Out-of-date CSS person needs up-to-date CSS advice!!

[Darin McGrew]

Re: Out-of-date CSS person needs up-to-date CSS advice!!

I wrote:[color=blue][color=green]
>> In the real world, content images should use the IMG element.
>> Content images that are pictures of text should provide the text in
>> the ALT attribute.[/color][/color]

Alan J. Flavell <flavell@ph.gla .ac.uk> wrote:[color=blue]
> Well, yes; but, on the other hand, there's a body of informed advice
> which says that making images that are nothing more than images of
> text is poor practice. Better would be to include the text itself in
> the HTML with appropriate markup (and if you don't like the visual
> result, to propose something via the stylesheet to modify the visual
> result in appropriate presentation situation/s).[/color]

Yes, the ideal is to use real text, and to style it with CSS.

But image-replacement hacks aren't styling real text with CSS; they're
hiding the real text and replacing it with an image of text.

If these hacks were styling the real text, then users could select the
styled text and copy-paste it somewhere. Or I could add another H3 element
to the CSS Zen Garden boilerplate HTML, without having the new H3 element
look different from all the original H3 elements that are otherwise similar
to my new one. Or I could edit the text of an H3 element without mucking
with the style sheet or its images.

IMHO, if you're going to replace the real text with an image, then you
should be honest about it and use an inline image with appropriate ALT
text. But the artificial requirements of the CSS Zen Garden project
prohibit that.
--
Darin McGrew, mcgrew@stanford alumni.org, http://www.rahul.net/mcgrew/
Web Design Group, darin@htmlhelp. com, http://www.HTMLHelp.com/

"The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese."

[Christoph Päper]

Re: Out-of-date CSS person needs up-to-date CSS advice!!

Alan J. Flavell:[color=blue]
> On Mon, 15 Aug 2005, Darin McGrew wrote (...):[color=green]
>> In the real world, content images should use the IMG element.[/color][/color]

Sure.
[color=blue][color=green]
>> Content images that are pictures of text should provide the text in
>> the ALT attribute.[/color][/color]

Sure.
[color=blue]
> Well, yes; but, on the other hand, there's a body of informed advice
> which says that making images that are nothing more than images of
> text is poor practice.[/color]

Sure, but 'img' + 'alt' is still a much better, i.e. accessible,
practice than any of the CSS IR techniques. If the alternative text is
displayed it is just as stylable as all the other, normal text, which is
element content instead of attribute content. At least it should
be---some browsers might disagree.
[color=blue]
> Better would be to include the text itself in
> the HTML with appropriate markup (and if you don't like the visual
> result, to propose something via the stylesheet to modify the visual
> result in appropriate presentation situation/s).[/color]

Exactly. Most people (ab)use CSS this IRy way, because of lacking CSS
features or, more commonly, suboptimal CSS support in browsers. The
latter includes downloadable fonts, which currently only IE supports,
but only in a proprietary format (EOT), in which site-specific files
have to be generated by a Windows-only tool (WEFT) out of TTF files
which allow embedding (or more).

[Matt Silberstein]

Re: Out-of-date CSS person needs up-to-date CSS advice!!

On Sun, 14 Aug 2005 14:55:16 +0000 (UTC), in
comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.stylesheets , Darin McGrew
<mcgrew@stanfor dalumni.org> in <ddnm0k$nup$1@b lue.rahul.net> wrote:
[color=blue]
>Alan Silver <no@spam.than x> wrote:[color=green][color=darkred]
>>>> I recently came across www.csszengarden.com and was totally amazed
>>>> that you could do such things with CSS alone.[/color][/color]
>
>Alan J. Flavell <flavell@ph.gla .ac.uk> wrote:[color=green][color=darkred]
>>> Yes, it's a spectacular demonstration of what can be achieved, indeed;
>>> but under no circumstances to be used as an actual model of how to
>>> design normal web pages.[/color][/color]
>
>Alan Silver <no@spam.than x> wrote:[color=green]
>> Why not?[/color]
>
>For one thing, many of the designs are brittle, and fail in browsing
>environments that differ from what the CSS author expected. For example,
>try enforcing a minimum font size, using a narrow browser window, enforcing
>a narrow browser window, or turning off image-loading when CSS is enabled.
>
>For another, many of the techniques common to the CSS Zen Garden designs
>(e.g., replacing text with images of text) are used not because they are
>good techniques for real-world projects, but because the CSS Zen Garden
>imposes artificial constraints.[/color]

Of course it does. It is not a "real world" problem, but a opportunity
to show off clever solutions to a variety of problems. I would not
code from Zen Garden, but I do look to it for a variety of interesting
solutions and results. Obviously if you can change both the HTML and
the CSS you can get more elegant results.


--
Matt Silberstein


And now our bodies are oh so close and tight
It never felt so good, it never felt so right
And we're glowing like the metal on the edge of a knife
C'mon! Hold on tight!
C'mon! Hold on tight!

Though it's cold and lonley in the deep dark night
I can see paradise by the dashboard light
Paradise by the dashboard light

Jim Steinman