In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Mark Anderson"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> "Phillip M. Jones, C.E.T." wrote:
>>
>> All of this is well and good the question hasn't been answered what
>> exactly to do layers do why tey are so easy to do and why because they
>> were so easy to do did W3C decide they were to easy and therefore
>> shouldn't be used?
>>
>> I'm still dense. And really want to learn.
>
> The W3C was producing the HTML 4.0 spec at about the same time Netscape
> shipped 4.0. Netscape invented layers originally because there *was* no
> standard at the time (HTML 4.0 didn't come out until 4 months or so
> after the release of Communicator 4.0).
Bzzzt. HTML 4.0 has nothing to do with layers. The document you're
looking for is the CSS Positioning draft:
<http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-positioning-970130.html>
This was the precursor to the positioning properties in CSS2.
> When they figured out that the
> W3C was headed a different direction, they deprecated layers (I've heard
> tell this was even in the beta cycle of 4.0).
Check the authorship of that document. Netscape knew where the W3C was
headed; though the exact timing of their engagement with the W3C's CSS
activities is a bit unclear, it was clearly well before the Navigator
4.0 release (June 1997). They may not have had the opportunity to
backpedal by 4.0 and implement CSS Positioning, but they could have done
the responsible thing and disable LAYER. Yet they included both it, and
worse, JavaScript Style Sheets:
<http://www.w3.org/Submission/1996/1/WD-jsss-960822>
> The reason that they became so popular is that despite their deprecation
> they were much more reliable in 4.x than the standards way was. DIV and
> SPAN features didn't always work correctly, so layers made an acceptable
> alternative, since Web developers knew they'd have to develop
> browser-specific content for this anyway (because IE's support was
> different from Netscape's and both were different from the W3C's).
Actually, IE 4.0's support of CSS positioning was a fairly reasonable
implementation of the W3C's working draft at the time. It wasn't perfect,
but they at least were on the right track.
> Long story short, this argument mostly boils down to a bunch of Web
> developers who are mad because they didn't read the documentation.
Oh, please.
Web developers are mad because they have had to deal with the clusterfuck
that is Netscape 4.x for a few years now, and in exchange for their loyal
support of that platform, Netscape rips the carpet out from under them
rather than provide a real migration path.
Don't confuse me for a sympathist, though--IMO, it was a mistake ever to
loyally support a platform that so willfully and overtly diverged from
Web standards. On those terms, Web developers are certainly getting
what's coming to them.
Braden
