Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference

A Fragmenting World

As you will see throughout this book, implementing Dynamic HTML applications that work equally well in both Navigator 4 and Internet Explorer 4 can be a challenge unto itself. Understanding and using the common-denominator functionality among the various pieces of DHTML will lead you to greater success than plowing ahead with a design for one browser and crossing your fingers about how things will work in the other browser.

One more potential gotcha is that the same browser brand and version may not behave identically across different operating systems. Navigator 4 is pretty good about maintaining compatibility when you open a document in operating systems as diverse as Solaris and Windows 3.1. The same can’t be said for Internet Explorer 4, however. Microsoft readily admits that some features (detailed in later chapters) are guaranteed to work only on Win32 operating systems (Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT 4). Even features that should work on non-Win32 systems, such as style sheets, don’t always translate well to, say, the Macintosh version of IE 4.

If the inexorable flow of new browser versions, standards, and authoring features teaches us anything, it is that each new generation only serves to fragment further the installed base of browsers in use throughout the world. While I’m sure that every reader of this book has the latest sub-version of at least one browser installed (and probably a prerelease edition of a new version), the imperative to ...