Re: Proposal of @ua

Forgive me if this has been mentioned before, but I haven't seen it in 
my 4-5 months on this list...

But it seems like you don't really care about detecting the user agent 
*or* rendering engine. You're looking for support for specific CSS 
functionality. Given that, wouldn't something more like this be in order:

@supports multiple-background-image {}

I know that a browser could lie in its response, but that's true also of 
  the @ua idea. I'm not fully convinced either method is necessary, but 
this would be requesting information about the implementation of the 
specs, not about the implementor of the specs. The burden of knowing 
support levels in new releases of every browser is taken off the author; 
and there's no reason for a browser-maker to give a false answer, since 
any author using an @supports type query would (in theory) be writing 
gracefully degrading layouts.

It seems to me that @ua would solve a problem but introduce another, 
whereas querying for capabilities would only solve a problem, and 
support smaller browser-makers too.

j




> Yeah, it seems pretty clear I shouldn't hold my breath hoping much of 
> the software will come around to addressing the biggest, most obvious 
> need of Web page authors. I guess I will just have to choose between 
> continued use of hacks, or avoiding all CSS that is not supported by the 
> big 3 or 4. That or use sliced up images and tables when I want to 
> achieve an effect that would cause ugliness in one of the major browsers 
> that didn't support a more elegant means to the end.

Received on Friday, 23 November 2007 01:30:42 UTC