[thelist] Spot the Error

James Aylard webmaster at equilon-mrc.com
Tue Oct 16 10:18:03 CDT 2001


Matt,

> I know this is alot to ask, but I'm going nuts. Can anyone spot anything
> in the following table which would cause the CSS to not display for the
> entire page in NN4.7? It works fine in IE, no problems, but in NN4.7,
> when this table is nested within the main table, it blows the CSS. When
> I delete the table, like magic it fixes it and displays normally. I
> can't spot the error. Can anyone else?

    Technically, it's not an error. But Netscape 4.x ignores class names
that contain underscores. Or, more accurately -- and more bizarrely -- it
treats the underscores as though they are hyphens.
    Theoretically, the shunning of classes with underscores is the result of
the W3C CSS specs failing to include the underscore as a valid character for
class names [1] -- an oversight which has been remedied in the CSS 2 errata
[2]. But since Netscape 4.x adheres to the W3C recommendations so horribly,
it's hard to say whether this alignment was by accident or intent.
    Regardless, that is the root of your problem. The solution: either
replace the underscores with hyphens, or drop them altogether.

James Aylard

1. http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-CSS2-19980512/syndata.html#q4
2. http://www.w3.org/Style/css2-updates/REC-CSS2-19980512-errata.html





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