Posted by the idiot on 12/07/51 11:28

"Andy Dingley" <dingbat@codesmiths.com> wrote in message
news:1128511066.777523.100330@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
> the idiot wrote:
>
> > eek just been told (by a laughing friend) that my homepage
> > falls apart when viewed by mac ie5
>
> Why are they laughing? Can't they afford a WebTV?
>
> Mac IE is one of the least reliable browsers around for rendering CSS.
> It's completely obsolete and no-one should still bother using it. For
> web designers you can basically ignore it unless someone's offering you
> good money to muck out its cage.
>
> Floats are particularly bad. If you really care about supporting Mac
> IE, do your layout with tables (but break the legs of anyone who thinks
> this is somehow "better"). If you want to try getting floats to work,
> then set explicit widths on floated elements (implicit doesn't cut it).
> Trying to float:left and float:right opposite each other is
> particularly unreliable.
>
> Mac IE doesn't like deep nesting of <div>s. Many bugs only manifest
> when they're a couple of layers down.
>
> SGML parsing(?) is broken too. If you avoid nesting <div>s by placing
> multiple class names into the same attribute (perfectly legal, just
> whitespace them apart) watch out for a nasty bug where any surplus
> (sic) whitespace (double spaces between names, a leading space in the
> attribute) can barf the parser so badly that it ignores the whole
> element.
>
> You have my sympathies - I'm sorting out a moderately complex CSS-based
> site for Mac IE compatibility today and it's a nightmarish job. My own
> bugs are one thing, but dealing with M$oft's are quite another.
>
> The odd thing is how anyone ever took Tantek Celik seriously
> afterwards. The Mac IE bugs are just that - bugs. They're not minimal
> support for a standard, they're just the result of bad project
> management and test case design.

hurrah the answer i needed, the answer which allows me (until someone
complains) to ignore such matters. ;-)

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