From: Thomas Hurst Date: 2002-02-18T04:44:37+09:00 Subject: Re: OT Netscape 4.x? was Re: "Powered by Ruby" banner * Avi Bryant (avi@beta4.com) wrote: > > Why is anybody still using Netscape 4.x? Does it have some, well > > hidden, technical virtue or is it a political thing? > > At least on linux, it can be several times faster at rendering pages > than anything else. Sounds more like a less than wonderful GFX card blitter or something. The NS4 layouter is aimed at HTML 2 type usage, with tables for tabulating data (and hence being fairly simple) rather than the tables layout hack that took over the world. Now it's gone from being slow and a bit buggy in it's tables layout, to being ultra-buggy on CSS layout.. > I spend a lot of time testing web applications, and the response time > in NS4.7 is so much better than mozilla/konq/etc that I gladly live > with the DHTML wonkiness. DHTML is irrelevent for me, what does bother me is the utterly braindead CSS implimentation which has spawned it's own style of keeping stylesheets modular to hide layout stuff from it, lest NS turn your page into a 10px * 10px folded postage stamp. http://www.eleganthack.com/ is a nice example of how it manages to do entirely the Wrong Thing with CSS, brrr, best turn them off in Preferences -> Advanced -> Enable Stylesheets. In a few years, with more sites using CSS for layout (especially with CSS3, which should make it less nasty to make CSS layouts), you'll probably find sites viewed in NS4 become more and more like Lynx, although I'm sure people will misuse CSS and make it much worse :( -- Thomas 'Freaky' Hurst - freaky@aagh.net - http://www.aagh.net/ - When you're up to your ass in alligators, it is difficult to keep your mind on the fact that your primary objective was to drain the swamp.