[thelist] Layers vs. Div

[MRC]

Hassan,

> >     Not so. The div element was part of the html 3.2 spec [1], which
> > pre-dated Netscape 4.x.
>
> "pre-dated" the *release* of NS4.x, but certainly not the start of
> the development cycle :-)

    Netscape was part of the team that developed HTML 3.2 [1]. Further, the
HTML 3.0 spec also included the div element, and it was released in March of
1995 [2]. And Netscape itself introduced support for the div element with
Netscape 2 [3].

> And since, at the time, the only way to manipulate page elements was
> JavaScript, a Netscape technology, it might have seemed like a better
> idea to *not* use a standard tag like DIV that could be removed, or
> have incompatible attributes added, or who knows what, later on ...

    Rather, I suspect that Netscape was simply more comfortable doing as it
pleased, and viewed the introduction of the layer element as progress.

James Aylard

1. http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Wilbur/pr7may96.html
2. http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html3/divisions.html
3. http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/htmlguid/tags4.htm#1624402