Broken CSS Implementations, was Re: XHTML

On Wed, 24 Nov 1999 13:20:51 -0800, Murray Altheim
<altheim@eng.sun.com> wrote:

>Håkon Wium Lie wrote:
>> 
>>  > "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. 

Mozilla, not Netscape.

>I use the
>most recent versions (4.7) on Solaris and Linux, and there are plenty of
>holes. 

There have been serious CSS deficiencies since the first
quasi-supportive release of Netscape. That those deficiencies were
never 'fixed' is not a shortcoming of the CSS recommendation(s).

>...How about 
>even changing the text content of <li> to green? (It makes the bullet 
>green, not the element content.)

I can do that, (and 'fix' some of the other Netscape problems), via
'workarounds' which do not break better implementations. Again,
though, it isn't that the recommendation is flawed, the problem is
that buggy deployments were thrust upon a largely unsuspecting
authoring community, with some implementors releasing versions which
failed to correct a single CSS bug. 
...
>It's certainly improved over
>the past few years, but we certainly aren't ready for CSS2 and CSS3.

*We*, the CSS authoring community are ready; we've just been waiting
for implementors to catch up.

>>  > The ability to create many varieties of interoperable markup languages
>>  > based on a common framework (XML and its family of specs, XLink, XSL,
>>  > etc.) relies on people abandoning proprietary markup (and in this I
>>  > include a wide array of non-XML Web "features" such as CSS, JavaScript,
>>  > the current HTML linking syntax, etc.) and begin using truly
>>  > interoperable markup. A new baseline for interoperability, a new era
>>  > based on XML, XLink and XSL.

Quite apart from the issue of whether the masses will abandon
HTML+CSS, the 'reliance' will be on perfect deployments of XML/XSL
tools to weave your X* web. If history is any indication, that might
be a problem.

Received on Wednesday, 24 November 1999 17:25:50 UTC