Div and browsers

[baseiber]

For what browser versions are div's not ok to use?
For example IE 5.0, Netscape 4.X

You see, a few months ago a coworker designed a site in HTML and CSS. It was then given to my team. We completed the site and prepared it for viewing by the client.

For some reason it didn't display right for the client. I examined the CSS and found a z-index mentioned. I read somewhere that some browsers have problems with that. I tried changing the z-index and removing it. Nothing seemed to work.

Because of time constraints by boss told me to just remove all the divs and replace them with tables. (I know! I know! How Horrible!!!) But I did it fairly quickly and the client was able to view the site.

I have no idea what browser or version the client was using. It may just have been bad CSS. But sometimes I'm told a site must be compatible with a specific browser. If the version is old enough I'm concerned div's won't work with it.

If any of you could help me or point me in the right direction I'd appreciate it.

Thanks

[toicontien]

Browsers versions 4.0 and older do not support CSS layouts (though 4.0 browsers try). DIV tags are a part of the HTML 4.01 specification. I believe all browsers 3.0 and newer support this tag, definitely 4.0 and newer. Count on 99.999999% of the browsers out there to support the DIV tag. It's browser support for CSS that chokes things up.

If your client is using a 4.0 browser, tell them to upgrade! For the love of God, those browsers came out more than half a decade ago (three millennia in technology years). ;)

4.0 and older browsers only make up less than one percent of the browsers used. Even so, a properly designed CSS-layout will still be readable to legacy browsers if semantic markup is used (using HTML tags for their intended purposes).

[NogDog]

Did you run the page(s) through the w3.org validators?

http://validator.w3.org/

http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

PS: DIV tag was part of HTML 2.0, which I think started being implemented in the early '90s.

[baseiber]

Like I said it was done by someone else. Often where I work people stay with a project the entire time. This time the web developer was reassigned. My team was assigned to take care of the db and ASP coding. We expected the design to work for the specified browsers. Since we didn't see a problem while modifying the site, we didn't know something was wrong.

If I'm ever in that situation again I know to validate it. It's a lot easier to fix things in the beginning then when a client is waiting to look at it.