Re: style sheets

On Fri, 14 May 1999, Virginia Ravenscroft-Scott wrote:

> I'm sure I"m not the first person to say this, but I find it very strange 
> that you recommend using style sheets so that more people can access the 
> site. A significant percentage of people use Netscape 3, which cannot 
> process style sheets.

Style sheets are designed that way.  They do absolutely no harm to
Netscape 3: it, like any other WWW client, displays such web documents
to the very best of its ability. If the user isn't satisfied with the
results, there are other browsers to choose from.  (Frankly, I'm more
worried about MSIE3, if its user hasn't had the perspicacity to turn
off its experimental/buggy stylesheet support.)

> trying to reach the largest possible audience, I will definitely choose to 
> use markup that is readable for Netscape 3!

If your document isn't _readable_ without the stylesheet, then you're
doing something wrong.  Sure, the text won't be particularly pretty,
but if the job's been done right, then the essential content will be
fully accessible to everyone.

Whereas, the presentational attributes of HTML3.2, taken together with
the behaviour of the popular browsers, pretty much guarantees
accessibility failures in non-mainstream browsing situations.  And
that isn't limited to users with disabilities.

best regards

Received on Friday, 14 May 1999 16:21:24 UTC