Slashdot Mirror
Mozilla now supports all CSS1 properties
EmilEifrem writes "Looks like the Mozilla team's doing good: "The new layout engine now supports all CSS1 properties. Troy Chevalier implemented the last property, background-attachment, earlier this week. Some properties are still buggy, and one selector (the visited pseudo-class) isn't yet implemented. However, this is probably the most complete implementation of CSS1 so far, and the bug list is consistently getting shorter." Check story at MozillaZine. "
Personally, I think JWZ's departure and subsequent comments were all about sour grapes. I didn't expect mozilla to be "hacker friendly" for at least a year, I don't understand why anyone would have. Granted, the project has a bit of a "family atmosphere," but what else should we expect?
In hindsight, dumping the legacy rendering engine will probably be seen as the salvation of mozilla. It's smaller, faster and easier to maintain, at least according to the comments I've read from developers. After the code stabilizes we'll probably see gecko popping up in all kinds of applications and a lot more interest in development. I think mozilla is going to put the screws to Internet Exploder and will eventually become the de facto standard against which other browsers are measured.
slashdot broke my sig
CSS is supported to some extent on all but
one browser, that one being IE3 which has so
much broken CSS support, it's not funny. And
browsers that don't know anything about CSS
support it, generally, because they will render
the page without it (aka lynx), so using CSS
on a non-CSS browser will get you graceful
degragation.
And as pointed out, you probably use sites every
day that use CSS, and don't know it, because
it's supposed to be invisible to the end user.
It's not that CSS is dying out now, but it's
been slow to catch on, as people find table layout
a terrible approach to web design and accessibility
comes into play.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
I don't think so. First, here's a quote from
w3's page:
Will XSL replace CSS?
No. They are likely to co-exist since they meet different needs. XSL is intended for complex
formatting where the content of the document might be displayed in multiple places; for
example the text of a heading might also appear in a dynamically generated table of contents.
CSS is intended for dynamic formatting of online documents for multiple media; its strictly
declarative nature limits its capabilities but also makes it efficient and easy to generate and
modify in the content-generation workflow. So they are two different tools; for some tasks,
CSS is the appropriate choice and for some tasks, XSL. They can also be used together - use
XSL on the server to condense or customize some XML data into a simpler XML document, then
use CSS to style it on the client.
Secondly, most average web authors will for the next 2 to 3 years will still be using HTML for
most pages, and CSS is the only way to format
these types of pages.
However, the apparent problem with CSS is that it
has been standardized by the W3 group for several
years, and only *now* are we seeing fully compatible browsers, mostly due to the trail ends
of the browser wars. It's a shame that there
is all this tech in web content delievery that
an author cannot take advantage of because
of incomplete browsers.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
--
Standards should be drafted based on proven designs, not the other way round. Most RFC's are based on working code, why can't this be expected from the W3C?
Let's hope that XML/XSL turns out the be simple and consistent enough in practice to make up for some of the obscenities in web design that HTML + all the incompatible extensions have made necessary. (Allow me to be sceptical, since approximately 1 1/2 years have passed since the introduction of XML by the W3C and I don't see it being used much...)
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
c't has a comprehensive test and description of CSS (wannabe) capable browser (unfortunately not online). Gecko is best, even in version M3, followed by Opera and IE5.
Things look pretty bad on the CSS 2 side, though.
Anyway, with IE5 trying to undermine the web standards it's excellent to see Mozilla make progress.
1. I never use em, no need, it can't hurt me if I don't touch it right?
Except that em and % are two of the most useful size units in CSS. It allows elements to be sized relative to how the user wants to see them, instead of in an absolute manner, which can hinder usability. Unfortunately, the IE 3 screws up em very badly, and NN4 screws up % rather badly as well. (sigh)
3. When you have a large audience you have to cover all your bases, so you have to do all that "stupid shit" so you know it looks the same everywhere
If you're trying to do that, then you're doing the wrong thing. My page will
(And yeah, I know...try convincing the suits of that -- I do, and it usually fails, but it's worth trying for anyway.).
I've just learned over the years that it's better to make a page with the added functionality for the users of new tech that is also completely backward compatible. Yeah, it's a bitch, but that's what I get paid for.
That's what I get paid for, too. And that's the exact point of CSS. No matter what, some users get a usable version of the page (if you're doing things right) -- some users may just get a better-looking experience. If your content is interesting, it won't really matter too much to the users.
pooptruck
On a side note, StyleMaster 1.3 shipped this week from an Australian Company, Western Civilisation, and includes fantastic help for determining which CSS features are implemented correctly in various browsers. I was so impressed I went to kagi and paid for it after an hour of use.