Readers Questions

Thanks for the new HTML authors corner. It will be good to have a further source of information for those of us learning to put together pages "by hand".

A question, if I may, regarding forms.... If you have a background color other than white, Netscape (I,m using Netscape4 and Explorer4- prefer Netscape, but need Explorer to check cross-browser differences) displays the form radio buttons in a white box whereas Explorer displays them correctly. Is this a Netscape bug and is there a work-around to avoid this?

I look forward to the newsletter every couple of months.....keep up the good work!

Regards,
Peter

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Thank you for your kind comments Peter.

When it comes to your problem, unfortunately, how a Browser displays HTML form buttons is largely up to the Browser. It not only varies from one manufacturer to another other, but within the same version running on different platforms. Netscape V3 and 4 for example display buttons differently under windows to OS2, and differently again on the Macintosh and Unix. Frequently this may come back to the base icons or widgets available to the operating system - the program (a browser in this case) may simply be pulling symbols out of the operating system's libraries for its own use. These libraries do tend to vary from one OS to another, and background color assignment may or may not be controlled by the Browser.

Different versions of the same browser on the same machine can also exhibit annoying changes in the way they treat your forms.

With the emerging standards now incorporating java-script and supporting java applets, it should be possible to create a DHTML form that looks identical across all future browsers, versions and platforms, but it doubtful whether this is worth the effort for all but the keenest personal home page designer.

Please note: our counter cgi is ONLY available for use by our (ALI) subscribers. Visitors from other ISP's are encouraged to contact their own ISP or page hosting site to see what counter cgi's are available, and how to use them. There are numerous "free" counters available all over the net. It makes more sense however to use a local counter if one is available.

Go to the The counter tutorial.