Re: Why CSS On Older Browsers Is Broken

Kynn Bartlett writes:
>>Right now it's orange and yellow and all sorta autumny.  I use
>>tables and I apply styles, colors, and fonts using only CSS.
>>
>>If you use Internet Explorer 4+, Opera 3.6+, or Netscape
>>Navigator 4+, you will see a happy autumnal web site, and you
>>will have access to the content of the site.
>>
>>If you use an older browser, or one which does not support
>>CSS (or have CSS turned off), you will see a very plain, default-

>>colors web site, and you will have access to the content of the
>>site.

Marja responds:
>I don't think anyone means to exclude the older browsers, however, 
>sometimes it is necessary to have some discontinuity to be able to have a 
>better solution in the future. So could we come up with some solutions that 
>would help to get the CSS where it should be and at the same time save the 
>old browser views for those artists who really care?
>
>For instance, I know browser sniffing is not popular but would it be 
>acceptable to use that to be able to provide a CSS and a non-CSS browser 
>version? For those who know this stuff, what other solutions there might 
>be? And if there is an acceptable way is it possible to make it easy for 
>the artists/designers?
>
>Marja

There are several problems with this 'solution'. The first is the double
work up front... creating multiple versions and a browser sniffer is a bother.

Secondly, you have to update two sites in tandem... this will undoubtedly
cause disconnects down the line. A basic premise in the programming world
is that you don't have two 'identical' pieces of code that both have to be
updated. Now, we could take a page from the programmer's books and use
server-side includes for all copy (replicating datafiles, copybooks, or
other similar functions from the programming world), but not all servers
will support said functionality.

But this *still* doesn't address the real concern designers have with CSS.
That concern is that in IE 5 and Netscape 4.7 (or whatever), the same CSS
rendered page tends to not look the same. And because of this, CSS isn't
going to be a valid solution for graphic-minded designers.

A great number of people are very concerned with consistency in appearance.
No matter how misguided it might be, companies want consistent looks and
feels from print to television to the web. And CSS doesn't offer that. That
is a game-breaking factor.

As a web designer, I dealt with that on a daily basis with my old company.
After 6 months, I finally got the VP of Corporate Marketing to buy into
CSS, and she even accepted the slight differences between browsers, and
that our 'company font' wouldn't be available on most computers. The site
was polished, and shown to the President, who really liked it at work on
IE4. But when he got home to Netscape 3 (he'd never bothered to upgrade),
and the site looked completely different, he came in and said 'the site is
broken, our corporate colors and fonts aren't there'.

So it was back to 'image text' and colors in the HTML.

The point? We don't have to convince the web designers alone that they need
to use CSS, we have to convince the people who *live and breathe a print
world* that this isn't print, and that it is ok to let the person choose
how their information is displayed (be it by choice of browser or user
defined stylesheet or whatever).

You can convince the web designers all day long, but if you don't convince
the person who writes the checks, then the web designer *will not* buy into
it.

So not only is CSS broken, as Kynn says, we are also facing an extremely
difficult hurdle in getting acceptance for this technology. And as long as
you have something that works (HTML 4.0), people aren't going to use
something that doesn't (CSS).

Marshall.
--
Marshall Jansen  //  marshall@hwg.org
Senior Web Developer
VP of Marketing and Outreach
HTML Writers Guild, Inc.  //  <http://www.hwg.org/>www.hwg.org

Received on Monday, 2 October 2000 09:41:41 UTC