Re: Style Sheets are in NS Commmunicator 4.0

At 06:06 PM 23/02/97 -0500, Jonathan L Neuenschwander wrote:
>
>Netscape has put up the new beta of Communicator over the weekend, and CSS1
>support is in there!  That's the good news, the bad news is that it didn't
>fare very well with the pages I tried it on.  But then, most of those were on
>Microsoft's site. :-)

It fared horribly on the pages I tried it on, including the Web Design
Group's site [1].

The WDG site uses an external Cascading Style Sheet on most of its pages,
and since most of the pages are HTML 3.2 compliant, we don't use the TYPE
attribute on the <LINK> tag.  This should be okay, since the W3C Working
Draft on HTML3 and Style Sheets [2] states that text/css should be assumed.
 Unfortunately, Navigator 4.0b2 assumes text/jsss and reports a JavaScript
error when it tries to load the style sheet.  A screen shot of the error
message is available at <http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/css/n40b2-3.gif>.

We have some pages that use Cougar, so they include the TYPE attribute, and
while there are no JavaScript errors on these pages, the application of the
style makes most of the pages very difficult to read.  I've put a couple
screen shots up to demonstrate this, at
<http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/css/n40b2-1.gif> and
<http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/css/n40b2-2.gif>.  Navigator 4.0b2 seems
to be adding blue backgrounds to some elements for no reason, and it also
puts a paragraph break wherever it encounters a new style.  E.g., <P>Blah
blah <STRONG>strong text</STRONG> blah blah</P>, where STRONG is given a
color declaration in the style sheet, is rendered as

Blah blah

strong text

blah blah

There are also severe problems for those with JavaScript disabled, since
Navigator 4.0b2 on Windows 95 will offer the following message:

----
Unknown File Type

You have started to download a file of type text/jsss
Click "More Info" to learn how to extend Navigator's capabilities.

[More Info] [Pick App...] [Save File...] [Cancel]
----

Clicking Cancel leaves a blank page.  It seems that CSS pages are
completely inaccessible to Navigator 4.0b2 users who have JavaScript disabled.

[1] http://www.htmlhelp.com/
[2] http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TR/WD-style

Liam Quinn
liam@htmlhelp.com
http://www.htmlhelp.com/%7Eliam/

Received on Sunday, 23 February 1997 20:22:23 UTC