On Netscape 4.x and the Stylesheets of LJ's S2 Layout Engine:

[acroyear]

Now I don't want to get into a rant here, but neither IE NOR Netscape follow the standards correctly. I support the standards, and also respect that one must move forwards in capabilities or be left behind by those that do. The browser wars were supposed to be about standards. Tragically, Netscape 1) lost the war and 2) didn't have a stable-enough code base to be fixed via open source methods (particularly when required 3rd party stuff was removed, leaving a lot of gaping functionality holes).

Thus, Mozilla had to basically start over w/ the new layout engine, Gecko. Newer *IS* better in this case, both in the Mac world and in the standards-based browsing world.

The style sheets are NOT poorly formated. They are perfectly legit to the standard; i ran 'em through a validator. That Netscape for doesn't (and will never) support the standard is neither our fault, nor LJs. That Netscape freezes or crashes as a result is certainly not our fault.

One can always try to go into the netscape configuration options dialog and turn off stylesheets. Netscape 4 allowed that, at least for windows/linux, though the resultant look was often horid and even more unreadable. The other option, seeing if the right-mouse-button menu had a "copy link location" (which it does in IE and Mozilla) isn't an option for OS 9 since Macs don't have that right mouse button to start with (and thus, most mac apps don't have those menus even for the macs with 2-button mice).

Mozilla as "newest and greatest" it most certainly isn't. Html 4.0 and CSS 2.0 are *3 years old*. Netscape 4.x is technically now 5 years old and 5 years abandoned. No bug fixes or functionality fixes have been done in ANY Netscape 4 release since 4.6. The only reason ANY release after 4.6 happened is to fix security issues to keep the feds (who'd committed to Netscape for a solution back in the 3.x days) from complaining. That's it. No other bugs like the multitude of CSS problems have ever been fixed in a Netscape 4 release since 4.6 over 5 years ago.

So no, I have no intention any more of crippling my stuff to work with a product that has been abandoned by its owners for half a decade.

The world moves on.

Comments

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

a friend (though i may not be her "friend" anymore, LJ-wise, after this rant) who's stuck on an OS-9 mac because her work won't pay for a new box, and is a bit too prideful (I used to be like that too, once) to use I.E., so Netscape 4.79 is it.

[jmthane.livejournal.com]

So NS above 4.79 doesn't talk to Mac?

I only use Extorter if I'm doing a MS Update. Otherwise, I'm perfectly happy with NS 7.1. Not too proud to use Windoze (I hate to admit I like any MS product, but I actually *like* XP), but I still avoid Extorter and Outfluke if I can (so guess what we use at work? *sigh* But not at home).

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

There are Netscape 6s (don't trust them) and 7.01's (should be ok; based on Mozilla 1.0) for Mac OS9, but i'm not sure how well they work or why she claims they break the app that she specifically needs Netscape 4 for.

One of the problems is that some applications who never thought Mozilla and standards would break backwards-compatibility things (mostly javascript and the DOM for DHTML). These apps in their javascript only look to see if a browser is Mozilla and greater than 4, so Mozilla 5 matches their scripts and they try to do things that Mozilla no longer supports (by being standards compliant, with a few IE modifications like innerHTML).

[blueeowyn.livejournal.com]

I know that with Net6 they told us NO! I haven't heard much from them on Net7, however, IIRC it focuses on some security related scripts that they use to validate access to things running on the ldap server. I don't understand it, but I know that others in my office (WinXP, Net7) have problems that they don't have when using Net4. Specifically they don't see their normal choices for what they can access.

Besides which, Netscape 7 doesn't seem to exist for Mac OS9. So I could (in theory) try to use buggy Netscape 6 that is not to be trusted or ????

Since IE won't upgrade from 5.1 for Mac, I would be in the same boat in a few years using it.s

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

Well, you could try mozilla 1.2.1 (the last supported for os9)

go to http://www.mozilla.org/releases/old-releases-1.1-1.4rc3.html and scroll down to the 1.2.1 entry, or if those stylesheets also cause the browser to yarf, just get http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mozilla/releases/mozilla1.2.1/mozilla-macos9-1.2.1-full.bin as is and try it out.

it shouldn't change any netscape settings, though it will import likely them (like bookmarks). i don't think it'll try to change the default app for html files, but no promises.

[blueeowyn.livejournal.com]

I work for a university in Maryland. I have an iMac that I am working on re-configuring to use (it is a hand-me-down from a co-worker).

