Java, HTML, Javascript and the browser wars

["Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Well, I'm now in a pretty nasty predicament.  It seems that Netscape
basically, well, stinks, at least when it comes to stylesheets and DHTML.
I've recently found that DHTML offers a very easy way to cleanly allow me to
dynamical update small chunks of data within a web page (using IFRAME, SPAN
and the innerHTML property).  This makes for highly interactive websites,
where a page can be sectioned into various regions and buttons on a page
relate only to their own particular region.  This is an incredible boon for
bandwidth, and also allows you to design small, succinct pieces of code
which can be then be arranged into meaningful pages by your users.

Unfortunately, it's not easy to implement this with Mozilla.  And, in fact,
the code that is required to get this feature to work with Mozilla actually
has a syntax that breaks IE5 (gee, go figure).  So there's not even a clean
way of using conditional code.

Add to that the fact that Mozilla doesn't even seem to like stylesheets.  I
have a simple JSP with a stylesheet which shows an image, some text and then
a one-line script.  I have another JSP that shows a few links.  I show these
two JSPs, each in a frame, and then a third frame with some HTML content.
In IE5, it comes up great, in Mozilla no dice.  All I see is the text, no
image.  The image flashes up for a second, then goes away.

Anyway, my dilemma is this: if I don't use the frames or the IFRAME/SPAN
technique, I can still code web pages.  But frankly DHTML makes a lot more
sense to me than having to reload an entire page every time one region
changes.  So I'm going to work on this a bit and see what I can come up
with, but the upshot is that I might just have to code for IE5 and the heck
with Netscape.  And I hate that idea, because that's exactly what Microsoft
would love to hear.

<sigh>

Any ideas?

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