Re: XHTML

Also sprach Murray Altheim:

 > >  > "HTML" documents in theory should be viewable on any browser that
 > >  > implements the specification, but unfortunately HTML 4.0's spec allows
 > >  > for such wide variance and requires support for CSS (itself an impossibility)
 > >  > that I hardly blame MS and NS for not having compliant browsers.
 > > 
 > > Impossibility? Both Opera and Netscape (through Mozilla) have now
 > > implemented CSS1 fully. It wasn't that hard, actually...
 > 
 > Well, apparently your version of Netscape is better than mine. I use the
 > most recent versions (4.7) on Solaris and Linux, and there are plenty of
 > holes.

Sorry, I should have been more specific. CSS1 is -- I believe -- fully
implemented in Mozilla [1] which will form the basis for Netscape 5.x.
As you have notices, Netscape 4.x has quite crappy CSS support and
Netscape employees are the first to admit it.

[1] http://www.mozilla.org

Opera's CSS1 support in 3.6 (currently shipping) is the best on the
market [2] but not quite complete. The few remaining holes have been
filled, but not yet shipped. The next version will support XML as well
as a number of other MLs.

[2] http://webreview.com/wr/pub/guides/style/lboard.html

 > As the principle editor of the CSS1 Recommendation
 > I would expect you to defend CSS (as do Bert and Chris), but you must
 > admit that CSS was designed for use with HTML, given that there was 
 > no XML at the time.

There was no XML, but there was SGML. The CSS1 Recommendation notes:

  "We expect to see extensions of CSS in several directions:

    - other DTDs: CSS1 has some HTML-specific parts (e.g. the special
      status of the 'CLASS' and 'ID' attributes) but should easily be
      extended to apply to other DTDs as well."

The CSS2 Recommendation is fully XML-aware:

  "This specification defines Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 (CSS2).
   CSS2 is a style sheet language that allows authors and users to attach
   style (e.g., fonts, spacing, and aural cues) to structured documents
   (e.g., HTML documents and XML applications)."

Regards,

-h&kon

Chief Technology Officer                                Opera Software
Håkon Wium Lie                     http://www.opera.com/people/howcome
howcome@opera.com                                gets you there faster

Received on Wednesday, 24 November 1999 16:50:58 UTC