LAYER and ILAYER

dead tags 1997 dead

Netscape 4's positioned boxes, and the reason half of 1998's DHTML has two code paths.

In 2026: Dead. Netscape 4 shipped LAYER while Microsoft shipped CSS positioning, so every DHTML script of the period branched on document.layers versus document.all. Netscape 6 dropped LAYER entirely and the branch went with it.

Where it came from: Netscape Communicator 4.0 DHTML reference, 1997. Wikipedia ↗

<layer id="float1" left="50" top="100" width="200" bgcolor="#FFFFCC"
       visibility="show" z-index="2">
  A positioned box, Netscape 4 style.
</layer>

<!-- Inline version, flows with the text -->
<ilayer width="120" height="60" bgcolor="#CCFFCC">inline layer</ilayer>

<!-- Shown only to browsers that DO NOT understand layers -->
<nolayer>
  <div style="position:absolute; left:50px; top:100px; width:200px;
              background:#FFFFCC">Everyone else got this.</div>
</nolayer>

<script language="JavaScript">
// Moving one, Netscape 4 style
if (document.layers) {
  document.layers["float1"].left = 120;
  document.layers["float1"].visibility = "hide";
}
</script>

sandboxed demo · breaks nothing but itselfrestart

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