Netscape 6, Part I: Detection and Scripting Page 3

The introduction of Netscape 6 has worsen the browser-independent scripting situation, at least for the short time. No longer do you have to deal with only two browsers – there are now three major browsers to support. One good old way is to use if statements. You want to make your script as generic as possible, and use if clauses as late as possible. The following script uses this technique. The switchEntries() function is a common event handler for all browsers. The content of switchEntries() is an if statement that executes a different statement for every browser:

Al Gore
George W. Bush

Click the button below to see how the first option changes on the fly:

Al Gore
George W. Bush

Avoiding Netscape’s Proprietary Features

Netscape 6 does not support the LAYER and ILAYER elements. It means that the browser will silently ignore the , , , and tags. The browser will render the HTML page as if those tags are not present. Any other elements (non-LAYER) between and will be rendered as if the and are missing. Obviously, this will change the look of the page. Let’s take an example. The following LAYER element includes one line of text:

In Netscape Navigator, this line should be colored tan. Should be white in Netscape 6 and IE.



Here is the rendering of this element on your browser:
In Netscape Navigator, this line should be colored tan. Should be white in Netscape 6 and IE.