the=20
server and give it a dumbed down versions of any style sheets I use.  The=20
problem with Netscape 4.x is that it can completely destroy the layout of a=
=20
page if you're not careful.  You just need to test your CSS pages very=20
thoroughly but I don't let that prevent me from using CSS.  It does handle=
=20
basic text formatting fine though, as long as you use redundant style rules=
=20
for all elements you want to affect because of it's bugs with inheritance.

I think that once you get comfortable working with CSS and get to=20
appreciate its much increased flexibility and power over font tags you'll=20
have a hard time going back.

HTH!

St=E9phane Bergeron

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