Re: [SVG] Experiment and proposal

Fred P. wrote:
> 
> Ya that's great Microsoft ESPN decided to make Netscape 4
> unable to see their site! What a good news!
> Weirdly, they decided that most of their sites:
> MSN.com will bug in Opera
> Hotmail.com would crash your Netscape4

I don't think it is fair to blame Microsoft for this.  In fact, the lead 
developer was complaining that their "partner" (read Microsoft) was the 
reason the site didn't validate yet.

> Not mentioning that if you resize the page in a specific manner,
> the entire layout will be screwed out.
> <div> is good for default best-case scenario,
> it doesn't work with old browser and doesn't
> work neither for new browser if you resize
> the webpage just a bit.

I think the original question was tell me a major site that uses CSS 
rather than tables, not tell me a site that does so flawlessly :)

>> Ideally tables are only to be used for tabular data, i.e. information 
>> with a 2-dimensional correlation, though there are still some designs 
>> that are not possible without tables given current css support in 
>> major browsers. (3 column, one column with full image vertical 
>> coverage matching variable page height, with a horiziontal gradient, 
>> for >example, css3 background properties such as background-size will 
>> >resolve cases like this).
> 
> 
> Of course if you design your site such that it works ONLY for IE5/6,
> you won't have any problem, but there is other browser that people use
> that won't support those.

mozilla, opera, safari, konqueror, etc.  I think there are sufficient 
alternatives to IE besides Netscape 4.  I've actually been pleasantly 
surprised lately with the number of people I know who are not using IE, 
without my normal forceful influence.

> You can't just cut back backward compatibility just for the fun of it.

But you can deliver a plain version of the site for older browsers and 
actually improve backwards compatibility if done right.  In the case of 
ESPN, they don't want anyone to see a plain version of their site, so 
they choose to exclude NS4 users.  I don't necessarily agree with their 
decision, but I can understand their point given the importance of their 
brand.

> This doesn't mean that you cannot have XHTML/CSS site
> which generates contents faster for some browser
> and generates thicker contents with old table layout for others.

Yes, but a lot of incentive for using standards goes away if you still 
have to use the old hacks and workarounds to get a site looking the way 
you want it to.  With SVG still in its infancy, wouldn't we be better 
off doing things the right way, than following an paradigm that was 
never designed for layout?

-Dylan

Received on Thursday, 24 April 2003 22:04:37 UTC