hack to hide CSS from WebTV Viewer

[Kris]

Hello,
By accident I noticed that a hack to hide CSS from IE4.x/Mac also hides
it from WebTV Viewer. Since I noticed a little while ago a post here
that mentioned the 'incompatibility' of WebTV Viewer with CSS and the
hardship of hiding CSS from it, I thought this might be of relevance.

@import 'styles.css'; // hides from IE4/Mac and IE5/Mac
@i\mport "styles.css"; // hides from some browsers, but not from IE5/Mac

I noticed the effect in my WebTV Viewer v2.0 (build551), an emulator for
the Mac. Can anybody confirm this effect using the real WebTV?

I put up a test page for it.
<http://www.xs4all.nl/~apple77/webtv/>

--
Kris
kr*******@xs4all.netherlands (nl)

[Tina Holmboe]

Kris <kr*******@xs4all.netherlands> exclaimed in <kr*****************************@news1.news.xs4all .nl>:

By accident I noticed that a hack to hide CSS from IE4.x/Mac also hides
it from WebTV Viewer. Since I noticed a little while ago a post here
that mentioned the 'incompatibility' of WebTV Viewer with CSS and the

This is true, afaik, of WebTV up to 2.6 - and sad. 2.6 has fairly good
CSS support. I'd suggest not hiding from it. YMMV.

--
- Tina Holmboe Greytower Technologies
ti**@greytower.net http://www.greytower.net/
[+46] 0708 557 905

[Steve Pugh]

Kris <kr*******@xs4all.netherlands> wrote:

By accident I noticed that a hack to hide CSS from IE4.x/Mac also hides
it from WebTV Viewer. Since I noticed a little while ago a post here
that mentioned the 'incompatibility' of WebTV Viewer with CSS and the
hardship of hiding CSS from it, I thought this might be of relevance.

@import 'styles.css'; // hides from IE4/Mac and IE5/Mac
@i\mport "styles.css"; // hides from some browsers, but not from IE5/Mac

I noticed the effect in my WebTV Viewer v2.0 (build551), an emulator for
the Mac. Can anybody confirm this effect using the real WebTV?

I put up a test page for it.
<http://www.xs4all.nl/~apple77/webtv/>

Doesn't work (i.e. the styles are applied) in MSNTV Viewer 2.8 for
Windows.

With luck Magic Dave will be along in a bit to tell us what it does in
a real MSNTV box.

Deconstucting things a little the Windows viewer can handle the first
import okay but not the second. But using the second on its own isn't
an option as that blocks CSS from, for example, Opera 7.

Steve

--
"My theories appal you, my heresies outrage you,
I never answer letters and you don't like my tie." - The Doctor

Steve Pugh <st***@pugh.net> <http://steve.pugh.net/>

[Brian]

Tina Holmboe wrote:

Kris <kr*******@xs4all.netherlands> exclaimed in
<kr*****************************@news1.news.xs4all .nl>:

By accident I noticed that a hack to hide CSS from IE4.x/Mac also
hides it from WebTV Viewer. Since I noticed a little while ago a
post here that mentioned the 'incompatibility' of WebTV Viewer
with CSS and the

This is true, afaik, of WebTV up to 2.6 - and sad. 2.6 has fairly
good CSS support.

But I'm perplexed by WebTV reading a stylesheet media=screen in the
first place, when media=tv is available.

--
Brian
follow the directions in my address to email me

[Kris]

In article <M9zib.761169$uu5.132328@sccrnsc04>,
Brian <us*****@mangymutt.com.invalid-remove-this-part> wrote:

By accident I noticed that a hack to hide CSS from IE4.x/Mac also
hides it from WebTV Viewer. Since I noticed a little while ago a
post here that mentioned the 'incompatibility' of WebTV Viewer
with CSS and the

This is true, afaik, of WebTV up to 2.6 - and sad. 2.6 has fairly
good CSS support.

But I'm perplexed by WebTV reading a stylesheet media=screen in the
first place, when media=tv is available.

I would gladly supply a stylesheet for media="tv" if support is proper
and does not compromise rendering in other UA's. And of course if the
budget allows it.

--
Kris
kr*******@xs4all.netherlands (nl)
"We called him Tortoise because he taught us" said the Mock Turtle.

[Brian]

Kris wrote:

But I'm perplexed by WebTV reading a stylesheet media=screen in the
first place, when media=tv is available.

