Which version?

**Keith Bowes** · Jul 20 '05, 08:17 PM

Re: Which version?

The Plankmeister wrote:[color=blue]
> I'm redesigning my site using CSS and have just decided to start again from
> scratch as I was using too much javascript to do positioning and stuff. My
> question is: What version of CSS is it safe to use? Since I last used CSS,
> version 2, 2.1 and 3 have popped up. Is it still better to use CSS1, or is
> it safe to use CSS2? Or 2.1? I guess 3 is not a good idea right now.
>[/color]

For optimum browser compatibility, use CSS1 with some widely-supported
CSS2 (positioning, cursors, system colors and fonts, etc). But ideally,
there is no reason you can't use advanced stuff for browsers that
support those things, or may some day. CSS 2.1 probably isn't good
right now, because it corrects certain errors and browsers tend to do
them the CSS2 way. CSS3 is a series of working drafts, though things
like selectors and colors are stable.

**Brian** · Jul 20 '05, 08:17 PM

Re: Which version?

The Plankmeister wrote:[color=blue]
>
> What version of CSS is it safe to use?[/color]

Depends on the browser, of course. MSIE 5.x can't handle much of
CSS1. Mozilla and Opera can do most of CSS2, and ignore that which
they can't do, which is the correct behavior. N4 chokes on so much of
CSS that it isn't worth the effort. Hide all css from that browser
for its own good. NS4 users will get a plain but usable site,
assuming you have written robust and valid html, which you should do
in any case.
[color=blue]
> Is it still better to use CSS1, or is it safe to use CSS2? Or 2.1?[/color]

Code for CSS2, and hide css from N4 and MSIE/Win5.x/6 as needed.
< http://w3development.de/css/hide_css_from_browsers/ >
[color=blue]
> I guess 3 is not a good idea right now.[/color]

Only a few ideas are supported, and only by Mozilla and, possibly,
Opera. You can add these in, and if a browser can't handle it, it
should ignore it, which is safe behavior. Note the MSIE and N4 caveat
detailed above.

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

**Jim Dabell** · Jul 20 '05, 08:17 PM

Re: Which version?

The Plankmeister wrote:

[snip][color=blue]
> What version of CSS is it safe to use? Since I last used CSS, version 2,
> 2.1 and 3 have popped up. Is it still better to use CSS1, or is it safe to
> use CSS2? Or 2.1? I guess 3 is not a good idea right now.[/color]

Like any web technology, none of them are truly safe to use unless you test
in user-agents that are important to you. However, there are some parts of
CSS that are more dangerous than others.

CSS 1:

Most graphical browsers in common use today support almost all of this
specification. You can expect it to be implemented pretty consistently
from Internet Explorer 5.0+ on both the Windows and Mac platforms, any
Mozilla derivatives (including Netscape 6.0+), and KHTML derivatives
(Konqueror, Safari, the next version of Omniweb).

However, there are still plenty of user-agents that cannot or will not
support CSS at all, or may only implement parts of it. For instance, Lynx,
or search engines. You need to ensure your HTML is up to scratch.

CSS 2:

A five-year-old specification, large parts of it still aren't implemented by
any version of Internet Explorer. The browsers I mention above can all
understand most of CSS 2 though, so for most websites, you can be pretty
confident when sticking to the subset of CSS 2 that Internet Explorer
understands.

Internet Explorer does not understand the table parts of CSS 2, and some
types of selector (attribute selectors and direct descendant selectors, off
the top of my head, there may be more). It also gets the box model wrong,
but google for "box model hack" to find out how to handle this. Internet
Explorer 6.0 includes a "Standards" mode that gets a bit more of CSS 2
right. Internet Explorer also has some pretty nasty bugs that flare up
from time to time, but they are mostly understodd and documented enough to
be easily googlable, and usually have simple workarounds.

CSS 2.1:

Faced with loads of crap implementations , the CSS WG decided to put out a
specification that more accurately described what is understood by current
UAs. Basically, they took CSS 2, ripped out the obscure bits that hardly
any browser got right (e.g. counters), and republished it as CSS 2.1. You
are probably safer authoring to CSS 2.1 than you are authoring to CSS 2.

CSS 3:

Mostly in draft status. You may find the odd browser that supports some CSS
3 properties (e.g. Mozilla derivatives understand -moz-border-radius
properties, which closely follow the border-radius CSS 3 property). I
believe recent versions of some browsers understand some CSS 3 selectors.

Miscellaneous:

Lots of browsers limit the ability to style form control elements.

It's typical to find that an element rendered by a plugin has an infinite
z-index.

You can do stupid things with CSS as well as smart things. For instance,
setting the font size in absolute units isn't very smart. You'll pick
things like this up if you read this group for a while.

There is no harm in supplying CSS that some browsers don't implement. Just
because you can't get the effect you want in some browsers, it doesn't mean
that the users of other browsers can't benefit from it.

Internet Explorer on Windows and Internet Explorer on the Mac use entirely
different rendering engines. Don't let the name fool you, treat them as
different browsers.

Lots of user-agents that read web pages out to the user aurally actually pay
attention to CSS that is specifically intended for the screen. So don't be
surprised if your content marked as @media "screen" {foo{display: none;}}
doesn't get read out in JAWS or IBM Home Page Reader.

It's usually best to stick to "standards mode" in browsers that do doctype
switching (lots of browsers have different rendering modes, google for
info).

A common technique is to exploit the parsing bugs of some browsers to supply
different CSS to different browsers.

<URL:http://w3development.d e/css/hide_css_from_b rowsers/>

Basically, until you have gotten used to CSS, check in browsers that are
important to you as much as possible. After a while, you know what to
avoid and are confident enough to write to a reference browser and fix up
the messes other browsers may make of it at the end. Oh, and talking of
reference browsers, use something with good CSS support, otherwise you are
just creating work for yourself. I recommend the latest stable version of
Mozilla.

--
Jim Dabell

**Sue Sims** · Jul 20 '05, 08:17 PM

Re: Which version?

On Mon, 15 Sep 2003 17:55:58 +0100, Jim Dabell <jim-usenet@jimdabel l.com>
wrote:
[color=blue]
> Basically, they took CSS 2, ripped out the obscure bits that hardly
> any browser got right (e.g. counters), and republished it as CSS 2.1.[/color]

Alert: counters are still in CSS2.1, as mentioned here
<URL:http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-CSS21-20030915/generate.html#c ounters>

and still supported by Opera.

Sue

Which version?

Which version?

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment