[WEB4LIB] JavaScript & CSS relationship question

[Thomas Dowling]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bobb Menk" <bmenk at ll.mit.edu>
To: "Multiple recipients of list" <web4lib at webjunction.org>
Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2000 10:43 AM
Subject: [WEB4LIB] JavaScript & CSS relationship question


> Someone in our MIS group seems convinced that CSS is somehow built on
> Javascript and that our policies concerning Javascript therefore
> preclude the use of style sheets on our web pages.
>
> My understanding is that CSS is an entirely separate entity, unrelated
> to Javascript and therefore is not precluded by Javascript policy from
> use on our web pages.
>
> Could anyone more learned in the intricacies of the two help to clarify
> this for me?
>

Your MIS people are misinformed and confused--not without reason, but not
with any excuse.

In Netscape 4.x (and only in 4.x), you must enable JavaScript for CSS to
work.  The only reason for this is that, under the hood, Netscape 4.x
doesn't really support CSS.  It supports its proprietary JavaScript
Stylesheets, and uses JavaScript to translate CSS to JSS.  That's a big
part of the reason why its support for CSS is so abysmally incomplete and
inaccurate.

>From the author's perspective, CSS is completely separate from JavaScript.


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