Re: how to square netscape 4 compatibility with css

Hi Julia,

Without knowing specific's it's hard to render advice.  That said, I have 
been in this situation myself and may be able to lend some assistance.

If you can send us all some links, that'd be helpful.  But here's a short 
list of some helpful hints.

1. If you want to obscure CSS classes from NS4, move the classes into a 
separate file and make use of media="all" which causes NS4 to reject the 
stylesheet (example <link href="/css/nsbug.css" type="text/css" 
rel="stylesheet" media="all">). One might argue this is inappropriate, but 
unless you have multiple versions of the site formatted for different 
devices the technique is generally considered acceptable.

2. View source once the page is rendered and run a find for "Ttyle".  If you 
find it, you will discover some wonderful ugliness that only this browser is 
capable of.  It has to do with document.write, and the only solution is to 
ditch style attributes in favour of classes.

3. If you are using <meta http-equiv="Content-type" 
content="text/html;charset=something-or-other"> in your header then drop the 
charset reference (eg: <meta http-equiv="Content-type" 
content="text/html">).  NS4 bugs out if the browser preference differs from 
the declared charset.

Normally the 3 points above are what break NS4, but let us know if there are 
more specific issues we can help you deal with.

Cheers,

JRB







----Original Message Follows----
From: Julia Collins <julia@we3.co.uk>
To: "'w3c-wai-ig@w3.org'" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Subject: how to square netscape 4 compatibility with css
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Hi

Without wishing to seem immodest, I have written a fabulous javascript and
table free site where all layout and navigations are controlled by css. It
works beautifully in netscape 6+ and IE4+ on Mac and windows and fails
gracefully where stylesheets are not supported. (it is also fully accessible
for people using screenreaders).

My problem is, my client, who is large and archaic, has about 7,000 PCs
running netscape 4 only.  So it is important to write a site that looks good
for them.  Thing is, while it works, it looks s*** in that lovely browser.

I have been fiddling around and found a few workarounds which make the
situation a bit better, but it still looks like a bad web design in NS4,
with boxes all misaligned, rollovers not working (which I can live without)
and "strong" citations misaligning.

What do I do?  I am sorely tempted to write to the head of IT at the client
organisation and say that if they want W3c compliant, accessible sites
(which they demand, quite rightly) that look good at their end (which is
important to them) then they have to install standards compliant browsers on
their machines.

I have to stress that the site works in NS4, it just looks awful.

Any thoughts?

Julia



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Received on Thursday, 20 March 2003 05:10:04 UTC