[WEB4LIB] Re: Setting Fonts in Netscape

[Thomas Dowling]

> Part of the problem is, I DON"T WANT 700 Font tags in my HTML. It's
> messy, and makes troubleshooting problems a lot harder due to all the
> extra clutter. Front Page will put the tags in all right, including
> cells that have NO text content whatever! Brain-dead...
> Another problem is low end browsers - they don't recognize style sheets
> any better than Netscape 1-5.xx. I have a beautiful style sheet for our
> basic background, no tiling, looks wonderful - can't use it because most
> of our patrons do NOT have IE4/5, or Netscape 6 (which I understand is
> still a bit wobbly anyway).

Really?  What is the browser breakdown at your site?

You're aware that Netscape 4 has CSS support, right?  Flaky, buggy
support, but support nonetheless, and capable of understanding font-family
properties.  So the low end browsers you're talking about are really
Netscape 3- below and IE 3-.  On www.ohiolink.edu, making allowance for
rounding errors, current use of those browsers comes to a combined 0% of
the total.  I'm already seeing more hits from Netscape 6 than from
Netscape 3.

> ...They wouldn't see any background at all. I'm
> still trying to figure out how to reconcile accessibility issues, lowest
> common denominator browsers, HTML versions, etc ad nauseam.
> DeeAnn & I have been discussing having 2 separate pages - 1 low tech, 1
> high tech, so we could have a page to play with (the high tech) & one
> for our patrons that they can see. Double the work, double the fun,
> right? :) Figure the odds...
>

Would there really be a problem if someone using Netscape 3 saw your page
with their default font and color settings?  If not, that would free up
some time for you to check whether your pages were navigable without
JavaScript.  :-)

Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu