Calling Stylesheets for specific browsers

anyone wnat to show me how to define a specfic style sheet for IE or if someone is using a Mozilla one it defaults to another stylesheet?

Loading an IE only stylesheet is easy: http://www.quirksmode.org/css/condcom.html

I know a way around PHP.

get_browser() is an easy choice assuming you have browscap.ini installed (see that link for more info.)

if you don't have that file, we can always use regular expressions...but like I said, can you use PHP in the first place and do you have browscap.ini installed?

Unless you specifically want to have mozilla users to see something completely different to IE users and your intention is to make a site work in all browsers you should be able to do this without specifying one or the other.

Regarding the original post, it is certainly possible but I'm not going to tell you how (there are lots of ways anyway). It is very bad practice to serve up completely different stylesheets depending on the browser being used.

How will you be sure that you've styled all browsers?

Making x number of stylesheets is much more work than making one which works for all browsers (with css hacks, etc).

Why should IE look different from Firefox from Safari from ... .

I totally agree with Salathe, when serving up css the only differences should be in the media - screen, print and handheld.

The man hours involved in coding specific stylesheets for different browsers in not cost effective, efficient or desirable. The BEST way to do it is to learn all the best ways to get around the differences in each browsers interpretation of the css and build one screen.css file accordingly.

There are plenty of great examples of standards compliant, non-browser specific css at the awesome http://www.csszengarden.com.

hope that helps,

Ian

All

Though I agree that it is not best practice to call up different CSS per browser, mmorales asked for some assistance. I think it would be best for all of us to provide the answer to the question, then give advice and opinion as to why this is a good/bad idea.

That way he can learn two things and grow as a developer rather than just learn what we think he should learn.

Having said that, I don't know what the best method is since I don't know what your dev environment is.

Originally Posted by moped All Though I agree that it is not best practice to call up different CSS per browser, mmorales asked for some assistance. I think it would be best for all of us to provide the answer to the question, then give advice and opinion as to why this is a good/bad idea. That way he can learn two things and grow as a developer rather than just learn what we think he should learn.

i agree.
i think sometimes to know the good side of things, you have to know the bad side of things also so that you can compare them and understand for yourself why it is actually good

#header {margin-bottom:10px} /* IE */
html>body #header {margin-bottom:20px} /* other browsers */

OR

<style type="text/css">@import url(cssfile.css);</style>

Netscape 4 will display a non-styled version of the site as it can't understand this @import directive.


OR


div#example {

width: 50px !important; /* Firefox */

padding: 2px;

border: 1px solid #FFFFFF;

margin: 10px;

width: 56px; /* IE */

}

This means that internet explorer picks up the width of 56 pixels and firefox will pick up the 50 pixel width giving both the
same appearance.