Detecting non-css intellegent browsers

I've been studying a great book on css and now that I've put together a
few pages using it, I'm finding out that my book needed one more very
important chapter. Introducing css in the real world. Obviously,
there are a LOT of older browsers still out there that don't support
css and some newer one's that still don't support it very well.
Knowing that, I have prepared a second set of pages using table layouts
for those browsers. It would have been VERY helpful to know how to
detect which browsers were css intelligent or even which were not.

Can anyone here please enlighten me or give me a reference to go in
search of? I've been told it is not enough to be able to detect
browser and version. It's been suggested that I need to test for css
enabled and perhaps there's other things to be considered. Any help
would be sincerely appreciated.

ima wrote:

I've been studying a great book on css and now that I've put together a
few pages using it, I'm finding out that my book needed one more very
important chapter. Introducing css in the real world. Obviously,
there are a LOT of older browsers still out there that don't support
css and some newer one's that still don't support it very well.
Knowing that, I have prepared a second set of pages using table layouts
for those browsers. It would have been VERY helpful to know how to
detect which browsers were css intelligent or even which were not.

Can anyone here please enlighten me or give me a reference to go in
search of? I've been told it is not enough to be able to detect
browser and version. It's been suggested that I need to test for css
enabled and perhaps there's other things to be considered. Any help
would be sincerely appreciated.

My honest opinion:
Throw out these table layout pages.
Upload the CSS based pages.
Give us a URL, and state which problems you are encountering in which
browsers, and you got a fair chance you'll learn a few small tricks
and get your pages all working without a table.

That is, based on the assumption your CSS based pages already are
working well in some browser, and based on your information this is
probably Firefox or Opera.

--
Els http://locusmeus.com/
Sonhos vem. Sonhos vão. O resto é imperfeito.
- Renato Russo -
Now playing: Dave Edmunds - The Wanderer

ima wrote:

there are a LOT of older browsers still out there that don't support
css and some newer one's that still don't support it very well.
Knowing that, I have prepared a second set of pages using table layouts
for those browsers. It would have been VERY helpful to know how to
detect which browsers were css intelligent or even which were not.

A very bad plan.

Browser sniffing fails to correctly identify many browsers, modern or
otherwise. Search the web for numerous articles why this is so.
It is possible to create web pages that degrade gracefully for old or
defective browsers.
Do as Els suggests.

--
jmm dash list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
(Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)

ima wrote:

I've been studying a great book on css and now that I've put together a
few pages using it, I'm finding out that my book needed one more very
important chapter. Introducing css in the real world. Obviously,
there are a LOT of older browsers still out there that don't support
css

As a proportion of traffic on the web - not really. Smaller still when you
consider that users of such browsers will probably be happy they can get to
the content in the first place. Even smaller if you don't count those user
agents for which a table based layout is worse then sensible markup.

and some newer one's that still don't support it very well.

This comes down to learning the bugs in the common ones you care about an
implementing work arounds. For most people that means MSIE 6, and perhaps
5.x.

Knowing that, I have prepared a second set of pages using table layouts
for those browsers.

Waste of time.

It would have been VERY helpful to know how to
detect which browsers were css intelligent or even which were not.

http://www.greytower.net/archive/art...customcss.html

--
David Dorward <http://blog.dorward.me.uk/> <http://dorward.me.uk/>
Home is where the ~/.bashrc is

OK.. I'm sensing a uniform impression from this group, that my
inexperience was leading me in the wrong direction for a solution.

I have only a few browsers installed for testing and (to my current
knowledge) my biggest problem is with Netscape 4 (which is also the
oldest of my browser selection). I've done some research and I know
that N4 does have some CSS support (if somewhat limited). I don't a
version of IE prior to 6 so I suspect IE5 and earlier probably have
even more problems but I have no way to see them.

The CSS book that I've been studying, ends with an example of a 3
column layout which I've been trying to adapt my own pages to. This
layout tests fairly well for my other browser resources but it displays
as a jumbled mess with Netscape 4. At first I thought perhaps it was
an error somewhere in my code (and that may still be the case) but I've
downloaded the online example from the book and the other's example
doesn't work with N4 either but it seems to be a different problem.
The example page starts to load and gets *maybe* a third of the way
down the page and then freezes with the right column nowhere in sight
and the parts of the footer text displayed in the center of the window.


I've tried contacting the author but no replies yet. I've temporarily
uploaded a copy of the example to the link below in case any of you
here can spot the problem(s) and suggest a way to work N4 around it.

