ATTENTION stylesheet users!

We have just released Internet Explorer 3.01.
>
>IE 3.01 includes a change in HTML stylesheets that will break many HTML pages
>that currently work in IE3. We must make this change because of a serious bug
>in the implementation of stylesheets - we need to fix this as part of our
>commitment to the W3C and to open HTML standards. However, this will cause a
>one-time hit to most stylesheets pages on the web. I am sending this to all
>of these lists to make sure we catch this problem everywhere possible. 
>
>The short description below explains how to author stylesheet pages with
>margins that look the same in both IE3.0 and IE3.01.  If you author HTML with
>stylesheets, please take the time to read this email and make corrections to
>web pages as necessary. I am sorry for the inconvenience, but this is
>necessary pain to ensure future compatiblity with the use of margins in CSS.
>
>-Thomas Reardon
>
>1. What was broken in IE3.0 stylesheets implementation:
>Margins were functioning as absolute margins instead of relative.  This
>means, for example, that if you had a 1-inch left margin on the <BODY>, and a
>0.5-inch left margin on a paragraph inside the <BODY>, that paragraph would
>be 0.5 inches from the left side of the window, instead of 1.5 inches away
>from the left side of the window.  This goes for all margins (i.e., vertical
>margins too).
>
>2. How margins behave in the corrected IE:
>Margins are all relative; if you have
>
><BODY STYLE="margin-left: 1in; margin-top: 1in">
><P STYLE="margin-left: 0.5in; margin-top: 1.5in">This is some text.</P>
></BODY>
>
>The text will have a (cumulative) left margin of 1.5 inches, and a
>(cumulative) top margin of 2.5 inches.  This is how it is supposed to work,
>according to the CSS specification. (http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TR/WD-css1)
>
>3. How to author a page that works correctly in both:
>The main trick is to not get in any situation where there is more than one
>margin specified in the hierarchy, then both IE3.0 and IE3.01+ will act the
>same way.
>
>For example, the formatting of this HTML will be different between the two
>platforms:
>
><BODY STYLE="margin-left: 1in; margin-top: 1in">
><P STYLE="margin-left: 0.5in; margin-top: 1.5in">This is some text.</P>
></BODY>
>
>but this won't:
>
><BODY>
><P STYLE="margin-left: 1.5in; margin-top: 2.5in">This is some text.</P>
></BODY>
>
>Collapsing the margin properties like this is the only way to be sure the
>margins will look the same on IE3.0 and IE3.01+.
>
>

Received on Friday, 18 October 1996 11:53:18 UTC