Re: default.css

Lynn Alford wrote (12:59 PM +1000 5/15/98):

" This *fixes* problems?  I've just installed this, and it is not playing
" nice with the Core style sheets on the Mac.

You should have seen how 4.0/4.0a choked on it! Believe me, it does fix
problems. No browser implements CSS1 completely, and none is without error
in what it does implement. The Core Styles do try to avoid stepping in
holes, but it's been a long, difficult dance.

" There seem to be some major problems with ie4.01 for Mac, the core
" Stylesheets and images.  My homepage looks fine with IE4.72.xxx on a PC.

Confirmed. I have isolated the problem to the line-height property set on
BODY. This is set in the "vertical composition" module. It seems that any
line height set on body will tickle this bug out of hiding.

Except it doesn't occur in all pages with inline images, so I'm a bit
mystified. I tried closing all your paragraphs (sometimes helps), to no
avail.

Can anybody propose a few lines of crutch code to cascade in and patch for
this UA? It would be a shame to withhold the composition modules from it -
that would make WinIE4 the only browser to get leading and headers that
actually appear to be associated with the following text. And the
"Traditional" style family would be silly - indents are superfluous with
blank lines between paragraphs.

" It looks ok with Netscape 4 on a Mac though the font is a bit large for my
" text.

Yes, Verdana tends to look huge.[1] I don't provide any size property for
it as Netscape handles ems and percents badly, and I won't use fixed
measures (because flexibility is essential, and people without Verdana
would then see the substitute too small). I could just withhold all type
specification from Netscape.

What do people think?

" But the new version of IE is laying out the graphics on the page
" over top of the text.  The page is HTML 3.2 and bog-standard as far as
" layout goes.  The <h1> and first paragraph are not being displayed at all,
" just the first image.

Actually, they're hiding behind the image, like the mothership behind that
comet.[1]

Meanwhile, Lynn, if you like "Steely", you can request only its safe
modules instead:

http://style,verso.com/?affo=1;comp-h=1;head=1;body=1;marg=1;safety

Unfortunately, no leading.

Note that the Verso styleserver is an experimental resource at this point -
not a stable service for general use. It remains to be seen whether W3C
might offer "roll your own" stylesheet services, or whether there will be
mirrors, and so on.

In any case, this is exactly the kind of feedback necessary to tighten up
the service. Thank you.



[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/fonts.html#propdef-font-size-adjust
[2] UFO cult reference


The page being discussed: http://www.jcu.edu.au/~imla/



Todd Fahrner
mailto:todd@lowbrow.com
http://www.verso.com/agitprop/

The printed page transcends space and time. The printed page, the
infinitude of books, must be transcended. THE ELECTRO-LIBRARY.
	- El Lissitzky, 1923

Received on Friday, 15 May 1998 00:25:52 UTC