images, bullets, and style sheets FYI

Hello,

I was curious about what MSIE 4.x does when bullets have been specified
using images and style sheets.  MSIE 4.x is the only browser that supports
this at this time that I'm aware of - see
http://www.webreview.com/guides/style/index.html for a complete list of
which style sheet directives Netscape Communicator 4, MSIE 3.0 and 4.x
support on mac and win95.  i also tested amaya for win95 and double checked
with NSC4 for win95 and found no support on either user agent.

I created a test page (
http://trace.ie.wisc.edu/kaboodle/html/tests/ssbullets.htm ) that uses
style sheets to generate bullets for an unordered list and verifies against
strict 4.0.  I had the assumption that if images were not loaded an image
icon would replace the bullet, or that a browser generated bullet would
proceed an image icon without alt-text.  Instead, I was happy to find that
when images are not loaded it draws default bullets.  Therefore, we never
see two bullets nor do we see image icons without alt-text.

The user agent guidelines ought to recommend similar "intelligence" so that
it doesn't disappear from MSIE and is included in future user agents.

--w

wendy chisholm
human factors engineer
trace research and development center
university of wisconsin - madison, USA

Received on Thursday, 7 May 1998 11:57:40 UTC