Peter Boughton wrote: > Now that I've thought of it, it seems incredibly obvious - which makes me > wonder if I'm missing some fatal flaw preventing it from already being a > common technique. :S >
Heh, well, it *is* considered bad practice (just post this idea to CSS-D and see what happens - they'll tell you all about the various reasons why it shouldn't be done). Having said that, the only drawback I'm aware of is that, (as you probably already know), user agents can be spoofed and often are, as well as hidden or stripped, so it's less than ideal in that respect (Opera has the built in facility to make itself appear as IE, and a lot of Internet Security programs block the user agent string). IE's conditional comments is the exception of course since it doesn't rely on browser detection. As Peter already pointed out, if one starts with a strict doctype and adheres to standards, that's a great place to start, and in 99.5% of cases it is only good old IE that needs serious alterations (I've encountered the odd very rare bug in Safari for which I've had to implement a hack, but you don't need a separate stylesheet for that. If you've got a lot of rules specific to Firefox or Safari, then something isn't quite right. The first link below is probably the most enlightening, and is from a guy who, in my opinion, knows what he is talking about. http://www.gunlaug.no/contents/wd_additions_35.html http://www.webmonkey.com/tutorial/Browser-Specific_CSS_Hacks http://www.nealgrosskopf.com/tech/thread.asp?pid=20 http://css-tricks.com/browser-detection-is-bad/ http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2007/11/12/detect_this/ HTH Mark ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;207172674;29440083;f Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:321318 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.4
