WWW browsers and support for HTML 3.0

[Michele_Berkes -at- CCMAIL -dot- OSTI -dot- GOV]

     Greetings techwr-lers,

     This isn't strictly technical writing, but I know that many of us
     create/maintain Web pages in addition to myriad other tasks. We
     publish a great deal of scientific and technical material. So we are
     intrigued by the features of the (developing) HTML 3.0 standard to
     support superscripts, subscripts, tables, and such.

     We are also a government facility and believe that we should provide
     our Web files in a format that most of the people accessing our files
     can read (read: no Netscape extensions, HTML syntax validated against
     the standard). The benefits of using some of the HTML 3.0 features
     would be great, but we want to balance that against the disadvantage
     of narrowing the group of people who can view our files as intended. I
     guess this is a variation on the age-old edict KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE!

     Which leads me to my question. I can find out what browsers they use;
     I just need to know how well (if at all) those browsers support HTML
     3.0. Does anyone know of a site that compares the various common
     browsers available and states which features of HTML 3.0 they support?

     I've looked at http://www.w3.org to see which features of the 3.0
     standard are fairly stable and which are still in a state of flux. We
     would only begin to implement those that are stable (we certainly
     don't want to create a mass of legacy data that will will need
     reworked to be compatible with the next revision). I've also done some
     searches, but haven't really come up with the kind of info I'm looking
     for.

     Any pointers or discussion would be appreciated. If you know of
     another group where this discussion might be more appropriate, please
     feel free to point me in the right direction.

     Thanks,
     Michele Berkes
     michele -dot- berkes -at- ccmail -dot- osti -dot- gov