Due to a system that the university uses for certain applications, we are told that we CANNOT use Netscape higher than 4.79 (or at least cannot use Netscape 6).

Many times when you put a newer version of something on a computer w/out deleting the old version, interesting things will happen when you use the old version (or the computer assumes you want the newer one).

I don't like IE. I have used it but don't like it. Right now my IE on this machine is set to accept all cookies since the 1 or 2 things I need to try to use it for requires all cookies to be accepted (and when you are talking about 20-30 cookies it takes awhile to say yes to all of them).

I *can* use it. I don't like it and it uses resources that I may need for other things (like SPSS).

So while I am not planning to 'unfriend' Joe OR Cyd, I will probably avoid commenting on their stuff very often and probably avoid reading the LJ cuts. My choice. However, it seems like most of the problems are with the S2 things so I wish there was a way to tell (before getting caught) that someone has changed to S2 from S1. C'est la vie.e

[dglenn.livejournal.com]

Go to http://www.livejournal.com/editinfo.bml and look at the last few items before the "Advanced Options" header. Check the box marked "View comment pages in your journal style?" This won't completely solve the problem, but it'll help a lot.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

as i posted below:

maybe we should file a bug report/feature request that "style=mine" become an option that can be permanent and affect all pages, whether its in the link or not. there are other usability/accessability reasons besides just lousy-CSS that people would prefer to have their "look" be what they use for the whole site.

Some people intentionally use larger fonts because of eye-sight problems; having huge fonts on their own page, then having to enlarge the fonts (if their browser supports it) every time they read a lj-cut or comment, then shrink them back down when they get back to their own/friends page is a tiresome excercise too.

[blueeowyn.livejournal.com]

Joe has the right to do what he wants on his journal. Just as on usenet, people have the right to post opinions that are not popular. This whole thing started with my comment that his new look didn't work for me (and I thought it might not work for others). I have read th e14 comments (using IE 5.1 which is the NEWEST browser available for OS9 that isn't seriously evil (NS 6 counts from what I hear)).

I admit that the style is (in my opinion) bad. But That is my opinion. On IE 5.1 Mac OS9 it looks sort of like:
"Some
people
intentionally
use
larger
fonts
because
of
eye-sight
problems;"

However, his choice. I did find some of his comments condescending BUT I also understand where he is coming from. I know that the browser options I have are limited. Life is bad sometimes.

So I don't get to read ptpgrad, acroyear70, faireraven, etc. on LJ or check the MS fund-raiser page. It ain't the end of the world. My being able to do stuff for work and sticking with something that I know is set up to help protect me from viruses, is easy on my eyes, and for me user friendly is important to me.

When I do HTML coding, I look at the lowest common denominator because A) it is easier for me, and B) it is much easier for me to stay compliant which I need to do for my job.

[dglenn.livejournal.com]

I don't have enough RAM to get away with any version of Nutscrape or Exploder that I have handy under MacOS 9, so I'm using iCab (I really want to use Opera, but iCab is smaller).

A number of people's journals display incorrectly under both iCab/MacOS and Opera/Windows (though I'm a rev behind on Opera). There is brokenness. Exactly where isn't as big a deal as the fact that it exists. (And I was under the impression that iCab strove to be standards-compliant, but I'll have to look into that.)

It sucks to have to code down to legacy systems, especially known-broken ones, not just old. It sucks to have this powerful standard all shiny and inviting and not get to use all of it. But it comes down to whether you want the folks using noncompliant browers (for whatever reason) to be able to read what you write.

Me, I get pretty pissed off when someone tries to tell me I should use a tool I can't stand, for their convenience. I don't want to have to give up the features I've come to depend on in Opera just because somebody else things I should be running MSIE, and I'm not willing to reduce the performance of my system to a [expletive] crawl because somebody says I should turn on JavaScript on an underpowered machine (though the recent acquisition of a 350MHz box may help there). You don't want to see how I react when somebody tells me I shouldn't be using the only mail client whose UI I can stand just because they don't want to stop sending HTML email to me.

So telling someone she shouldn't be "so prideful" and just use your tool strikes me as being insulting, and thoughtless.

Sometimes we choose our tools for dumb reasons and a gentle probing with the right questions can nudge us in the right direction. Other times we choose out tools because we know what we want or what we can get away with using the resources we have, and claiming you know better than we do about that is condescending.

If you decide that you don't want to be constrained by your readers' limitations so that you can play with the nifty tools, I think you can state that personal decision in a non-insulting way. Me, I'm more interested in the words and making those words accessible, but I understand that the visual layout is another aspect of the art of web publishing that is more important to some people than it is to me.

