ns4comp = on | off
The ns4comp command is used to produce Html pages that are as compatible as possible with Netscape 4. However, the use of the Netscape 4 browser has all but disappeared, so that we now confidently recommend that webmasters no longer use this option at all. Still, for the sake of completeness, a discussion of the option follows. There are a number of problems when using Cascading Stylesheets with the Netscape 4 browser. One of the problems we encountered dealt with defining TABLE borders in CSS. We noted that NS4 could not produce the borders at all using CSS, and that other CSS border properties were also ignored, such as the width. We also found that it was very difficult to write the chess moves in the board caption. Because of these problems, we had to create this special Palview3 option for those who wish to produce pages that NS4 can cope with. You will notice that the board caption is replaced with an Html text INPUT. This was done in order to allow NS4 to write the moves under the board. You can see this textbox in both of the examples below. You will also notice that the borders themselves look different from other examples seen in this manual. The borders you see in the examples below are not defined using the CSS classes, but instead are using the bordercolor command to define them. This bordercolor is only used in ns4comp = on mode. Note that when using ns4comp = on that you should use one of the ns4style.css stylesheets that is supplied along with Palview as your stylesheet. There are a number of CSS classes in the normal p3style.css stylesheets that must be removed if you are using ns4comp = on, otherwise your page will not be rendered correctly by NS6 or IE4+. This first example shows what an ns4comp = on page would look like in Internet Explorer. It produces much nicer borders than Netscape 4 in this particular mode. Netscape 6 produces a page similar to that above when using ns4comp = on mode. Here is an example of a normal page rendered by Netscape 4 when using ns4comp = off. While the page itself is functional in NS4, viewers will not see any borders and will not see the moves written under the board as they are played. Our recommendation is for webmasters to use the setting ns4comp = off and to suggest to their visitors that the page is best viewed with IE4+ or NS6. FIDE's current statistics suggest that while some visitors to its site still use NS4, that these same visitors are almost always running an MS Windows machine that almost certainly has a copy of IE4 or better on it. This means that those visitors to your page using NS4 do have access to IE4 or better. It may be a small inconvenience to those few visitors to ask them to return to your site using IE4+, but it would allow you to use all the features available with Palview. |