Re: CSS Hacks

Michael,

IMHO, no.

First, this is not the right list to "ask the browser developers" to 
enact, much less, enforce, normative requirements such as your suggestion.

Second, I think it fundamentally trades one problem for another--i.e., 
it is not really much of a help in a strategic sense.  If anything, 
targeting the underlying rendering engine (WebKit, Gecko, etc.) probably 
makes more sense from a development perspective.  Ultimately, it is 
possible that CSS interpretation for display, much less print, 
including, in some cases, imputation of stylesheet defaults and other 
assumptions, may not be wholly defined in the file format unilaterally. 
  My experience with Opera, in particular, is that Opera makes very 
different (but excellent, again IMHO) CSS choices in this regard.

But yes, I concur that some "hacks" (I am not even sure that using 
@import is a "hack" per se, but YMMV) are necessary for picture-perfect 
CSS rendering in different environments (when the customer requirements 
demand it and, of course, assuming the requirements are indeed valuable).

Wayne Smith, Ph.D.
CSU Northridge

Michael Adams wrote:
> 
> Just bouncing an idea here. I use the @import hack for IE which i first
> came across here:
> http://annevankesteren.nl/2005/10/ie-import-hack
> 
> My main CSS file consequently looks like this
> [Quote]
> @import url("layout.css");
> @import url("colour.css");
> @import url("fonts.css");
> @import url(.css) all;
> [/Quote]
>  
> The more i work in CSS the more i notice that all browsers need hacks.
> My question is- Is there any downside you experts can see in asking
> browser manufacturers to specify their browser as a media type so we
> could focus future fixes at a given browser? A future main CSS file
> could look like this
> [Quote]
> @import url("layout.css");
> @import url("colour.css");
> @import url("fonts.css");
> @import url("ie9hacks.css") ie9;
> @import url("ff4hacks.css") ff4;
> @import url("safari4hacks.css") safari4;
> @import url("opera10hacks.css") opera10;
> [/Quote]
> 
> I know this would not be a retroactive solution but in my eyes it could
> save time in the future.
>

Received on Sunday, 5 October 2008 22:53:02 UTC