Difference between Netscape 8.0 and IE.6

[CanMike]

I knew at both XHTML and CSS and I've just notice that there seems to be a few differences between NS and IE.

For example: my test css file,

body {font-family: "Book Antiqua", courier;
font-size:10px}

table {padding:12px;
margin:25px;
font-size:10px; <-- required for IE.6 but not Netscape 8.0
background-color:#87cefa;}

td {border-style:solid;
border-width:1px;
border-color:#000000;
padding:5px;}

This is what I noticed. Netscape will display the text at 10px with just the declaration in the body selector, but in order for the text to be displayed in IE.6, I have to add the line in the table selector!

Weird eh? Have I done something stupid?

Anybody have any idea what up?

Regards
Mike in Toronto

[toicontien]

Internet Explorer doesn't correctly inherit the font size for TABLE tags. It seems to use the browser default font size for body text unless told otherwise. I've also noticed the same behavior with the H4 tag too, that most browsers, including IE-Win, size H4 tags the same as body text, unless you change the text size from the browser default.

So basically always set the font size you want for the H4 and TABLE tags because IE-Win doesn't inherit the size correctly.

[felgall]

You have to remember that IE6 was written many generations ago before the current web standards were developed. You need a version 7 browser at minimum to be able to get reasonable support of the 21st Century standards and a version 9 browser or better for full support of the standards.

[CanMike]

Thanks to everyone who took the time to answer my question. As an old Java developer, the browser world can drive me nuts.

I keep the table and h4 inherence problem in mind.

So, in a way, it's a bit of trail and error, making sure that what you want to happen happens.

I'll just make sure I always test against as many browser as I can.

Regards
Mike in Toronto

[drhowarddrfine]

The general rule is to design and test using a modern browser like Firefox or Opera. Once that's working it should work in all other browsers except, perhaps, IE. But then you know your code is good and you only need adjust for IEs quirks and bugs.

[CanMike]

Thank-God for FireFox. Been using it since it became available.