[thelist] CSS for Mac and PC

Marlene Bruce marlene.bruce at colemandesign.com
Tue Aug 8 17:57:10 CDT 2000


Hi Richard,

I just had to tackle a similar problem for a client. Layout in my case was
also important to maintain. The tool in question had to work on all 4.x
browsers and above, various platforms, and the html contained nested
multi-rowed tables and form elements. Also, the html was going to be pulled
apart and put into Web Objects, and then reassembled as appropriate when it
was served to the user.

Whew. Okay, so I ended up creating 4 style sheet versions which would be
served after doing a browser detect. After doing some testing (Mac vs.
Windows, Navigator vs. IE), I came up with:

both_ie5.css
mac_all4.css
win_all4.css
both_other.css

I don't know whether your situation allows for browser detect and various
style sheets, but it can be a great and simple solution if your backend can
be set up to handle it. I ended up using 9pt for IE5, nothing (revert to
default font size, which would be equal to 1em) for all Mac v.4.x browsers,
and .7em for Win v.4.x browsers. Of course, the sizes just mentioned are for
general content to be readable, and in all cases the font size can be
changed by the user to allow for variations in users' eyesight.

I'd actually be curious to have someone comment on my choices. I tested on
Mac and Win, in various 4.x and 5.x browsers, and my solutions seemed to
work well.

Richard (or anyone), if you care to see my style sheets let me know and I'll
send them off-list.

Best of luck,
Marlene

> ----------
> From: 	Richard H. Morris
> 
> Erika Meyer [erika at seastorm.com] offered:
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > Do you REALLY REALLY need to set an exact size?  What if you didn't
> > specify any size?  Would your layout fall apart?
> 
> It wouldn't look as good and for a site I'm looking at now, we'd like to
> set
> the size to allow the layout to work in all browser sizes without getting
> lost at higher screen res.
> 
	[snip]

> When we tried setting the font sizes in pixels, er, I think or was it %,
> Netscape rendered the text a different size to how it was shown on IE.
> 
	[snip]

> Layout is important to us, hence trying to set relative font sizes and
> faces, but it has to be the case that we don't want the sites to be
> illegible on a Mac, say, or just to look awful on any platform!




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