I would gladly supply a stylesheet for media="tv" if support is proper
and does not compromise rendering in other UA's. And of course if the
budget allows it.

It would probably be less expensive to provide a different stylesheet
altogether for a web tv browser than to have yet another partly broken
browser attempting things in a screen stylesheet that it cannot
handle, and another slew of hacks to hide css from it.

--
Brian
follow the directions in my address to email me

[Kris]

In article <wMzib.754713$Ho3.193369@sccrnsc03>,
Brian <us*****@mangymutt.com.invalid-remove-this-part> wrote:

But I'm perplexed by WebTV reading a stylesheet media=screen in the
first place, when media=tv is available.

I would gladly supply a stylesheet for media="tv" if support is proper
and does not compromise rendering in other UA's. And of course if the
budget allows it.

It would probably be less expensive to provide a different stylesheet
altogether for a web tv browser than to have yet another partly broken
browser attempting things in a screen stylesheet that it cannot
handle, and another slew of hacks to hide css from it.

Yes. But I don't trust UA detection.

--
Kris
kr*******@xs4all.netherlands (nl)
"We called him Tortoise because he taught us" said the Mock Turtle.

[Brian]

Kris wrote:

In article <wMzib.754713$Ho3.193369@sccrnsc03>,
Brian <us*****@mangymutt.com.invalid-remove-this-part> wrote:

But I'm perplexed by WebTV reading a stylesheet media=screen in the
first place, when media=tv is available.

I would gladly supply a stylesheet for media="tv" if support is proper
and does not compromise rendering in other UA's. And of course if the
budget allows it.

It would probably be less expensive to provide a different stylesheet
altogether for a web tv browser than to have yet another partly broken
browser attempting things in a screen stylesheet that it cannot
handle, and another slew of hacks to hide css from it.

Yes. But I don't trust UA detection.

Neither do I. That's my point. It shouldn't be up to authors to try
to detect the ua. The ua should follow the specs. Perhaps I'm
mistaken, but I feel that web tv should not be reading any stylesheet
for media="screen". If it didn't, an author would have no need to
sniff for a webtv ua string. Or have I misunderstood you? :)

--
Brian
follow the directions in my address to email me

[Kris]

In article <8gAib.754936$Ho3.193148@sccrnsc03>,
Brian <us*****@mangymutt.com.invalid-remove-this-part> wrote:

It would probably be less expensive to provide a different stylesheet
altogether for a web tv browser than to have yet another partly broken
browser attempting things in a screen stylesheet that it cannot
handle, and another slew of hacks to hide css from it.
Yes. But I don't trust UA detection.

Neither do I. That's my point. It shouldn't be up to authors to try
to detect the ua.

Indeed.
The ua should follow the specs. Perhaps I'm
mistaken, but I feel that web tv should not be reading any stylesheet
for media="screen".
I agree.
If it didn't, an author would have no need to
sniff for a webtv ua string. Or have I misunderstood you? :)

You understood me. And there should be no need for hacks either, but we
are living in a not so perfect world. I would prefer a CSS hack over UA
detection, if it cannot be done in a way that it is supposed to be done.

--
Kris
kr*******@xs4all.netherlands (nl)
"We called him Tortoise because he taught us" said the Mock Turtle.

[Stan Brown]

In article <M9zib.761169$uu5.132328@sccrnsc04> in
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets, Brian
<us*****@mangymutt.com.invalid-remove-this-part> wrote:

But I'm perplexed by WebTV reading a stylesheet media=screen in the
first place, when media=tv is available.

Do you mean there is a link to a media=tv style sheet and WebTV uses
the media=screen one? If so, I agree: that seems wrong.

Or do you mean WebTV reads media=screen even though it's a TV, when
the author did not provide a media=tv style sheet? I'm not so sure
that's bad. Presumably the media=screen style sheet is closer to the
author's intentions for presentation than the default WebTV style
sheet.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cortland County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/
2.1 changes: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/changes.html
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

[Steve Pugh]

ti**@greytower.net (Tina Holmboe) wrote:

Kris <kr*******@xs4all.netherlands> exclaimed in <kr*****************************@news1.news.xs4all .nl>:

By accident I noticed that a hack to hide CSS from IE4.x/Mac also hides
it from WebTV Viewer. Since I noticed a little while ago a post here
that mentioned the 'incompatibility' of WebTV Viewer with CSS and the

This is true, afaik, of WebTV up to 2.6 - and sad. 2.6 has fairly good
CSS support. I'd suggest not hiding from it. YMMV.

