Netscape 4.7*

Factual Questions
1

I was designing a web page for a friend and being an idiot I decided that I would do my best to create a page that would be viewable in any browser. I used Netscape 4.75, Opera 6.0 and IE 5.5. The site uses style sheets too.
When I viewed it in the latter two browsers it rendered just fine but in Netscape there was something very bizarre.
The further you scrolled down, the larger the words became on the screen until I was halfway down the screen and I could have the stroke of a character fill my entire screen (1064x768)!
I validated the stylesheet and it adheres to W3 standards.
I know that Netscape 4.7* is a POS but I want to know why it screws up like this.

2

Well why don’t you link us to the page, or at least show us the code and markup?

3

Also, I realize I am being pedantic, but I think it’s important. You should call the program Navigator 4.7, or Netscape Navigator 4.7, or NN 4.7 if you want to be succinct. But Netscape 4.7 is not its name.

4
      • NN 4.7 broke a lot of standards, playing the MS game of “proprietary extensions”. It is so far off standard HTML and IE 5’s HTML that most web designers have (happily) disregarded it after NN 6 was released.
        ~
5

You are right in noting that Netscape 6 is a big step up from Navigator 4.7. In fact, it’s so big of a difference that they gave the program a new name. The old program is called Navigator and the new one is called Netscape. So “Netscape 4.7” is wrong, and so is “Navigator 6” or “NN 6”. It’s “Navigator 4.7” and “Netscape 6”.

And while Navigator’s proprietary expansions of HTML are frustrating, in this case it sounds more like a CSS problem. Very few browsers of that time supported CSS1 even, and Navigator is just as bad as any.

6

To be just as pedantic, the change was from the package being “Netscape Communicator 4.7” to being “Netscape 6 (well, 7 now)”… they still call the web browser part of the suite “Navigator”, the e-mail program “Mail”… they just don’t use the names as prominently, so no one really notices, and it continues to not matter.

(I’ve been through this before, so your links are http://channels.netscape.com/ns/browsers/default.jsp in the middle column, where it says “Netscape Navigator”, links to this page, http://channels.netscape.com/ns/browsers/7/features/browsing.jsp which is headed “What’s New in Netscape Navigator”, and is about the browser part of Netscape 7)

Back to the OP, Netscape Communicator 4.7 was one of the most annoying things to hit the Web. Ever. As a result, it is largely ignored completely now (which is fine, since it doesn’t work with anything, and hasn’t worked with anything for some years now). In short, don’t worry about it. If someone is still using Netscape Communicator 4.7, they deserve whatever pains come their way.

7

Use Mozilla. It supports all the W3C standards best.

8

That’s not correct. Navigator supported HTML 3.2 just fine, it just didn’t have good support for CSS-1.

9

BTW, did you use tables to do layout? That’s where Navigator 4.7 has the biggest problem with: CSS elements inside tables.

10

What everybody else said. I 've actually set up my page so that NN4 users get redirected to a page that says, essentially, “Get a new browser!”

Having a <div> in a table cell should not crash a browser.

It would have almost been better if NN4 hadn’t supported CSS at all rather than the halfassed way that they implemented it.

Ignore it.

11

Now now. While I too have a stern message to Navigator users, the OP did ask a legitimate question, and they even said in the OP that they already know how unwieldy NN is, so would it kill us to try to answer it instead of being so dismissive?

So raisinbread, are you going to post the code or what?

12

Good point, though the most we’d likely be able to do would be to keep the page from looking like complete crap.

My stab in the dark:

Are you perhaps using percentages to make the text size larger, ie, font-size : 110%; anywhere in the stylesheet?

13

[color=“purple”]Yes, I am using percentages instead of pixel sizes on my stylesheets.
I’m not going to post the code because my friend, who is relatively new to the internet, feels it is personal. I’ll gladly post the CSS stuff though.

Happy? And it validates at w3.org which is more than enough for me. I wrote it all, I didn’t use an editor other than vi.

14

Sniff. Duh. I didn’t close the purple tags.

15

Why did use you use “font-size:100%”?, just out of interest?

16

I can’t play around with it, but I too think that the font-size attribute is what you need to work with. Try a value of “1em”, or just lose it.

17

It’s great that your code validates, but you should realize that there is a big difference between “valid code” and “valid code that does what you want”, even without worry about which browser supports what. And so, in my experience, the most effective modus operandi for getting this last kind of code is heavy doses of trial and error. That’s why I didn’t have a ready answer for you, and was wondering what went on behind the scenes.

18

Ditto. O_o

19

I don’t think em works with Netscape. IIRC I was doing something last week using em sizes and had to change them all to px.

Another thing that I use is a little javascript that does browser detection and then writes the correct CSS page (I have 3 sheets, one for each browser type). This is borrowed-borrowed-borrowed code so YMMV:



<body>
<script language="JavaScript">
function include_css() {
	if (document.layers) {
		document.write('<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/ns4-styles.css">');
	} else if (document.all) {
		document.write('<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/ie6-styles.css">');
	} else if (!document.all && document.getElementById) {
		document.write('<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/ns6-styles.css">');
		document.write('')
	}
}
include_css();

</script>

Note that this script goes AFTER the body tag…or else Netscape will have problems with it. Also note that the script points to my css folder. Customize as you will.

20

W3C has a similar trick that does not rely on JavaScript. They make use of the fact that Navigator does not recognize the @media at-rule, or the media attribute in the link tag:

<link rel=“stylesheet” title=“Default” href="…/map-ns.css">
<link rel=“stylesheet” title=“Default” href="…/map.css" media=“all”>
<!-- map.css is better than map-ns, but must be hidden from NS 4.x -->