CSS1 Demonstration

(A Level Two Heading)

Graceful Degradation

-by Charles T. Low
-from: ctLow Home -> CSS1 Intercompatibility

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Introduction

This page purports to demonstrate "graceful degradation," from the Cascading Style Sheets Level One specification ("CSS1") to plain HTML. I keep two copies of it for comparison purposes, each accessed from this page's "parent", and each almost identical with the other except that one uses CSS1 and one does not. I suggest that you open them both in separate windows and then tile them vertically to examine how they differ -- and if you can't do that, then I hope not to sound arrogant if I suggest that you don't seem like a CSS programmer to me! I won't list all the CSS1 features this page exhibits -- better to examine the code and the output yourself, I think (although how well the CSS1 works will vary by browser and version).

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Development

Here I am testing what I call a "pseudo-heading" -- something gained but something lost.

• This is a list item.
• And another one.

Probably not many web browsers need to "degrade" (what a term!) any more, so this concept may fade into obscurity. On the other hand, with the advent of Personal Digital Assistants and who knows what all else, I wonder if various platforms and displays will all use CSS1 or not. If not, the pages will have to degrade gracefully.

The issue of "users" (another less than salubrious term!) turning style sheets off in their web browser preferences looms less largely. The sort of user who might most need to would also less likely know how. Modern browsers don't seem to have a feature just to turn them off, anyway -- they have made the configuration choices more complicated, and none of the options seems just to say "No CSS."

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Conclusion

If you've read this far then you're doing well. But this should provide adequate paragraph-filling material for this demonstration.

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-by Charles T. Low
-from: ctLow Home -> CSS1 Intercompatibility