[WEB4LIB] Re: Netscape 6.1

Mon Aug 13 10:09:54 EDT 2001

> While I don't think Netscape/Mozilla fully implements all of the
> CSS standards, it is definitely ahead of IE 5.5 in this regard
> IE 5.x browsers screw up the "box model" for CSS-2 meaning that
> those of us who have tried to use CSS for page layout and
> placement have had to workaround IE 5.x if we want our pages to
> layout properly.  We'll see how well IE 6 meets the standards in
> the very near future.

It bears pointing out that--for better or for worse--Mozilla
(including Netscape 6.x), IE6/Win, and IE5/Mac all have
standards-compliant and bug-compatible modes for rendering
pages, and use the presence of a complete DOCTYPE declaration to
switch into standards-compliant mode.  CSS implementation is
more likely to vary between modes than most other display
issues.  So pages that are otherwise identical may render
differently if their first lines are:

  <html><!-- Bug mode -->

  <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
  <!-- Still bug mode -->

  <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
  "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"><!-- Standards mode -->

See <URL:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=
/workshop/author/css/overview/cssenhancements.asp> for IE6
details.  I believe any HTML4+ DOCTYPE with URL puts Mozilla
into standards mode.