Making Netscape 4 compatible with today's tricks
Author: Travis M Owens  travisowens@hotmail.com
Date: 8-1-2001
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*  In nested tables BGCOLORs will be ignored unless an invisible dot.gif
   background="" is also included.  This happens in the 3rd or 4th nesting.

  ie: <td bgcolor="#000099" background="dot.gif">


*  CSS positioning is lacking severely in NS4 and varies per version of 4.x
   There is no way to get around, except by using <TABLE> to position.


*  Lacks the proper (flat and solid) BORDERCOLOR="" rendering that IE draws,
   but it's still semi acceptable.  The use of pseudo borders works very well,
   which is shown below:


<!-- Start Creates floating page --><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td bgcolor="#000000"><img src="/dot.gif" width="2" height="2"></td><td bgcolor="#000000"><img src="/dot.gif" height="2"></td><td bgcolor="#000000"><img src="/dot.gif" width="2" height="2"></td></tr><tr><td bgcolor="#000000"><img src="/dot.gif" width="2"></td><td height="100%" align="center" valign="middle" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<!-- Start Creates Space --><table border="0" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>
your page goes here
<!-- End Creates Space --></td></tr></table>
<!-- End Creates floating page --></td><td bgcolor="#000000"><img src="/dot.gif" width="2"></td></tr><tr><td bgcolor="#000000"><img src="/dot.gif" width="2" height="2"></td><td bgcolor="#000000"><img src="/dot.gif" height="2"></td><td bgcolor="#000000"><img src="/dot.gif" width="2" height="2"></td></tr></table>



*  Netscape improperly estimates table measurements in percents.  There is no fix
   for this, you must try to use pixel measurements whenever possible.


*  Some versions of Netscape will start tiling the background but will not draw
   the first 10 width and height pixels.  There is no fix, this totally depends
    on which version of Netscape you run.


*  The size of <FORM> <input type="text"> is approx 50% longer than
   IEs.  Using CSS tags help this problem, but only if the version of Netscape
   supports CSS, otherwise there is no fix.


*  Netscape supports most standard CSS via class, but in most versions doesn't
   support on-the-fly CSS such as <a href="" style="color: #000000; font: verdana;">


*  If a BACKGROUND="" is added to the <table> tag, the background will
   repeat in each cell, instead of being a background across the <td>'s
   like in IE.  There is no fix for this, webdevs should about using a background
   inside the <TABLE> tag


* <form> and </form> will put hard returns in your html page, and
  this can be fixed by putting them inside the dead parts of a table like so


<table><form><tr><td><input></td></tr></form></table>


  But if you use an image for your submit or cancel, there will be a hard
  return in </form>.  The only way to prevent that new hard return is to
  wrap yet another table around it like so.


<table cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 border=0><tr><td><table cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 border=0><tr><form><td><input></td></form></tr></table></td></tr></table>