Changes in CSS

Cascaded Style Sheets are used to define web pages look. They replaced design-related HTML attributes for most of tags in 1996.

This page contains links to content about changes in CSS support in popular browsers.

Good article to read: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/11/15-helpful-in-browser-web-development-tools/

Microsoft Internet Explorer

This engine also used in almost all Windows applications that displaying HTML content or web pages (except alternate browsers).

Support (partial/full):

CSS 1.0	CSS 2.0	CSS 2.1	CSS 3
3.0/4	4/5.0	5.0/6	7/11

Links:

1. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc351024(VS.85).aspx (archived / older archived version).
2. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/internet-explorer/ie-developer/platform-apis/ms532849(v=vs.85)

IE 9/10 and early versions of IE 11 likes most of CSS3 stuff only with -ms- prefix. Some color-related parts of CSS3 have their analogs in IE 5.5-9 as DXImageTransform. Probably also should work in IE 4/5 too (rtfm).

IE 4-6 have non-standard CSS implementation and needs own stylesheets, not same as for other browsers. Be careful!

Engines of 16-bit versions of MSIE 3-5 have some little differences from 32-bit ones (IE 3/4/5 16-bit was a fork of IE 3.0 and was developed in parallel). MSIE for Macintosh is a different browser which have almost no common with Windows IE.

Debug tools

• Internet Explorer Web Developer Toolbar (IE 6/7)
• Microsoft F12 Developer Tools (IE 8+)
• Microsoft FrontPage (on local pages) (IE 4+)
• Web Accessibility Toolbar (IE6?+)

Netscape

Support:

CSS 1.0	CSS 2.0	CSS 2.1	CSS 3
3.0	4.0	(Mozilla)	(Mozilla)

Netscape 6-9 are rebranded Mozilla Suite 0.8-1.7 or Firefox 1.0/2.0. Netscape 5.0 uses a early alpha of Mozilla Gecko, which was very limited. First versions (all before 5.0, including Netscape Mosaic) were using original Netscape engine.

Debug tools

• Netscape 1-5: none?
• Netscape 6/7: internal DOM Inspector, Error Console.
• Netscape 9: Firebug 1.3, Web Developer 1.1.x.
  • See about Firefox 2 below.

Mozilla

Gecko is a engine used in Mozilla Suite, Firefox, SeaMonkey, Netscape Navigator 6+, Netscape Browser 8+ and many other. It have a perfect implementation of W3C CSS standards.

Support (partial/full):

CSS 1.0	CSS 2.0	CSS 2.1	CSS 3
0.x	0.x	1.x	1.7/?

Most of CSS3 stuff is introduced in Gecko 1.7-1.9.2 with -moz- prefix. Release-by-release the amount of supported things is enlarging. Firefox 39 and later does not requires prefixes. Gecko 1.7/1.8 have some performance issues on pages with CSS3 stuff when running on CPUs slower than 1 GHz.

Information source: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS

Debug tools

• Internal DOM Inspector, Error Console
• Firebug
  • Compatibility table:
  • Firefox 1.5/2.0 with Firebug 1.3.1
  • Firefox 3.0 with Firebug 1.4.5
  • Firefox 3.5/3.6 with Firebug 1.5.4
  • Firefox 3.6/4.0 with Firebug 1.7.3
  • Firefox 5.0 with Firebug 1.8.2
  • Firefox 6-12 with Firebug 1.9
  • Firefox 13-16 with Firebug 1.10
  • Firefox 17-22 with Firebug 1.11
  • Firefox 23-29 with Firebug 1.12
  • Firefox 30-32 with Firebug 2.0 (and also Firebug 1.12)
  • Firefox 30-56 with Firebug 2.0.19
  • Firefox 57+ have internal Developer Tools
• Web Developer
• Live HTTP Headers
• (there was a huge amount of XPI addons for Mozilla/Firefox which was designed to help developers)
• (for Mozilla Suite, probably some SeaMonkey addons should work)

Opera

Opera from 1.0 to 12.18 used Presto rendering engine.

To be written.

Use -o- prefix for CSS3 stuff.

Rendering in Opera <9.5 is similar to Gecko with some hacks for partial IE 5.5 stylesheet support. The browser have user-agent string selection, so it can appear as Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 for WebOne, if a corresponding Opera option is selected.

Debug tools

• Opera Dragonfly. How to run after 2016 (Russian article): https://habr.com/ru/post/392947/.

WebKit

The rendering engine is common in Apple Safari (WebKit), Google Chromium-based browsers (Blink) and Android programs with web browser control. Also used in Opera since 15th version. It have a perfect implementation of W3C CSS standards, almost identical to Gecko.

To be written.

Use -webkit- prefix for CSS3 stuff. WebKit was the engine that introduced most of CSS3 things firstest.

Debug tools

• Web Inspector (Safari)
• Developer Tools (Chrome)