Cascading Style Sheets for different media

Hi,

hope I'm not hitting a frequently asked question here, but I was
wondering what would be the preferred way of defining CSS for different
media:
(1) one global stylesheet and specialized versions for different media

or
(2) no global stylesheet but only stylesheets for supported media


While approach (1) might guarantee that a page looks "good" on all
possible media (TV, projection) it might completely fail on some (TTY,
handheld).

Approach (2) seems safer in this respect by not trying to render fancy
design on yet-to-come but tricky media but these "unsupported" media
would then receive rather dull pages.


What do you think?

Wolf

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed "Wolfgang Meier" <womei@sofort-
mail.de> writing in news:1119378816.307425.96770
@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

Hi,

hope I'm not hitting a frequently asked question here, but I was
wondering what would be the preferred way of defining CSS for different
media:
(1) one global stylesheet and specialized versions for different media

or
(2) no global stylesheet but only stylesheets for supported media


While approach (1) might guarantee that a page looks "good" on all
possible media (TV, projection) it might completely fail on some (TTY,
handheld).

Approach (2) seems safer in this respect by not trying to render fancy
design on yet-to-come but tricky media but these "unsupported" media
would then receive rather dull pages.


What do you think?

Wolf

I write one stylesheet for all, and separate it by device type, eg:

@media screen
{
body {font-size:100%}
#footer {font-size:85%}
}
@media print
{
body {font-size:12pt}
#footer {display:none}
}


--
Adrienne Boswell
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
Please respond to the group so others can share

in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.site-design, Wolfgang Meier wrote:

Hi,

hope I'm not hitting a frequently asked question here, but I was
wondering what would be the preferred way of defining CSS for different
media:
(1) one global stylesheet and specialized versions for different media

or
(2) no global stylesheet but only stylesheets for supported media


While approach (1) might guarantee that a page looks "good" on all
possible media (TV, projection) it might completely fail on some (TTY,
handheld).

Approach (2) seems safer in this respect by not trying to render fancy
design on yet-to-come but tricky media but these "unsupported" media
would then receive rather dull pages.


What do you think?

Don't care about what browser support, but what would work on devises.
There is no much more limits on projection compared to screen or print,
exept absolute position, so most style works. Browser implementing these
support CSS just as well as any browser

From rest I can't be sure, but some thoughts:

Handheld should only be used when content is for handheld devises. Opera
is most important handheld browser. I don't know if Opera on real
handhelds act as on desktop, but in desktop, if handheld CSS is used,
Opera will be using it instead SSR. That is not good, if your caontent is
not suitable for handhelds, as SSR is far more powerful than CSS to make
things work.

Don't know about TV, but again, I don't think any other browser than
Opera supports it, so probably works somehow.

I suggest you to serve using media="all" or without media, if unsure, as
I don't think it has any bad side effects (and it hides CSS from NN4)

--
Lauri Raittila <http://www.iki.fi/lr> <http://www.iki.fi/zwak/fonts>
Utrecht, NL.
Support me, buy Opera:
https://secure.bmtmicro.com/opera/buy-opera.html?AID=882173