T
Toby A Inkster
[Xposted, f'up to alt.html,comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets]
For ages I have provided links to alternate stylesheets from my pages as
per W3C recommendations:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="baz" type="text/css" title="Baz"
media="screen,projection" />
<link rel="alternate stylesheet" href="foo" type="text/css" title="Foo"
media="screen,projection" />
<link rel="alternate stylesheet" href="bar" type="text/css" title="Bar"
media="screen,projection" />
This morning I removed the alternate stylesheets, leaving only a
cookie-based stylesheet selector.
Why?
Simply because the current behaviour of all major CSS-supporting
browsers[1] is to preemptively download *all* linked stylesheets including
alternates when the page initially loads. Even Internet Explorer, which
doesn't even provide a mechanism to switch style sheets exhibits this
behaviour! In my case, this adds an extra 35KB to the initial[2] page
load.
Indeed some browsers[3] go even further and also download the background
images referenced in alternate stylesheets.
So until most browsers implement default style sheets sanely, I'm going
back to the cookie-based styling method.
</rant>
[1] Noticed this in Internet Explorer 5+, Mozilla 1.x, Opera 7.x, Safari
1.1 and Konqueror 3.1, although it probably effects others.
[2] 10KB page, 5KB default style sheet.
[3] Notably Konqueror, Safari.
For ages I have provided links to alternate stylesheets from my pages as
per W3C recommendations:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="baz" type="text/css" title="Baz"
media="screen,projection" />
<link rel="alternate stylesheet" href="foo" type="text/css" title="Foo"
media="screen,projection" />
<link rel="alternate stylesheet" href="bar" type="text/css" title="Bar"
media="screen,projection" />
This morning I removed the alternate stylesheets, leaving only a
cookie-based stylesheet selector.
Why?
Simply because the current behaviour of all major CSS-supporting
browsers[1] is to preemptively download *all* linked stylesheets including
alternates when the page initially loads. Even Internet Explorer, which
doesn't even provide a mechanism to switch style sheets exhibits this
behaviour! In my case, this adds an extra 35KB to the initial[2] page
load.
Indeed some browsers[3] go even further and also download the background
images referenced in alternate stylesheets.
So until most browsers implement default style sheets sanely, I'm going
back to the cookie-based styling method.
</rant>
[1] Noticed this in Internet Explorer 5+, Mozilla 1.x, Opera 7.x, Safari
1.1 and Konqueror 3.1, although it probably effects others.
[2] 10KB page, 5KB default style sheet.
[3] Notably Konqueror, Safari.