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Do you remember how different layer was from div? I’m struggling to remember now.

by mattl 1y ago

Lammy 1y ago
Layers were unique to Netscape 4.x (a.k.a “Communicator” vs. the older “Navigator” branding), so the Netscape ONE docs would probably be the best place to start if you can tolerate the fact that it's their tech so they're patting themselves on the back for it the entire time: https://web.archive.org/web/19990219125559fw_/http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/tools/devguide/contents.htm https://web.archive.org/web/19990219125559fw_/http://develop... Check out Chapter 2 “Dividing Content into Sections” in particular for examples: https://web.archive.org/web/20001207134400fw_/http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/tools/devguide/devtech.htm#1027408 https://web.archive.org/web/20001207134400fw_/http://develop... That chapter has a tantalizingly-broken link near the bottom: “For a comparison of CSS Positioning and positioning with the <LAYER> tag, see Danny Goodman's View Source article ‘CSS-Positioning — The Dynamic HTML Neutral Zone’”. I was able to fix the link (looks like it was MCom-intranet-formatted) and you can read it here: https://web.archive.org/web/19990129034353fw_/http://developer.netscape.com/viewsource/goodman_cssp/goodman_cssp.html https://web.archive.org/web/19990129034353fw_/http://develop... “Over and above this common [W3C CSS-Positioning (CSS-P)] standard, Netscape and Microsoft have applied these concepts to their own document object models and have developed different ways of conceptualizing these positionable entities. Netscape calls these items layers, and has even created a <LAYER> tag to facilitate adding such items into a document. Microsoft, on the other hand, refers to such items as styles. The challenge we scripters face is controlling Netscape's layers and Microsoft's styles to accomplish the same job.” “Over and above this common standard” is particularly funny wording to me considering Microsoft are the ones with the reputation for embracing-and-extending but here Netscape are doing the same damn thing. It was already in their blood anyway considering we got the <IMG> tag from a similarly non-standard extension by Marc Andreessen when he was working on MCSA Mosaic, before MCom/Netscape: http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q1/0182.html http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q1/0182.ht... ================= For many years it was customary to have separate NS4 vs IE4 code paths by detecting the top-level objects that were unique to each browser, something like: if (document.layers) { // Netscape Communicator code } else if (document.all) { // IE code } else { // All other browser code } Though my recollection is that `if NS4 else all-others-including-IE` was the most common pattern.
- mattl 1y ago
  > `if NS4 else all-others-including-IE` Yeah, certainly saw that. Plone which inspired Wikipedia's CSS has .netscape4 class used all over the place, which is probably still all over https://fsf.org https://fsf.org despite the fact I stopped working there 13 years ago next month.

Do you remember how different layer was from div? I’m struggling to remember now.

by mattl 1y ago

Do you remember how different layer was from div? I’m struggling to remember now.

Layers were unique to Netscape 4.x (a.k.a “Communicator” vs. the older “Navigator” branding), so the Netscape ONE docs would probably be the best place to start if you can tolerate the fact that it's their tech so they're patting themselves on the back for it the entire time: https://web.archive.org/web/19990219125559fw_/http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/tools/devguide/contents.htm https://web.archive.org/web/19990219125559fw_/http://develop... Check out Chapter 2 “Dividing Content into Sections” in particular for examples: https://web.archive.org/web/20001207134400fw_/http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/tools/devguide/devtech.htm#1027408 https://web.archive.org/web/20001207134400fw_/http://develop... That chapter has a tantalizingly-broken link near the bottom: “For a comparison of CSS Positioning and positioning with the <LAYER> tag, see Danny Goodman's View Source article ‘CSS-Positioning — The Dynamic HTML Neutral Zone’”. I was able to fix the link (looks like it was MCom-intranet-formatted) and you can read it here: https://web.archive.org/web/19990129034353fw_/http://developer.netscape.com/viewsource/goodman_cssp/goodman_cssp.html https://web.archive.org/web/19990129034353fw_/http://develop... “Over and above this common [W3C CSS-Positioning (CSS-P)] standard, Netscape and Microsoft have applied these concepts to their own document object models and have developed different ways of conceptualizing these positionable entities. Netscape calls these items layers, and has even created a <LAYER> tag to facilitate adding such items into a document. Microsoft, on the other hand, refers to such items as styles. The challenge we scripters face is controlling Netscape's layers and Microsoft's styles to accomplish the same job.” “Over and above this common standard” is particularly funny wording to me considering Microsoft are the ones with the reputation for embracing-and-extending but here Netscape are doing the same damn thing. It was already in their blood anyway considering we got the <IMG> tag from a similarly non-standard extension by Marc Andreessen when he was working on MCSA Mosaic, before MCom/Netscape: http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q1/0182.html http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q1/0182.ht... ================= For many years it was customary to have separate NS4 vs IE4 code paths by detecting the top-level objects that were unique to each browser, something like: if (document.layers) { // Netscape Communicator code } else if (document.all) { // IE code } else { // All other browser code } Though my recollection is that `if NS4 else all-others-including-IE` was the most common pattern.

mattl 1y ago
> `if NS4 else all-others-including-IE` Yeah, certainly saw that. Plone which inspired Wikipedia's CSS has .netscape4 class used all over the place, which is probably still all over https://fsf.org https://fsf.org despite the fact I stopped working there 13 years ago next month.