Style Sheets

Sun May 17 18:54:57 EDT 1998

Hi Roy & web4lib !

I am not implying that the browser is "going to blow up" with style sheets.
I am however stating that many browsers will not see that content in the
fashion you designed if you do so.  I maintain my position that Libraries
must concentrate on content and style is secondary.

When I help Libraries with web pages, I prefer to concentrate on the things
around them ... natural resources, points of interest, community events and
stuff like that. Lets get the content first ... then we can work on
background images, pictures of the library pet  etc. 

So many libraries have resource shortages that just having a presence on
the web is an ordeal in itself.

Best Regards

Jeff Bobicki
Technical Consultant Southwest Regional Library System

At 11:18 AM 5/16/98 -0700, Roy Tennant wrote:
>On Fri, 15 May 1998, Jeff Bobicki wrote:
>
>> 2) Style is nice ... but using this technique shuts out a VERY large
>> percentage of browsers today.
>
>I'm not sure what you mean here. Browsers that do not support style sheets
>are perfectly comfortable ignoring a tag in the <HEAD> like this:
>
><LINK REL="stylesheet" TYPE="text/css" HREF="/Styles/style1">
>
>The cardinal rule of browsers is "if you see a tag you don't recognize,
>ignore it". It *isn't* "if you see a tag you don't recognize, crash".
>What we *do* need to be careful of is browsers or browser versions that do
>a poor job of implementing style sheets, and therefore may see something
>in the style sheet it doesn't like. That's why for now I've only
>implemented styles on the Web4Lib Web site until I've been able to test
>for compatibility. But browsers that don't understand style sheets at all
>are perfectly happy displaying the documents as they always have.
>
>So far I've not detected any compatibility problems, but I would
>appreciate reports from any of you on any problems you have with documents
>at the Web4Lib site at:
>
>http://sunsite.Berkeley.EDU/Web4Lib/
>
>Also, I wanted to throw in two cents related to what Karen Schneider
><kgs at bluehighways.com> asked:
>
>>So, one question may be, how can we produce stylesheets with maximum
>>accuracy, ease and flexibility?
>
>In following up on one of the CSS resources that Thomas Dowling kindly
>posted for our assistance, I discovered a tool that got me going with
>style sheets literally within minutes. It is called the "Core CSS
>Development Interface" and is produced by Todd Fahrner of Verso. It is
>available at:
>
>http://style.verso.com/stylist.html
>
>It can be fun to play around with until you find a combination you like,
>then you can display the resulting style sheet and drop it on your server.
>Unfortunately that doesn't provide the kind of "safe serving" capability
>that the Verso server provides, with modules being withheld from browsers
>that are not compatible with them, but software such as that may soon
>become more available.
>
>As time goes on, there are likely to be other such quick-start tools, as
>well as stylesheet editors that make it easier. 
>Roy
>
>
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