My mileage does vary...

@import support was added in 2.8 according to
http://developer.msntv.com/ which is what makes it hard to hide CSS
from it.

Now 2.6 may have had fairly good CSS support but if the emulator is
anything to go by 2.8 does not. Maybe they bit off more then they
could chew and tried to add support for extra properties but messed it
up.

For an example look at your own site: http://www.greytower.net/. The
links are all solid black boxes and the text runs off the right hand
edge of the screen. Some of my sites appear even worse (no text shows
up at all).
This puts MSNTV right down with NN4 as a browser that can't cope with
CSS, but unlike NN4 there are no easy tricks to hide CSS from it.

Steve

--
"My theories appal you, my heresies outrage you,
I never answer letters and you don't like my tie." - The Doctor

Steve Pugh <st***@pugh.net> <http://steve.pugh.net/>

[Brian]

Stan Brown wrote:

In article <M9zib.761169$uu5.132328@sccrnsc04> in
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets, Brian
<us*****@mangymutt.com.invalid-remove-this-part> wrote:

But I'm perplexed by WebTV reading a stylesheet media=screen in the
first place, when media=tv is available.
Do you mean there is a link to a media=tv style sheet and WebTV uses
the media=screen one?

That is not what I meant. I tried to test it anyways, but I can't get
any styles to work on the web tv simulator. Not even a simple color
declaration works reliably. I did, however, coax this bit out of the
Page Notes window:

[02] NOTE Unrecognized attribute in <LINK REL> tag:
Attribute "MEDIA=tv"

Way to go, MSN WebTV! And,for your further amusement, I present other
entries from that same window:

[01] NOTE Unrecognized attribute in <LINK REL> tag:
Attribute "MEDIA=screen"

[03] NOTE Unrecognized attribute in <LINK REL> tag:
Attribute "MEDIA=print"

Oh! But its failures are not limited to css. Witness these entries,
all from the same page, by the way:

[00] NOTE Unrecognized attribute in <HTML LANG> tag:
Attribute "LANG=en"

[04] ERROR Unrecognized tag "<ABBR>"
<ABBR TITLE="street">

Plus failure to render entities, certain valid html 4.01 documents
showing up completely blank, etc. To hope that the real web tv
browser is better than the simulation is likely an excercise in
unwarranted optimism.
Or do you mean WebTV reads media=screen even though it's a TV, when
the author did not provide a media=tv style sheet?
Yes, that is what I meant.
I'm not so sure that's bad.
Of course it is. "screen" <> "tv"
And in practical terms of authoring for a badly broken webTV browser,
it means more css hacks to try to protect the browser from its own bad
code.
Presumably the media=screen style sheet is closer to the
author's intentions for presentation than the default WebTV style
sheet.

That looks like another example of MS pretending to know what authors
"really meant," instead of following the spec:

http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/media.html#media-types

screen
Intended primarily for color computer screens.

tv
Intended for television-type devices (low resolution, color,
limited-scrollability screens, sound available).

It'd be rediculous of visual devices that are not computer screens to
try to render screen stylesheets. A well-authored screen sheet may
not be appropriate for other visual devices.

--
Brian
follow the directions in my address to email me

[kchayka]

Tina Holmboe wrote:

WebTV... 2.6 has fairly good
CSS support. I'd suggest not hiding from it.
I would disagree. In my experience, when it comes to CSS, WebTV (any
flavor) is worse than NS4. It makes a right mess of positioning,
margins, % units, and who knows what else. I would suggest hiding as
much from it as possible.
YMMV.

indeed.

--
To email a reply, remove (dash)un(dash). Mail sent to the un
address is considered spam and automatically deleted.

[Tina Holmboe]

Steve Pugh <st***@pugh.net> exclaimed in <0n********************************@4ax.com>:

Now 2.6 may have had fairly good CSS support but if the emulator is
anything to go by 2.8 does not. Maybe they bit off more then they
could chew and tried to add support for extra properties but messed it

Checking our site with 2.6 and 2.8 is definetly on the list of things
to do, right after "sleeping" and "eating" at the moment.

We did, however, test 2.6 on the "old" layout:

http://www.greytower.net/images/scre...-webtv-2.6.png

Not exactly pretty, but then again ... our site isn't :) Getting our
test systems back online is indeed a priority.

--
- Tina Holmboe Greytower Technologies
ti**@greytower.net http://www.greytower.net/
[+46] 0708 557 905