>
> On Tue, 12 Feb 2002, Brian Kelly wrote:
>
> | To say we shouldn't go down the CSS/PNG/SMIL/SVG/ etc.
> route is to
> | deny services which are clearly needed by many.
> | Life was clearly easier in the past when vendors (Microsoft,
> | Borland, Sun or whoever) could say that version 1 of the
> software is
> | no longer supported.
> | So how do you see ourselves moved to a richer, more
> robust, more
> | accessible Web?
>
> The simple solution is to use style sheets partly as they
> were intended, i.e. serve different pages to different
> browsers.
That's not how they were intended. The intention was for different
types for different _media_ (e.g. CSS allows you to use different style
sheets for onscreen and print). If you want to provide different style
sheets for different browsers you will have to provide your own
application logic (client-side JavaScript - a problem if Javascript
isn't provided or is diabled or server-side - extra complexity).
You will also have to build your CSS files so that they only use safe
features (i.e. don't intend margings for Netscape 4 browsers).
You will also find it difficult to maintain the list of browsers and the
CSS features they support (Opera is know about but what about minority
browsers).
However I would agree that this is a legitimate approach, although
purists could argue that (a) Web resources should degrade gracefully so
we shouldn't be doing this or (b) we shouldn't be supporting fbrowsers
with bugs in them.
Ideally you would program this logic into your CMS so it becomes
transparent to your information providers.
Brian
> That way, you can have a more simple, plain site
> for, say, NS4.x, and a more 'designed' (for want of a better
> term) one for IE. And your pages will continue to work
> as people move from one browser to the other.
>
> You have to accept the fact that pages simply aren't going to
> look identical in different browsers. That's a hard pill for
> some designers to swallow, but, hey, that's the way the web
> works. It's a unique medium in that users can
> (theoretically) decide how they want to view it.
>
> Kat
>
>
>
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