Order of selectors, Background colors, IE3

In case this makes a difference for Core Styles, IE3 Mac will ignore
selectors in groupings, including ones it recognizes, preceding an unknown
element. Unknown elements include ABBR and ACRONYM, which are new in HTML
4.0. If unknown elements come first [1], the style rule can be read.

About as spooky, IE3 ignores background colors specified on font style and
phrase elements [2], unless colors are set for every element and on BODY.
Maybe someone here has a more generalized theory.

While the going wisdom may become that IE3 users always disable style
sheets (and it is conceivable someone would write such a utility, or add-on
if you prefer :-), and some style sheets will exclude IE3 with @import, I
think CSS sites which haven't already suffered from bad first impressions
probably will.

Last I read, IE3 Mac is shipping now, due to Apple/Microsoft agreements, as
the browser of choice with a Mac OS update, because IE4 wasn't ready. I
hope someone will correct me if that information is incorrect or outdated.

[1] http://www.macvirus.com/test/ie3/order.html
[2] http://www.macvirus.com/test/ie3/background-phrase.html

Susan Lesch

Received on Wednesday, 11 March 1998 16:25:05 UTC