[thelist] http_user_agent

[rudy]

> If you're going to do much more than text formatting with CSS,
> you're going to want/need to serve different stylesheets to
> different browsers,

hi erik

may i respectfully disagree

serving different stylesheets to different browsers is badly flawed
strategy

> in which case you should document.write() to different
> external stylesheets based on the userAgent ...

i shall overlook how suspiciously similar to javascript syntax this is, and
assume that you meant to advise doing browser sniffing on the server

> some people like to use @IMPORT.

some purists consider this a hack, but it is a very effective strategy

it is simpler and in my mind much better than tantek's high pass filter
(http://www.tantek.com/CSS/Examples/highpass.html)
which crashes ie5.5, or at least my patch level of ie5.5

it's not that the tantek filter doesn't work, it that it crashes my browser
(which, brazenly enough, then asks if it can phone home and let microsoft
know all sorts of stuff about what it was doing when it crashed... as if,
bill, as if...)

serving different stylesheets to different browsers might work, but it
takes a lot of effort -- it's like pushing a rope

it's a mug's game, a "profitless or futile activity" (m-w.com)

you really have to ask yourself -- not you personally, erik, i guess i
should say one really has to ask oneself -- just why one would want to
develop separate style sheets

just say no


rudy