But when a web site devoted specifically to what you can do "portably" with CSS currently (I'll look up the URL if you like, I think it was called "CSS Zen Garden" or something like that) breaks -- often unreadably -- on every browser I'm using, what they're claiming can be done safely isn't actually ready for prime time. CSS is supposed to fail gracefully. I shouldn't be getting black-on-black text, buttons hidden underneath text entry boxes, and margins ten characters across when I read LiveJournal. (Some folks I bother to add "?style=mine" to, others I just decide aren't worth the trouble of reading at all.)

I'm not using ancient browers. I'm using Opera 6, upgraded about a year ago (and will be trying out Opera 7 and Firefox, both for performance and for UI preferences, Real Soon Now), and iCab times out every six months or so and forces you to download the latest version. A lot of what *I* really, really want to take advantage of in CSS when I create web pages just isn't portable enough yet. (Admittedly, I was designing a commercial site, where it matters if users can't read it, but the same tricks I couldn't use there would be handy on my own site if only didn't care whether people could read it.)

Don't [expletive]ing tell me to switch to IE ifwhen I get around to mentioning these problems in my journal; I'm not going to bother to have a separate browser Just For LiveJournal, so I'm going to use a browser I like.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

crawl because somebody says I should turn on JavaScript on an underpowered machine

javascript is not (and never was) java; java is a JVM that when it launches, takes between 4 and 10 seconds and once running can still be dog slow on an underpowered box.

but javascript is just a little scripting language that is built-in to the browser and is "there" even when turned off. i know how its implemented in several browsers and aside from the "pop-ups" problem (where some adverts pop up and then bring up more popup ads as they get killed and you have all the memory wasted by the pages and the slowdown of the loading and all that rot) it really doesn't do anything intensive. the delays in most image rollover scripts are caused by loading the images, not in the rollover code itself.

i know you mentioned javascript being a slowdown before and it confused me then, too.

i do know that on netscape 4, having css on and javascript off, or vice-versa, broke a lot of apps/pages because dHTML assumes that both are there -- each is dependent on something done by the other.

---

I know that some browsers claim some degree of CSS compliance that isn't there. Obviously if something as simple as a CSS file causes a browser to freeze or crash, there's a big problem (and not one I can or should have to debug on my end).

For uglyness problems, that's where different browsers supported different parts of the standard first, all in the promise (that few actually ever met; IE still doesn't and likely won't for that matter) of fixing the rest later. positioning is usually the big one, like where netscape 4 ignores page margins on tables but nothing else (it means that table-controlled layout from netscape 2|3 gets screwed up with border images).

failing "gracefully" is relative. from a browser's perspective: once its tried to layout something, and then fails to layout something else, what do you do? re-render the whole page without the stylesheet? can you even detect that you failed to lay it out right? if you ignore some css entries and its not a problem, but others and it is, how can you tell the difference?

the "promise" of CSS being backwards-compatible and graceful in its failures was bogus, and I wrote so on a web-bb back in 1998 after having played with netscape 4 for a few months, Then i had to go to considerable work to make my pages look good for both css and not. some parts of celticdistrict.com are still broken and really just need a total redesign that i lack the patience for right now.

Finally, I didn't write the stylesheet for my blog; it was a built-in one to the particular s2 layout I used. my blog does exist for my comfort first.

maybe we should file a bug report/feature request that "style=mine" become an option that can be permanent and affect all pages, whether its in the link or not. there are other usability/accessability reasons besides just lousy-CSS that people would prefer to have their "look" be what they use for the whole site.

Some people intentionally use larger fonts because of eye-sight problems; having huge fonts on their own page, then having to enlarge the fonts (if their browser supports it) every time they read a lj-cut or comment, then shrink them back down when they get back to their own/friends page is a tiresome excercise too.

---

Firefox is still a memory hog, don't get me wrong on that. I was using Mozilla 1.4 on my last underpowered laptop (p2-233, 32meg memory, win98) and pretty much had to turn all other apps off to come close to being usable. But it was still stable and didn't give any page-rendering problems except for those pages whose javascript assumed that mozilla 5 == mozilla 4 and made bad DHTML requests.

Opera 7 is probably the more efficient as far as memory goes, but i can't confirm that.

end part 1. part 2 coming up.

