Re: CSS1 and tables

John Udall wrote:
> Pardon me for butting in, but what would the impact be in terms of
>development effort, code-base size, maintenance requirements, etc. if one
>were to develop the browser so that it has a user-controlled toggle to
>switch between a more permissive "legacy support" mode for viewing
>documents and a more strict DTD interpretation of the documents?

Check out MS home page at www.microsoft.com. Note the black menu strip at
the top. That strip is an 8-celled, 1-row table. The 7th cell has
BGCOLOR=#000000 and HEIGHT=20 specified. The cells on either side have GIFs
in them, with HEIGHT=21. Although the GIFs are, in fact, 21 pixels high, the
21st row of pixels is white, so they appear to be only 20 pixels high.

In both IE3.02 and NN3.01, this strip looks to be 20 pixels high all the way
across -- either the GIFs are being clipped at 20 pixels or all cells in the
row are not the same height.

In NN4.01, the 7th cell is obviously 21 pixels high -- the black background
is one pixel taller than the black in the surrounding GIFs. There's logic to
this -- one could say all cells in the row are being forced to 21 pixels
high to accommodate the GIFs.

In IE4.0, the 7th cell is 23 pixels high, and the menu strip looks like
crap.

Wow. And here I was thinking that legacy support meant "we won't change
anything that requires us to do major editing of our website".

Er, would someone please define "legacy support"?

David Perrell

Received on Thursday, 9 October 1997 15:34:52 UTC