HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide, 5th Edition

JavaScript Style Sheets (Antiquated)

Much of a browser’s work is manipulating the display, and much of its display code already has been exposed for JavaScripting. So it seemed only natural, perhaps even relatively easy, for the developers at Netscape to implement JavaScript Style Sheets ( JSS). Based on the W3C-recommended Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) model, outlined in Chapter 8, this alternative document style technology lets you prescribe display properties for all the various HTML elements, either inline as tag attributes, at the document level, or for an entire document collection.

JSS is a Netscape invention. In fact, for a short time, Netscape appeared ready to eschew the CSS methodology, which Internet Explorer already had implemented, and use JSS exclusively for HTML document designers with its then-current browser, Navigator 4. In the end, Netscape supported both JSS and CSS technologies. Today, Netscape 6 eschews support for JSS entirely in favor of the standard CSS2. At this point, CSS should be seen as Netscape’s long-term direction.

We are strong proponents of reasonable standards, and now that the CSS2 model is fully supported in HTML 4 and XHTML, we can’t recommend that you use anything but CSS-standard style sheets. Evidently, Netscape now agrees with us on this point.

We thoroughly discuss the concepts and ideas behind style sheets — specifically, Cascading Style Sheets — in Chapter 8, so we won’t repeat ourselves here. Rather, we address only how to create and ...