Hi all,
<quote from Russ>
John Allsopp (one of the original CSS guru's) explains this better than I
can... He says "If it is bad to put presentation on the page, how much
worse is it to put presentation inside the CSS file? It is fundamentally
unsound."
<reply from Hugh Todd>
Russ,
Perhaps this quote of John Allsop's should read, "...how much worse is it to
put *content* inside the CSS file?"
-Hugh Todd :)
<reply from russ> Oops. You're correct! Maybe I should just let John quote himself! :)
Well spotted Hugh.
This came out of a discussion Russ and I and a few others have had a couple of times, at WSG meetings and elsewhere (so if you are in Melbourne or surrounds, get down to the meeting on Monday, at RMIT, and you too can discuss such erudite matters :-)
I guess my instinct has been since I saw these techniques, "whoa, hold on a second.
It took me a little time to work out just why.
I think there are both practical and theoretical problems with these techniques.
They have pretty much all the downsides of "images for text" which using an image element in HTML has.
Accessibility issues and so.
But worse still is that they put content in the CSS. And as the above exchange points ou, if it is poor practice to put presentation in the HTML, surely it has to be worse to put content in the CSS?
On top of that, what's the upside? Nicer typography I guess.
Not on Safari, that's for sure. Because a pre rendered image, especially a gif, will probably have less fidelity and resolution than a system rendered, anti aliased text, especially as rendered by a nice engine.
But not everyone uses Safari you say.
They will soon. One way or another. New versions of IE will match it's font rendering. And Safari is available on Windows for that matter. I bet some of you use it already You just don't know it ;-)
OK, so you don't get an exact font match. I know some people disagree (Peter=Universal Head are you out there) but that is simply not the way of the web.
Is it ever acceptable? Well, for decorative, non content based images, by all means include them in your css.
What about logos and other branding which must conform to a standard. I'd use image elements in HTML. Afterall, this is content is it not?
Anyway, just my ranting,
John
John Allsopp
:: westciv :: software, courses, resources for a standards based web style master blog http://westciv.typepad.com/dog_or_higher/ http://www.westciv.com/
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