Your wisdom, time and effort are all greatly appreciated.

http://www.nwlink.com/~jac

ima wrote:

OK.. I'm sensing a uniform impression from this group, that my
inexperience was leading me in the wrong direction for a solution.

I have only a few browsers installed for testing and (to my current
knowledge) my biggest problem is with Netscape 4 (which is also the
oldest of my browser selection). I've done some research and I know
that N4 does have some CSS support (if somewhat limited). I don't a
version of IE prior to 6 so I suspect IE5 and earlier probably have
even more problems but I have no way to see them.

Make sure you test with Opera 7.54, Opera 8.02, Mozilla 1.4, and Mozilla
1.7.11.

You can (sort of) install older versions of IE on your Windows PC, at
least well enough for testing. In addition to 6.0 I have 5.01 and 5.5.
See http://labs.insert-title.com/labs/article795.aspx

The CSS book that I've been studying, ends with an example of a 3
column layout which I've been trying to adapt my own pages to. This
layout tests fairly well for my other browser resources but it displays
as a jumbled mess with Netscape 4.

How important is NN4 to you? Do you really have enough visitors to
fully support it?

At first I thought perhaps it was
an error somewhere in my code (and that may still be the case) but I've
downloaded the online example from the book and the other's example
doesn't work with N4 either but it seems to be a different problem.
The example page starts to load and gets *maybe* a third of the way
down the page and then freezes with the right column nowhere in sight
and the parts of the footer text displayed in the center of the window.

One of the problems with NN4 is that there were a lot of versions, and
each had its own set of problems. This made testing problematical: one
could not possibly test with all the versions, so one had to test with
the more common versions, which I believe today comprises NN4.08,
NN4.79, and NN4.80. If you are going to support NN4, these are the
versions you should target.

I trust that you know how to hide CSS from NN4.

ima wrote:

Obviously,
there are a LOT of older browsers still out there that don't support
css

No there aren't. There are very few of them, and even fewer people
using them. There are more _newer_ "browsers" that don't support CSS
and do this deliberately for various reasons (Googlebot might be
regarded as an important example). However the natural behaviour of CSS
is that it's non-harmful if not supported.

Code your pages to work without CSS, and code them so that their
behaviour without CSS is "rational", if not pretty. Then use CSS to
control the layout how you want it. Ignore NS4, it's just too much
trouble to support and simply not worth the effort.

On Mon, 5 Sep 2005, ima wrote:

as a jumbled mess with Netscape 4.

Nowadays, hide most of your CSS from NN4. It's not worth the effort to
/try to do better, as others have already advised you.

As a matter of principle, one should not make web pages which *depend* on
CSS. So, no matter if the cosmetics are poor for them, your (few) NN4
users still get the content, even without the more interesting CSS.

There are some handy web pages about techniques for hiding CSS from
inadequate browser versions (-> google etc.). NN4 would be especially
relevant in this context (for those few still running it).

Anyone who is still running ancient versions of the MS operating system
component that thinks it's a web browser, on the other hand, have far more
serious matters to worry about than mere CSS problems. Their latest
offering isn't without its problems (it's known to still violate several
mandatory requirements of the relevant interworking standards, and that
isn't the only security risk to which it exposes itself and its users),
but at least the current version comes with a ready ongoing supply of
sticky-plaster to fix the more evident security compromises as they get
exploited.


Re: the subject line -- browsers which don't implement CSS at all are
harmless, if you follow the principle of never *relying* on CSS. The
killers are the browsers which attempt CSS but get it sufficiently wrong
to wreck the result: and that's what the CSS hiding techniques are for.

David Dorward wrote:

agents for which a table based layout is worse then sensible markup.

When do tables display worse than "sensible" markup?

Borris <none (AT) none (DOT) com> writes:

David Dorward wrote:
agents for which a table based layout is worse then sensible markup.

When do tables display worse than "sensible" markup?

Any narrow display (mobile phones, PDAs, webTV, graphical browsers at
narrow widths, some text-mode browsers, etc)

If they don't linearise, then add speech browsers, the rest of the
text-mode browsers, and so on into the list.

Data tables should linearise sensibly, and the narrow display problems
are easier for the user to deal with there. Layout tables can cause
entire paragraphs of text

th
at
en
ds
up
wr
it
te
n
li
ke
th
is

in a narrow display, especially if the display can't be scrolled
horizontally.

--
Chris