First look at CSS in Netscape 4 Beta2

Well, I spent some time this weekend getting to know Netscape's 
first implementation of CSS. It is better than I had hoped for 
an initial try, but it still a long way to go. Lack of class addressing 
and in-line style support really hurts (especially since all my 
existing test example files are in-line; had to do all tests 
manually.) This survey is meant to be a broad overview, and does 
not try hard to identify or document the idiosyncracies (individual 
bugs compared to CSS1 spec behavior) of this implementation. 
I also did not do much checking on proper inheritance or 
cascading behavior. Until we see a spec for JSS or 'official' 
Netscape CSS support documentation, this sort of thing may have 
to do...

Notes: Tests performed on Win95 running on a Pentium system using 
       Netscape Communicator Pro (32 bit.) In order for a feature 
       or property to be considered 'supported', it had to 
       obviously control expected display characteristics when 
       property values were altered.           

The Bad: 
     - Improper syntax (such as 'p { }' or 'p { foo }') will print 
       out the style statement and other garbage at the top of the 
       document. Not so destructive, but I discovered this fairly 
       easily by accident - others probably will too.        
     - The 'Text-Decoration' property has a default value of 
       'underline'. This looks like a bug, as it makes a value of 
       'none' into 'underline' (same with 'overline' too.) This
       makes control of hyperlink underlining impossible for now
       (see <URL: http://www.news.com> for example.)
     - STYLE for in-line style specification does not work. 

CSS1 Features Not Supported:
     - In-line styles (STYLE attribute) not supported
     - CLASS as selectors: use of CLASS kept yielding JavaScript 
       errors (??)
     - Pseudo-classes and Pseudo Elements (yup, hyperlinks can not 
       be controlled yet)
     - @import not supported
     - Measurement Units not supported: Inches, Centimeters, Picas, 
       Points, X-height, Ems and percentages
     - Color Units: rgb(R,G,B) and rgb(r%,g%,b%)
     - Color and BG properties: 
        * background-repeat 
        * background-attachment      
        * background-position
        * background (shorthand does not support properties 
          listed above)
     - Font properties: 
        * Font-size: xx-small => xx-large, larger/smaller 
          not supported
        * Font-style: Oblique not supported (from the examples 
          I tried)
        * Font-variant: Not supported
        * Font: Shorthand does not include Font-variant
     - Text properties: 
        * Word-spacing: no
        * Letter-spacing: no
        * Text-decoration: 'overline' and 'none' are made in to 
          underline effects.
        * Text-align: Justify not supported
     - Classification properties:
        * White-space: Nowrap not supported 
        * All List-Style properties: Not supported. Includes 
          list-style-type, list-style-position, list-style-image, 
          and list-style shorthand properties.
        * Display: 'Block' produces break before the element, but 
          not after. 'List-item' creates and indent, and 'none' 
          turns off the element and everything else until a new 
          block element is reached(?)
     - Margin Properties: 
        * 'Margin' shorthand
     - Padding Properties: 
        * 'Padding' shorthand
     - Border Properties:
        * None of them are supported. (Too many to mention)
     - Width & Height: Not supported with one exception (tried 
       Images and rules as example)
     - Float: Not supported

CSS1 Supported features:
     - External style sheets (LINK)
     - Document level style sheets (STYLE tag)
     - Declaration, and Selector grouping
     - Contextual, and ID selectors
     - Comments
     - CSS properties override default properties (unless otherwise
       specified?)
     - Default Units: Pixels (I think - hard for me to tell.) 
     - Other Units: Millimeters (I may be wrong here)
     - Color Units: #rrggbb, #rgb, color-names
     - URL specification: Worked as expected
     - Color and BG properties:       
        * color
        * background-color
        * background-image
        * background (shorthand only supports bgcolor and bgimage 
          properties)
     - Font properties: 
        * Font-size: only explicit sizes
        * Font-style: italic and normal supported
        * Font-weight: 100-900, normal/bold, bolder/lighter supported
        * Font-family: General and explicit names supported
        * Font: Shorthand supports all that the other properties 
          support
     - Text properties: 
        * Text-decoration: Underline, blink and linethrough 
          (saw some odd linethrough behavior)
        * Text-transform 
        * Text-align
        * Text-indent
        * Line-height
     - Classification properties:
        * White-space: Normal and Pre supported 
        * Display: 'Inline' seems fine. Block, list-item, and none 
          seem to act strangely (not as I expected)
     - Margin Properties: 
        * Margin-left, Margin-right, Margin-top, and Margin-bottom
     - Padding Properties: 
        * Padding-left, Padding-right, Padding-top, and 
          Padding-bottom
     - Width & Height: Specifying width for HR works (but not on 
       other elements.) Height does not. 
     - Clear: Supported.        


This info should be integrated into the CSS section of my site 
<URL: http://www.blooberry.com/html/style/styleindex.htm> within 
a day or two and should serve as a good comparison against the 
CSS1 support found in MSIE 3.0x. 

Also mentioned in the release notes (I just noticed this) is the 
statement that 4.0 Beta 2 supports the "Positioning HTML Elements 
with Cascading Style Sheets" draft. I guess I will have to read 
up more on this... 8-}

If anyone knows of any errors or omissions here, let me know. 

Thanks,

-Brian Wilson 8-}
Brian Wilson --------------------------"Those aren't Sex muffins!   -Coach
bloo@eskimo.com ------------------------Those aren't Love muffins! 
http://www.eskimo.com/~bloo ------------Those are just BLOOberry muffins!"
Creator of Index DOT Html: http://www.eskimo.com/~bloo/html/intro.htm

Received on Tuesday, 25 February 1997 04:28:56 UTC