Nested layers and tables causing a NN 4.x problem

should I ignore it?

[dickbaker]

This is going to be a long-winded description of what's going on, so please bear with me.

I'm creating a site that has layers for images and image links on the top and on the left side, and I've created a template. The area in the center is the editable "body copy" area. Below the "body copy" area is a black box that must float, because the site is dynamic: where the black box winds up depends upon the amount of dynamic text/images.

In order to get the "body copy" area positioned exactly, I needed to create a layer with div position absolute definitions. However, in order to have the Black Box be able to float, I had to create a table within the "body copy" layer. The "body copy" and the Black Box are part of the same table. IOW, the table is nested within the layer.

This arrangement works fine with any version of IE on Windows that I've tried, and works fine with any version of NN or IE on a Mac platform. It works with NN 7 in Windows. But, when testing it with NN 4.7 on a PC, everything falls apart. Oddly enough, the main page, which uses the same template as all other pages, looks fine. But some other pages completely break down, yet others look fine.

On a friend's PC using NN 4.7, the straight HTML pages look fine, but the dynamic pages don't even load. He gets an "illegal activity" warning.

I have no idea if it's even possible to create a floating layer for the Black Box. Any ideas on how to do that would be much appreciated. I've tried laying out the site entirely in a table format, but it just won't work with all of the other things going on.

Beyond that issue, I have to wonder how much I should worry about those using NN 4.x browsers. This site is going to be my sole source of revenue, so I hate the idea of excluding 3% to 9% of the internet users out there.

In the end, though, I really hate Netscape.

Thanks much for any replies.

[tedster]

NN4 is now under 0.5% for most sites that I work with.

I think a better question might be can you give a better experience to the remainder by ignoring NN4 -- and therefore convert more of that 99%+

I have one site with a similar template to what you've described. Some page content is fine on NN4, and with some it wigs out as you've described. I never did figure out what made the difference, but I stopped worrying about it.

[thehittmann]

There are so many things that NN4 doesnt allow and very few people that actually are using it. I don't even bother about NN4. as long as I can cater for most of the other browsers I am happy.