Platforms Demonstrating Problem

Netscape Navigator 4

Description of Problem

Netscape 4 has a number of serious TABLE-element related formattin problems that make it almost impossible to mix CSS formatting rules with TABLE-related elements. There are also some Netscape-specific issues taht you must understand if you are to properly use CSS to properly format table content:. The main issues are:

• With Netscape 4, TABLE element content does not inherit the font size, style or other properties from the parent element (BODY or DIV). Thus, even if you have set a default font for a documetn using CSS rules aplied to BODY, you must also set these properties for the table content.
• You should never use CSS to set formatting rules that apply to TABLE, TR, TD, or TH elements -- the Netsacpe parser will mess up the formattin of the text that follows the table, and in unpredictable ways. The example document ex-table-probs1.html illustrates these problems in more detail.

Possible Workarounds

There are several ways to avoid these problems -- and these will work with all other browsers, although they add to the complexigy of the HTML markup and the CSS style sheet.

• Never associate CSS properties directly with TABLE, TR, TD, or TH elements.
• Use elements within each table cell, such as DIV or SPAN, to set formatting properties for table cell content. You can user TABLE-dependent context-selectors for the rules, such as
  TABLE DIV.classname {declarations...}
• Be sure to specify the desired font properties for the cell contents, since these properties are not inherited from the BODY or DIV elements containng the TABLE.