Sent by Plagiarist.com on 20 August 2002 17:05
At 01:26 AM 8/20/02 -0400, Timothy J. Luoma wrote:
>Huh... I've seen a warning like that somewhere... Not sure where it was
>now that you mention it.
If you specify the same font & background-colors for two selectors and
don't specify anything else, you'll get a warning (the two selectors have
exactly the same properties - which is stupid to have happen, since you
lose the warning if you just group them together with a comma).
>Still doesn't make your practice of treating warnings like errors any more
>logical
Having any validator warnings is just sloppy sloppy practice. A warning is
essentially saying "Yeah, it'll render... but it's still incorrect..."
>>>Redefining things is the essense of "cascading" a style sheet.
>>No it isn't. 'Cascade' has to do with how various sheets'
>>(designer/user/browser) selectors are given precedence over one another.
>
>Right, and part of that includes letting more specific selectors override
>previous definitions.
No, that would be "inheritance". More specific rules do not *inherit* from
their parent nodes. They still cascade depending on their level in the
cascading matrix (browser -> user -> designer -> user selectors with
!important).
>If you were listening you'd have seen that I have already said that IE
>won't render absolute font keywords smaller than 9px.
That could be "too small to read" in certain resolutions. Besides, I don't
just create my pages for IE. Other browsers could render the keywords
differently (since there's no point/pixel value associated with the keywords).
>Then again, if you think too large is worse than too small then we
>obviously are starting from way too divergent mindsets.
It depends on if you're thinking about a page from the position of a
designer or a user. Too large on text in a float and it's overflowing its
container. Yes, I know you can set overflow etc. But that could break the
design to the point where it's not useable - and if it's unusable (for
everyone) it'll be inaccessible, too (also for everyone).
>Right... and how many people are going to do that? How many people even
>know what a user style sheet is? How many know about the ignore font
>sizes option?
How many of these same hypothetical people are going to know they can
resize even non-specified font sizes with the "Text Size" menu option?
You can't throw your hands up in the air and say "it can't be done" just
because you imagine your users to be morons (although that may be a safe
way to bet - at least that forces you to 'take care of them').
Yes, IE could (and should) be made to make accessibility easier - and yes,
they should allow pages to be resized even if they're sized in pixels.
But that doesn't mean that someone with an impairment can't give themselves
a better internet experience TODAY (by switching to Mozilla - no, just
kidding - by defining a user style sheet - which would be easier if one
came with the browser - have an extra "accessibility" sheet or something).
No one has the *right* to not be inconvenienced. If the web were
convenient, we wouldn't need this list. Everything would just work to
spec, you'd read a tutorial, and bang, it would work the first time.
>>So I make my user style sheet give everything a nice big font. You can
>>too. