On 22 May 2010, at 2:42, Thierry Koblentz wrote:
>>> Bravo for trying to support as many browsers as possible, and for*not*
>>> considering the "universal ie6" styles sheet for IE6.
>>> And when using it for IE5, you may want to remove/ignore some of therules
>>> in there: the CSS expression, all the elements that you know wouldnot be
>>> part of your documents, or rules you do not think are necessary.
>>> For example this rule:
>>> h1 img, h2 img, h3 img, h4 img, h5 img, h6 img { margin : 0; }
>>> that follows this one:
>>> img { margin : 0; }
>>>
>>> Or rules like these:
>>> blockquote:before, blockquote:after, q:before, q:after { content :""; }
>>> blockquote, q {quotes : "" ""; }
>>> abbr { border-bottom : 1px dotted #666; }
>>>
>>
>> I assumed that any rules having no target in my documents would be
>> ignored so there was no reason not to leave them there. Am I wrong?
>
> Actually, it is the opposite, there is no reason to leave them in.
> If you know that some rules will serve no purpose, then why would you want
> to keep them in?
> http://carsonified.com/blog/design/setting-rather-than-resetting-default-sty
> ling/
>
>> The problem is that I assumed (again) that the creators of the
>> universal ie6 stylesheet had also tested it for "IE lt 6" and any
>> changes I made would NOT be tested.
>
> I don't think the author tested these rules in IE lte 6, because as far as I
> know these rules are *ignored* by IE.
> Also you'd be removing declarations or rules, not adding anything, so I'd
> say the "testing" part is irrelevant.
>
Thierry,
Your remarks are interesting but they leave me a bit confused. For me, there
are three possible ways of addressing IE less than 6 (for which I have no test
machine) :
- don't do anything special and don't care what the page will look like. It may
be complete chaos, unreadable, but that is not my problem;
- remove all styling and the page appears with the browser's default styles.
This was what I was planning to do before I came across the "universal ie6
stylesheet";
- use a special, simplified stylesheet that will produce a better user
experience than the two previous options. I thought that the "universal ie6
stylesheet" could be a good answer.
Of course, I can, as you suggest, remove any rules that obviously don't apply
to my site. But the whole point of using such "prepackaged" stylesheets is to
minimize work. Going painstakingly through each rule to see if it applies or
not seems a waste of time, especially for a large site. It is also much easier
to update if a new version is made available. I don't use frameworks, but I'm
sure those who do end up with a whole lot of html and css that is not really
relevant to their site. Are they supposed to remove all the cruft? And do they
actually do it?
The question is, aside from the aesthetic aspect of keeping everything clean,
is there a compelling practical reason not to use the "universal ie6
stylesheet" for IE5 and IE5.5 as is?
As for the irrelevance of testing when you *remove* things, as opposed to
*adding* things, I don't agree. I have come across many instances of situations
where removing something has an effect on the overall result. So, if you say
that the authors of the "universal ie6 stylesheet" have not tested it at all in
IE5 and IE5.5 (something that I may ask them about) then I think the best
solution for me is to serve an unstyled page to these browsers.
What do you (and others) think?
Ellen
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