RE: Checkpoint 3.3

I'm sorry, it was an accident that this remark was also copied to the
list.

On Thu, 15 Jul 1999, Anne Pemberton wrote:

> >> >Where it _does_ risk causing harm is in browsers like MSIE3, where the
> >> >CSS is misinterpreted and can cause serious damage. 
> >
> >> Especially if you are talking about that
> >> percentage of users who use MSIE (any version).
> >
> >That's a dishonest way to pursue a discussion.  Please reconsider your
> >approach.
> 
> Please explain???

I was very definitely not talking about "MSIE (any version)".  In
fact, later versions of MSIE have been rather good, and earlier
versions experience no harm at all from CSS, since they ignore it.

I was talking about MSIE version 3, a version which contained some
experimental support for a pre-release draft of CSS1, and which can
react disastrously to some perfectly simple, normal and correct CSS1
styles.

> How is this a dishonest way to pursue a discussion? 

Any conclusions drawn from partial/experimental support in one browser
version should really not be extended to "any version": you seemed to
have slipped that in without any comment or justification.

Fortunately, I gather that there are some techniques that can be
adopted which result in MSIE3 ignoring stylesheets, even if the user
hasn't had the perspicacity to disable them.

If I might try to draw _some_ benefit out of this unfortunate accident
of posting an individual reply to the whole list, for which I'd like
to offer my apologies, it would be this.

Let's try to identify and promote techniques of writing valid CSS
which shields that experimental browser version.  I believe some
useful components of such shielding have been discussed on the
stylesheets usenet group in the past.  Some of them seemed quite
simple, but I understand that Mac MSIE3 (to which I don't have access)
behaves quite differently from Win MSIE3.  (I would however like to
avoid any techniques that involve serving out different documents to
different browsers, on account of the deleterious effect on
cacheability, quite apart from the additional support overhead
involved in generating different versions).

best regards

Received on Thursday, 15 July 1999 09:52:51 UTC