[dglenn.livejournal.com]

Java is more of a dog than Javascript, yes. But here's the rub: I can leave Java turned on because very few pages use it -- I get a slow launch, performance is dragged down somewhat for a little while, I go elsewhere, performance is fine again.

Javascript, whether it's supposed to be painless or not, is everywhere, so if I turn it on, I've got script after script all trying to run at once. And when a page uses Javascript, it tends to use a lot of it. The theory is interesting, but I find my direct observations more interesting: when I turn on Javascript, within fifteen minutes my machine is so bogged down that I'm waiting thirty to a hundred and twenty seconds for response to a keypress or mouseclick, and it doesn't get better until I turn Javascript off.

The problem is not pop-up windows; I keep those disabled.

Until the arrival of the 350 MHz equipment, the fastest machines I ran browsers on were:

Win95, Pentium, 120 MHz, I think 48 MB RAM.
WinNT, Pentium, 100 MHz, 80 MB RAM.
Mac, have to look up CPU and speed, 128 MB RAM.

Whether Javascript is supposed to bog those machines down or not is secondary to the fact that it does. "Just a little scripting language" that gets used for bigger and bigger scripts. (In many cases I feel it's The Wrong Tool, but that's a different discussion.)

"Finally, I didn't write the stylesheet for my blog; it was a built-in one to the particular s2 layout I used. my blog does exist for my comfort first."

*nod* It's true that specific complaints about specific bugs relating to specific S2 styles should be addressed to the LJ support staff.

And I've already acknowledged that your priorities regarding accessibility vs. style differ from mine. My personal decision is to favour a style less likely to cause problems, but that wasn't my complaint about what you had written. My complaint was with the "Oh just upgrade already" tone.

(BTW, your current LJ style does not break under Opera 6. The problems I've encountered personally have been elsewhere, and some of those are still readable but I can't imagine the rendering I'm seeing is intentional, while others either have foreground and background the same colour or completely omit the text until I tack on "?style=mine".)

'maybe we should file a bug report/feature request that "style=mine" become an option that can be permanent and affect all pages, whether its in the link or not.'

Good idea. Make it part of the login cookie.

Thanks for the caveat regarding Firefox.

Turning off all other apps isn't a good solution for me. I keep less stuff active at a time than I'd really like already; at some point I wind up spending more time closing and restarting apps than I do using them.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

I apologize if the specific words were insulting, since I didn't clarify the particular camp of non-IE users I was refering to.

There are those who won't go to IE because they really are more comfortable with their current browser/setup (my officemate here uses Links, a lynx varient with frame, table and css-positioning support, when viewing javadocs), even with its limitations in standards support.

Then there are statements like [I] don't like having internet exploder on a Mac. I don't like supporting M$ in that fashion. which definitely came across to me as a statement of pride. I also will note that I (in mentioning pride before) counted myself among that camp once.

My attitude now is i'll use the non-M$ alternative when i can (that is, almost all of the time), but i will not let the nature of a particular tool (or at least, its origin) get in the way of what i need to accomplish. if i need to use IE to see something, then i'll use IE. if i needed to get a box with windows XP on it in order to do the dvd work i want to do, then fine, i get a box with windows xp on it. i bemoan that i can't use my linux box for everything, but its the truth and i'm not going to fight it.

yes, one tool that does all (correctly and with a nice interface) is nice, but also impossible; i accepted that years ago. i personally think we're still a decade away from "comfortable" computing.

I do respect that having somewhat faster machines (though the laptop i mention below is certainly slower than the 350mgtz box you refer to), but i decided last year to go with Mozilla on that laptop, preferring slower performance over constantly working around buggy browsers that crash or can't render what i consider to be "the basics" properly. For a time, I swallowed my pride on IE, until the alternative finally became stable enough to use, even if a touch slower through page-thrashing.

In the end, it changes nothing as far as what i'm going to do. I no longer will now or ever worry or care about my work being "safe" for Netscape 4. I will not make any overt effort to test and debug my pages on browsers I do not have on hand. This includes Opera and Safari (though I will test on kde's konqueror, which is the source base for Safari).

If someone reports a "Netscape 4" rendering problem, I will probably ignore it unless its a bug in my code that the browsers i used ignored or worked-around automagically; i don't want to add browser-detection code to every page when the only thing it may do is turn on/off one little feature like the stylesheet. If someone reports a rendering bug in another browser, I'll look at my code and see if there's anything obvious i screwed up, but if nothing blunt comes out of it, i won't change anything.

i have to accept that 98% of the browsers are enough, lest i be chasing down browser-differences bugs to the point of not having the time or patience to prove any content at all. to cater to that last 2 percent at the expense of being able to make the page look asthetically pleasing to me is not worth it.

