[thelist] position:fixed [was: http_user_agent]

[Erik Mattheis]

At 8:51 PM -0500 3/20/02, aardvark wrote:
>we all (almost) know better than to check for browser versions in our JS -- we
>learned to do function checks... why wouldn't we do the same with CSS?
[...]
>first off, if it's a CSS layout, you're looking at similar support
>in the post-4.x
>browsers...  the 4.x and earlier are generally non-CSS...
[...]
>overall, unless there's something *really* wonky, one linked CSS file and one
>imported CSS file should handle 95%+ of your cases...

I wholeheartedly agree that checking the userAgent is troublesome and
try to avoid it ... but I am in a *really* _wonky_ meddle:

A client wants a frames effect and a non-scrolling frame has to sit
at the _bottom_ of the window. I've figured out how to do this for IE
5+ Win, IE 5 Mac and NS 6 but it's three different ways which uses
just three or four lines of DHTML (which is still more than I'd
ideally like to use).

So I'd like to use a capability check to distinguish between:

IE 5 Mac AND IE 5+ Win (throw in Opera 5 for me if you're feeling
ambitious) ... but can think of or find a way to do it other that
examining navigator.platform and navigator.userAgent ... Is there a
way?

And 2nd question:

In Opera, how can I find the window height, and set a positioned div
to hug the bottom of the window and have the rest of the page scroll?
While using a minimum of DHTML ... I don't want to be constantly
checking where the visitor has scrolled to.

I'm OK with penalizing people for using NS 4 by showing them
something different, but Opera's a pretty nifty browser and I'd l,ike
to get this to work for it.

>and let's not forget the number of users with JS turned off (like both N6 and
>O6 on my machine) as well as those users in corporate environments where
>JS is disabled or stripped for security...

Right ... in my world, people with JS off get what they ask for ...
and I'm evil enough to ruthlessly ignore people in handicapped
corporate environments ... so un-PC. Heh heh.
--

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- Erik Mattheis

(612) 377 2272
http://goZz.com/

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