Browser-Specific Stuff

A lot of what we now consider "standard" HTML (tables, text around graphics, centering) started out as Netscape-specific features. Much of it has been absorbed in the yet-to-be-nailed HTML 3.2 specification, and adopted by other browser makers, so you can use it and be relatively sure it is supported by the people who read your pages.

However, there are features supported by Netscape and Internet Explorer that haven't (yet) been absorbed into the standard. There are a few situations where you might want to use them, but remember that A) they are only available to a subset of users, and B) they can be really annoying (especially if they don't work right).

HEY,
YOU!

Before even thinking about using anything you see here, be sure to take a look at these pages in both Netscape and Internet Explorer so you know what people who don't use your favorite browser will be seeing.

Netscapisms

Blink!

Want to get someone's attention? Try blinking text. Just in case that isn't annoying enough, try blinking RED text! The blink rate seems pretty slow on my system, which is both good news and bad news. Blinking faster would be even more annoying, but you might get a bit more time to read the darned thing.

GIF Animations

Netscape supports a form of GIF file that contains multiple frames. It will play the frames of the file in rapid succession, creating a low-budget form of animation. If you want to learn more about how to create GIF animations, see CyberNet.

This is a relatively safe Netscapism to use, since other browsers will still see the first frame and get the basic idea of the image without motion.

Frames

Frames let you create HTML pages that are presented in multiple windows in a browser. For example, you might create an Explorer-like view that consists of two windows side-by-side. The left one would be a tree view of something, and when you clicked on an item there it would be displayed in the right window.

Besides being Netscape 2.0-specific, frames are pretty complicated. If you want to learn more about them, get a book or check out Netscape's web site. I won't explain them here.

Java

Java is a C-like programming language. It's way beyond this group of pages to explain, but suffice it to say that you'll need a Java compiler and programming experience before you could tackle creating a Java application.

JavaScript

Netscape has a simple scripting language in its browser that they used to call LiveScript until they figured it would get more attention if it had the term "Java" in it. It lets you do a few cool things, but again it only works on Netscape at the moment.

Internet Explorerisms

Microsoft couldn't leave well enough alone either. They've added a few of their own features to HTML. You should be even less tempted to use these than the Netscape features, because Internet Explorer is probably less than 10 percent of the total browser market right now. If you do use any of these, make sure they still look reasonable in Netscape.

Background Sounds

If you started this page with Internet Explorer and have a sound board, you've been listening to music. It's done with the IE-specific code

<BGSOUND SRC="hawaii50.mid">

inside the file. The file can be either a MIDI file or a WAV file. Other browsers or systems without a sound board will just "silently" ignore BGSOUND.

If you must use this, try to keep your music short and subtle. IE doesn't provide a way to stop playing the sound, short of turning all sound off in IE's View/Options dialog, so if someone doesn't like your choice of music they don't have a lot of options and will be very annoyed.

Marquees

Like Netscape's GIF animations, IE's marquees bring econo-animation to web pages. They can be just as annoying if overused. Plus, they don't degrade all that gracefully in Netscape, which is still the most common browser by far. For best Netscape-degradation, don't depend on anything but the standard font and stick with dark text, since the background won't happen if MARQUEE isn't supported.

Here are a few examples of marquees. Note that you can only scroll text with a marquee, but you can get some symbols by using a font change to Wingdings.

Hit the duck and win a prize!

This slowly slides in from the right and mercifully stops.

Now, as seen in Times Square!

F DANGER! E

Background Colors in Tables

IE supports the BGCOLOR option in the TABLE, TR, or TD tags, so you have a lot of control over how your tables are shaded. I've used that feature in many tables in this tutorial, notice that table background effects don't show up in Netscape.

You can also use an unfilled table entry for special effects, like this multicolor raised horizontal rule:

It's probably better in most cases to use a bitmap for a trick like this since that will work with Netscape too. You can use a WIDTH option to the IMG tag to stretch the bitmap and it will still look good.

Font Faces

In these pages, I've made liberal use of the FACE extension that IE provides to the FONT code. It's mighty handy to have, especially for characters like Wingdings. But remember that not everyone will have the fonts that you have, so they may see something very different than you do. If you stick to the standard Windows fonts like Times New Roman, Arial, Courier New, Symbol ( ABCDabcd ) and Wingdings ( CDEFJKLMNxi²■╢ ), you will probably be OK on Windows. However, the most universal way to do small graphics is with GIFs.

Don't forget that if you need a fixed-pitch font like Courier there's a universal way to get that with the <KBD> ... </KBD> pairing. Don't use a browser-specific method when a better solution is available.

AVI files

Normally you think of AVI files as being big honking multi-megabyte monsters. But if you make the graphic small and use a tiny palette you can create some nice animations that don't take up that much space. This animation of a Porche is a 64KB AVI file. Small icon-sized animations can be as little as 10KB.

You lay out an AVI file using the IMG tag, but specify the AVI file name with the DYNSRC parameter. In the same tag, you can still include a GIF file with the familiar SRC parameter. That would be used on browsers that don't support AVI (Netscape and the rest of the world right now). Since Netscape supports multi-frame GIFs you could use one of those and get motion effects for both browsers!

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