And that includes its coding as well as its visible appearance; I'm not going to jump through a ton of javascript hoops to turn this or that feature on and off in each little browser-difference situation. that's not coding, that's garbage for its own sake.

[dglenn.livejournal.com]

'Then there are statements like [I] don't like having internet exploder on a Mac. I don't like supporting M$ in that fashion. which definitely came across to me as a statement of pride.'

Is every boycott an example of the sin of pride then? (I don't remember having spoken to Eowyn about Microsoft in this regard, so I'm not sure where her attitude falls on the pride/principle thing.) I can see how such a statement could be a pride thing (and not recognized as such by the speaker); I can also see how it might not be.

(Oh, about Links and Lynx -- I use each of those on occasion (there are some things Lynx seems better at), and that's my other gripe about pages that rely on Javascript for stuff that doesn't require Javascript.)

'yes, one tool that does all (correctly and with a nice interface) is nice, but also impossible; i accepted that years ago. i personally think we're still a decade away from "comfortable" computing.'

Heh. Tell that to one of those Emacs-using heretics. (Flamebait: vi rules!)

I'm not sure what you mean by "one tool that does it all" here. I never expect my computing to use a single tool any more than I expect a Swiss Army Socket-Wrench With Soldering Iron, Waffle Iron, Web Browser, And Trouser Press to be manageable.

I do expect one web browser to be a reasonable all-around web browser and do all the web-browser stuff correctly and comfortably. In fact I expect several to do so, so that people with a different idea of "comfortable" than mine can pick a different browser. I expect to switch tools when I go from web browsing to news to email to image editing to music composition; I do not expect to switch tools when going from one web site to a different web site.

' i don't want to add browser-detection code to every page when the only thing it may do is turn on/off one little feature like the stylesheet.'

Oh those are annoying from both ends and often work incorrectly anyhow. Especially when they reject a browser for not being on the list of browser the author knew about even though that browser would work correctly with the page. No, my approach (which I present here only as an alternative way of thinking about things) is to make things less complicated instead of more: I just dismiss all the extra-fancy layout tricks that only work in some browsers and not in others, as being unimportant to getting my content across. I've got a different set of priorities; I'm not trying to show how cool a layout I can make, I just want to present my words, images, and music in a reasonably attractive form. So, I am definitely note advocating adding browser-detection code.

In general, if I make it display correctly and attractively under Lynx, it'll display correctly in pretty much every other browser except perhaps Mosaic (and even Mosaic stands a chance). So I don't have a lot of testing to do except where I do something fancy ... well, what passes for "fancy" for me, that is.

Am I artificially limiting myself and disregarding a lot of what HTML can do? Unfortunately yes. But it doesn't particularly bother me. It bugs me in principle that not all of the power can be used portably, but it doesn't bother me personally because, despite what some people may think, I do not feel I need to use every available feature of a tool. I only need to use the parts that pertain to what I'm trying to do. For me, the "safe" parts of HTML suffice.

[blueeowyn.livejournal.com]

It might interest Joe to know that I happen to prefer MS Word to Word Perfect, AppleWorks, ClarisWorks and several other word processors that I have had access to over the years. MS Word and MS Excel are my friends. I use PowerPoint but think that it in general is over-used (not an attack against MS, but an attack against the put it into bullets and don't bother explaining anything method of presentation). I haven't used Access but I hear that it is a PIA and lacks a few protections against erroneously deleting the entire DB due to a slip of the finger.

Left to my own preferences my default apps are:
Netscape, MS Word, MS Excel, Filemaker, Telnet to unix for unix mail & newsgroups, Eudora for work email, SPSS, MeetingMaker, Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Photoshop, BBEdit Lite, Goliath, Fetch, and Stuffit.

I dislike a lot of what Bill Gates is doing. I find the newer version of Word a pain to use and a huge memory hog (so I usually use the older one). I find the whole "IE is necessary to the OS" saga extremely annoying (and unfortunately effective). I have heard so much about the security flaws in IE and the lack of stability of it (to say nothing of the stupid left toolbar that takes my small screen and makes it smaller) to NOT want it on my computer (esp. since with very few exceptions, it doesn't fix things, it just shows different problems).

That said, it will probably stay since Hotmail won't work anymore with Netscape (though I can't say I am at all surprised).a