[ale] Netscape, CSS, and fonts

[Jeff Hubbs]

I'm following this thread with great interest because I care about
OS/browser independence.  

With that in mind, let me ask a question.  What (preferably
free-software-based) mechanisms for Web app development exist that render
this CSS issue academic?


- Jeff

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Randy Carpenter [mailto:randy at cc.gatech.edu]
> Sent: Friday, February 09, 2001 9:43 AM
> To: Dan Newcombe
> Cc: ALE
> Subject: Re: [ale] Netscape, CSS, and fonts
> 
> 
> We've worked with CSS alot and have learned that it's very 
> difficult to come
> up with one CSS that will work for every platform/browser combination.
> Typically, when you modify a common CSS to fix one platform/browser
> combination, you end up breaking another.  So, we decided to maintain
> different CSS definitions for certain platform/browser 
> combinations that
> caused us trouble.  The advantages to this approach are that 
> you can correct
> problems that you discover on one combination w/o breaking 
> the other and you
> eliminate making compromises in your CSS.
> 
> We use "The Ultimate JavaScript Client Sniffer, Version 3.0" 
> to determine the
> platform/browser combination:
> 
> 
>    http://www.mozilla.org/docs/web-developer/sniffer/browser_type.html
> 
> 
> Then, use simple javascript on each page to select the CSS.  
> For example,
> 
> 
> if (is.win) 
>   document.write("<LINK REL=stylesheet TYPE=text/css 
> HREF=/style/pc.css TITLE=ourhome>")
> else 
>   if (is.mac) 
>     document.write("<LINK REL=stylesheet TYPE=text/css 
> HREF=/style/mac.css TITLE=ourhome>")
>   else
>     if (is.unix) 
>       document.write("<LINK REL=stylesheet TYPE=text/css 
> HREF=/style/unix.css TITLE=ourhome>")
>     else 
>       document.write("<LINK REL=stylesheet TYPE=text/css 
> HREF=/style/main.css TITLE=ourhome>")
> 
> 
> This technique has worked well for us.
> 
> Hope this helps,
> Randy
> 
> On Thu, 8 Feb 2001, Dan Newcombe wrote:
> > From: Dan Newcombe <Newcombe at mordor.clayton.edu>
> > To: ALE <ale at ale.org>
> > Subject: [ale] Netscape, CSS, and fonts
> >
> >
> > I have a page I am updating 
> (http://duck.clayton.edu/index-new2.html). It
> > uses some basic CSS stuff in it, and looks mostly pretty in 
> IE5.5.  Some
> > changes left to make, but it works for now.
> >
> > I pulled it up in Netscape on Win and it looked okay.  I 
> then tried it in
> > Netscape 4.75 on Linux, and it looks horid.  The problem is 
> that for some
> > elements, I have a style that says to use Arial, Helvetica, 
> or Sans-Serif
> > for the font...yet on Netscape on Linux, even though 
> Helvetica is there,
> > it refuses to use it.  I've tried telling it to use other 
> fonts, and it
> > still won't.
> >
> > I put an image of it in NS at http://duck.clayton.edu/YUCK.jpg
> >
> > What do I need to do to get the Linux netscape to view this 
> properly?
> >
> > Thanks!
> > 	-Dan
> >
> > --
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> ______________________________________________________________
> _____________
> Randy Carpenter                             
> http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~randy
> Georgia Institute of Technology                         
> randy at cc.gatech.edu
> College of Computing                                         
> (404) 894-9046
> Computing and Networking Services Group        
> http://www.cc.gatech.edu/cns
> 
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