Of CSS and XHTML (was: Re: J2EE)

[Colin Bendell]

Could someone explain to me why NS4 is still an issue?  I mean, NS4
makes up for less than 1% of browser usage
(http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp) - why should we
bend over backward for them?  People using NS4 are used to seeing web
pages look like crap. I would recommend that you simply ensure that the
pages work without javascript enabled.  It won't look pretty for NS4,
but it will work.

Just my two cents.

/colin

-----Original Message-----
From: David Miller [mailto:justdave at bugzilla.org] 
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 2:50 PM
To: developers at bugzilla.org
Subject: Of CSS and XHTML (was: Re: J2EE)

On 12/4/2003 3:29 PM -0500, Tom Emerson wrote:

> Personally I would love to see the current BZ interface make more use
> of styles. Support for NS4 and Lynx is an albatross, as far as I'm
> concerned. At some point you have to draw a line in the sand and move
> on. I am not in favor of using the latest and greatest CSS features,
> but those that have become virtually ubiquitous should be looked at.

Actually, support for NS4 is the albatross.  Supporting Lynx is actually
much easier if you use CSS exclusively than it is with all the hacks you
have to do to make it look good in NS4.  Think about it...  Lynx is a
text
presentation browser.  You can build your raw pages so that the order
looks
and works good in Lynx.  Then you use the CSS to reposition things so it
looks good on a standards-compliant GUI browser.  The browsers that
don't
do CSS will wind up showing the page very similar to how it looks in
Lynx,
even though it's a GUI browser.  My official stance at this point is
that I
wouldn't mind subjecting NS4 users to that type of layout.  As long as
it's
still functional for them and we don't actually prevent them from using
it.

However, based on some conversations I've had with persons who are
actually
on the W3C XHTML committee, and a visit to the Real World, I still think
XHTML for the sake of being XHTML is a bad idea at this point.  I would
have no objections from changing our doctype from HTML 4.01 Transitional
to
HTML 4.01 Strict however.  Which would be at the expense of markup
features
that NS4 understands.  But as long as it's all eye candy and it's still
functional in NS4, they can live with it.
-- 
Dave Miller      Project Leader, Bugzilla Bug Tracking System
http://www.justdave.net/             http://www.bugzilla.org/
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