Sent by Lorin Rivers on 21 January 2005 01:01
On Dec 3, 2004, at 8:49 AM, Eric A. Meyer wrote:
> At 12:32 +0000 12/3/04, Bob McClelland wrote:
>
>> Thanks to all who responded. The reason I'm labouring the point here
>> is
>> because the very simple styling:
>>
>> width : 450;
>> w\idth : 400;
>>
>> type of thing works for me (IE 5.5, IE6, quirks and standards,
>> Mozilla 1,
>> Firefox 1, Opera 7), so why should I use anything else? Michael
>> (Wilson)
>> suggested adding an extra line (which is OK):
>>
>> width: 400px;
>> \width: 450px;
>> w\idth: 400px;
>>
>> but Zeldman and others suggest using the clumsy voice things. I ask
>> myself
>> why, if the simple things do actually work properly?
>
> I can't speak for others, but I can for myself. The first thing to
> remember is that Zeldman, or anyone else, may have once suggested
> something that they wouldn't still suggest. For example, I know there
> are documents out there with my name on them that recommend using
> 'link' to associate basic, NN4.x-friendly styles to the document, and
> '@import' to bring in the more advanced stuff that IE5.0 can handle.
> I would no longer recommend doing that. Still, someone who read one
> of those 1998-era documents this morning might think I do. There's a
> difference between "did" and "do" that the Web, and indeed any form of
> publication, can blur.
> So, on to the specific topic at hand. The 'voice-family' hack was
> the first of the parsing-bug hacks, and it was (in a word) brilliant.
> Some would add the word misguided, but I'm not one of them. At a time
> when IE/Win had no standards mode, and when its box model
> interpretations differed from every other CSS-aware browser on the
> market, the BMH solved a crying need. What's more, it was all valid,
> future-compatible CSS. That's most of the reason I call it brilliant.
> So its use spread far and wide. Asking why people used the
> original BMH is like asking why people ever used punch cards to write
> computer programs. At the time, there was no other choice.[1] Now we
> have the SMBH, child selector hacks, and a whole slew of tools at our
> disposal. The old-timers, of course, keep plodding along using the
> same archaic tools they learned back in the day. ("COBOL was good
> enough in 1974, and dern it all, it's good enough today!")
> Although I should point out that this old-timer has switched over
> to using child-selector hacks of late, because of the failure of the
> BMH in quirks mode in IE6. I may move to the SBMH, which should
> actually be the ECH (Escaped Character Hack), but I still experience
> lingering resistance because I don't entirely understand all its
> ramifications. I don't like using hacks I don't fully understand.
> Now, stop that snickering, or I'll mash your toes with my walker
> when you aren't looking.
>
>
> [1] Which is, I admit, not a perfect analogy. At the time the BMH
> came out, you could use Microsoft's Conditional Comments to feed
> IE/Win special values, just as you can today. There were reasons to
> prefer one or the other; most of us in the standards community took to
> the BMH. Good or bad, that's how things unfolded.
First, let me say this list is such a godsend.
Second, Eric, thanks for this book which has been a huge help for me
_understanding_ css, rather than copying and pasting it...
OK, so all that said, how would you write these rules (From EMoC,
Project 13) were you writing it today?
div.note {float: right; clear: right; border-width: 0;
width: 18%; margin: 0 1% 0 0; padding: 0;
text-align: right; font: 80% Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;
background: transparent url(blue.gif) 50% 15px repeat-x;
voice-family: "\"}\""; voice-family:inherit;
width: 19%;}
and
div.caption {float: right; width: 30%; margin: 0 1% 0 0;
padding: 0 0 0 40%;
border-top: 1px solid #006;
voice-family: "\"}\""; voice-family:inherit;
width: 19%; padding-left: 10%;}
I've been trying to use the * html hack, but it's not quite working in
Safari...
Thanks!
--
Lorin Rivers
Mosasaur: Killer Technical Marketing <http://www.mosasaur.com>
[EMAIL-REMOVED]>
512/203.3198 (m)
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