Re: Issue 1: Font-weight and headings

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At 06:50 PM 26/07/97 -0700, E. Stephen Mack wrote:
>Traditionally, graphical browsers have rendered heading
>elements (H1..H6) in bold.  An element such as:
>
><H1>The headline <STRONG>is</STRONG> important!</H1>
>
>(with an embedded strong emphasis element) would not
>result in a distinction for the word "is" when this
>element is rendered by browsers such as
>Navigator and IE (without the use of style sheets).
>
>Using CSS1, we can declare that level-one heading elements
>should not be given a bold weight:
>
>H1 { font-weight: normal; }
>
>Since font weight is an inherited property [2], the STRONG element
>in the example heading above sbould inherit its parent's
>lack of bolding.
>
>Thus, the example HTML should be displayed with no bolding
>throughout the entire heading, including the word "is".
>
>IE 3.02 renders the entire heading in bold, perhaps it
>doesn't fully support the "normal" value of font-weight.

I remember IE3 as not supporting any "normal" values.  (I'd like to 
confirm, but unfortunately Microsoft won't allow me the pleasure of 
running IE3 and IE4 on the same computer.)

>To make the strong emphasis appear, we can add the following
>rule:
>
>H1 STRONG { font-weight: bold }

Using STRONG { font-weight: bolder } would be better, as it would apply to 
all situations in which strong emphasis may be required in text that is 
already bold.  This, IMO, is what browsers should have done from the 
beginning for their default behaviour.

>I've read through the section in the CSS spec on
>inheritance [7], and I see how rule 3 clearly says that
>User Agent default values are given less priority than author
>or reader style sheet values.
>
>So, it seems to me Navigator is wrong.

Huh?  Netscape is using the inherited value of 'normal', which overrides 
the user style sheet value of 'bold' since the 'normal' value comes from 
an author style sheet.  Am I missing something?  It seems, from your 
explanation, that IE 4.0b2 is the one that is wrong in this case.

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Liam Quinn
===============  http://www.htmlhelp.com/%7Eliam/  ===============
Web Design Group            Enhanced Designs, Web Site Development
http://www.htmlhelp.com/    http://enhanced-designs.com/
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Received on Saturday, 26 July 1997 22:30:53 UTC