My son put up this quickie website:

http://www.fieldapps.com

I decided to use it for CSS/4.01 practice. It seemed like a good
challenge. I made this:

http://www.jchap.com/steve

and showed it to him, although it's not quite "there" yet. He emailed
back: "Yeah, that code looks A LOT nicer. Of course, the Netscape4 thing
will keep me from using it, as many engineering types use Solaris
workstations and the latest supported release of Netscape for Solaris is
still 4.8. :( "

Before I embark on a hopeless venture, I thought I'd ask: Would a sane
person (or anybody in this NG ;-)) even try to reproduce this in NS4
using limited CSS without tables, or is hiding a bunch of the CSS and
shooting for "graceful degradation" the best one can do in a case like
this, other than sniffing NS4 and redirecting, or totally redesigning?

--
John C

> and showed it to him, although it's not quite "there" yet. He emailed[color=blue]
> back: "Yeah, that code looks A LOT nicer. Of course, the Netscape4 thing
> will keep me from using it, as many engineering types use Solaris
> workstations and the latest supported release of Netscape for Solaris is
> still 4.8. :( "[/color]

Perhaps for his purposes [where most people who would view the page would
use Netscape 4.x] it may be best to use tables. However, when designing
using valid code/css - the best one can really hope for is for it to degrade
gracefully in Netscape 4.x.

Especially when creating complicated CSS layouts.
You will not have it looking exactly the same.

Nick.

On Sat, 04 Oct 2003 07:06:05 GMT e n | c k m a posted:
[color=blue][color=green]
> > and showed it to him, although it's not quite "there" yet. He emailed
> > back: "Yeah, that code looks A LOT nicer. Of course, the Netscape4 thing
> > will keep me from using it, as many engineering types use Solaris
> > workstations and the latest supported release of Netscape for Solaris is
> > still 4.8. :( "[/color]
>
> Perhaps for his purposes [where most people who would view the page would
> use Netscape 4.x] it may be best to use tables. However, when designing
> using valid code/css - the best one can really hope for is for it to degrade
> gracefully in Netscape 4.x.[/color]

I decided to take the challenge. See http://www.jchap.com/steve now. I've
only done the home page, and I haven't worked on the menu yet. But, it
seems to hold up as a fluid 3-column non-table layout with a banner and
footer, validating 4.01 strict and CSS 2 and looking very much the same
in IE6, Moz 1.4, and NS4.

--
John C

John C wrote:[color=blue]
> On Sat, 04 Oct 2003 07:06:05 GMT e n | c k m a posted:
>
> I decided to take the challenge. See http://www.jchap.com/steve now. I've
> only done the home page, and I haven't worked on the menu yet. But, it
> seems to hold up as a fluid 3-column non-table layout with a banner and
> footer, validating 4.01 strict and CSS 2 and looking very much the same
> in IE6, Moz 1.4, and NS4.[/color]

This may help you avoid trying to re-invent the wheel:

http://www.realworldstyle.com/nn4_3col_header.html

I haven't tried looking at your site in NN 4.X but I imagine if you want
to get this to work, you may find it easier if you used a layout that at
least says it already works in NN 4.X.

HTH,

--Nikolaos

On Mon, 06 Oct 2003 23:18:13 -0400 Nikolaos Giannopoulos posted:
[color=blue]
> John C wrote:[color=green]
> > On Sat, 04 Oct 2003 07:06:05 GMT e n | c k m a posted:
> >
> > I decided to take the challenge. See http://www.jchap.com/steve now. I've
> > only done the home page, and I haven't worked on the menu yet. But, it
> > seems to hold up as a fluid 3-column non-table layout with a banner and
> > footer, validating 4.01 strict and CSS 2 and looking very much the same
> > in IE6, Moz 1.4, and NS4.[/color]
>
> This may help you avoid trying to re-invent the wheel:
>
> http://www.realworldstyle.com/nn4_3col_header.html
>
> I haven't tried looking at your site in NN 4.X but I imagine if you want
> to get this to work, you may find it easier if you used a layout that at
> least says it already works in NN 4.X.
>
> HTH,
>
> --Nikolaos[/color]

Thanks, Nikolaos. I think I already re-invented the wheel, though. That
CSS is similar to what I came up with. There are some differences I might
play with to see if one is more reliable than the other.

What surprised me is that the stylesheet I'm using for NS4 only needs
*one* additional attribute in the @import stylesheet to display correctly
in Mozilla. IE6 didn't even need that.

Sometimes I think people make stylesheets more complicated than
necessary. Other times I think I must be missing important nuances by
reason of my naivete.

--
John C

John C wrote:[color=blue]
> On Mon, 06 Oct 2003 23:18:13 -0400 Nikolaos Giannopoulos posted:
>
>
> Thanks, Nikolaos. I think I already re-invented the wheel, though. That
> CSS is similar to what I came up with. There are some differences I might
> play with to see if one is more reliable than the other.[/color]

View the source of the style sheet as there are some important points to
consider such as resizing the browser window in NN 4.X which seems to
require JavaScript.

I haven't checked out the rest of the stuff but do yourself a favor and
look under the hood ;-)

[color=blue]
> What surprised me is that the stylesheet I'm using for NS4 only needs
> *one* additional attribute in the @import stylesheet to display correctly
> in Mozilla. IE6 didn't even need that.
>
> Sometimes I think people make stylesheets more complicated than
> necessary. Other times I think I must be missing important nuances by
> reason of my naivete.[/color]

I'm not sure that's the major problem with NN 4.X - The problems I have
heard of range from behaving badly to flat our crashing when hitting
certain CSS.

YMMV although I strongly suggest you look at resources geared to this
kind of stuff - don't underestimate it is my advice.

--Nikolaos

On Tue, 07 Oct 2003 15:49:03 -0400 Nikolaos Giannopoulos posted:
[color=blue]
> John C wrote:[color=green]
> > On Mon, 06 Oct 2003 23:18:13 -0400 Nikolaos Giannopoulos posted:
> >
> >
> > Thanks, Nikolaos. I think I already re-invented the wheel, though. That
> > CSS is similar to what I came up with. There are some differences I might
> > play with to see if one is more reliable than the other.[/color]
>
> View the source of the style sheet as there are some important points to
> consider such as resizing the browser window in NN 4.X which seems to
> require JavaScript.
>
> I haven't checked out the rest of the stuff but do yourself a favor and
> look under the hood ;-)[/color]

I did. It's not near as daunting as looking under the hood of a late
model automobile. Not a bad html/css analogy, though. When I was (much)
younger, working on cars was pretty straightforward. Now, there are
hundreds of mysterious components that are related in mysterious ways and
messing with one can have unexpected results.
[color=blue]
> YMMV although I strongly suggest you look at resources geared to this
> kind of stuff - don't underestimate it is my advice.[/color]

I like to think I take pride in my work, do my best to achieve highest
quality. But, when coding to accommodate "old" browsers, the adage "good
enough for government work" is probably as high as the bar needs to be
set in most cases. A person's gotta decide what's the best use of his/her
time. Presently, this NS4 "challenge" is doing a lot toward making me
more knowledgeable and proficient with CSS in general, so the time is
well spent. After a point, time spent on NS4 is probably just lost time.

--
John C