Re: Why CSS On Older Browsers Is Broken

At 08:38 AM 10/2/2000 -0500, Marshall Jansen wrote:

>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.

But isn't it one reason why we want to use CSS - to avoid extra work when 
making the information available to wide variety of users (with different 
devices in different environments).

Another reason is to give some control of the presentation to users when 
they need it (other times most users are too busy to bother changing it). 
These users are customers, and with all these different devices coming out, 
I think there will be a lot of them.

I think it is worse if the user does get the information at all than if the 
presentation is changed a bit so that he succeeds to get it in spite of the 
capabilities of the device or his own capabilities. And I DO appreciate 
good graphical design a lot.

>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.

And if you need to have a separate version to support accessibility and 
device independence, because you are not using CSS, you end up with the 
same updating problem.


>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.

To my understanding the problem is not that CSS is broken - some 
implementations are - and need to be corrected. And unfortunately, it means 
there will be unnecessary differences or errors in the graphical 
presentation. However, with CSS the good thing is that the information 
itself will still be available unlike with many other technological 
incontinuity points.

>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).

I agree. There is definitely a lot of convincing to do.


>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).

I thought that even with HTML the pages don't always look the same with 
different browsers, but maybe I'm wrong.

As I understand it, there is no problems with CSS as a standard, but some 
implementations are broken. Going over a technological incontinuity point 
is always difficult, CSS is not an exception.  But sometimes it is 
necessary to jump over to save work and serve customers in the long run. So 
all good ideas and examples of how to support CSS and at the same time best 
address as many of the current problems as possible are welcome.

Marja


>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 11:19:28 UTC