Fwd: RE: Erratic Bounce Back is Netscape/tables problem

Wed Apr 12 10:35:00 EDT 2000

I sent a private message to Michael Sauers about his message to the list 
that he posted on Apr 7. He sent me the informative reply below, that he 
said could be forwarded to the list.

With lists of links so central to library-oriented web use, why do 
libraries hold on so tightly to Netscape when it manifestly handles lists 
on tables pages so poorly?!

*       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *
Eric Rumsey, Hardin Library for the Health Sciences
University of Iowa, Iowa City IA 52242
<eric-rumsey at uiowa.edu>
319-335-9875 (voice), 319-335-9897 (fax)
Hardin Meta Directory of Internet Health Sources - Kudos -
<http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin/md/news.html>http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardi 
n/md/news.html

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>From: "Michael Sauers" <msauers at bcr.org>
>To: "Eric Rumsey" <rumsey at blue.weeg.uiowa.edu>
>Subject: RE: Erratic Bounce Back is Netscape/tables problem
>Date: Thu, 6 Apr 2000 12:44:31 -0600
>
> > Being a well-known problem, do you know of anyplace on the Net where it's
> > documented?
>
>I have never seen any coherent documents describing all of the problems
>related to Netscape's rendering of tables. It all boils down to Netscape not
>properly treating a table as part of the body of a document. For example
>(I'll assume you have some CSS [cascading style sheets] knowledge):
>
>body {font-family: sans-serif}
>
>In a browser that properly implements table rendering (IE does) then all of
>the text in the body of a document will be in a sans-serif font, including
>text in a table since the table is in the body. However, in Netscape, a
>table is not considered part of the body, but a independent section of the
>document (although in the HTML itself <table>...</table> must be in between
><body> and </body> to work.) To cover for this you need to create redundant
>CSS:
>
>body {font-family: sans-serif}
>td   {font-family: sans-serif}
>
>This will cover all text in the body of the document and all text in table
>cells. (You would think that you could write "table {font-family:
>sans-serif}" but that won't work, you need to do it on the TD.
>
> > I coined the name "erratic bounce back" - Is there a better name for
> > phenomenon [ :-) ]
>
>As I understand it in this case, that since the table is not considered part
>of the body, Netscape can not remember where exactly in the body (i.e. in
>the table) to send you back to. For lack of a location to go to it generally
>sends you back to the top of the document.
>
>As for your name, it is as good as any that I can come up with. However, it
>is just a specific instance of a much larger problem.
>
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Michael Sauers, Internet Trainer
>Bibliographical Center for Research (BCR)
>Aurora, CO :: msauers at bcr.org :: http://www.bcr.org/~msauers
>The WWW Library Directory is @ http://www.webpan.com/msauers/libdir/
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>
>"I want to know what good is a Web search engine that returns 324,909,188
>'matches' to my key word. That's like saying, 'Good news, we've located
>the product you're looking for. It's on Earth.'"
>--W. Bruce Cameron
>
>Opinions expressed are my own unless otherwise noted.
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------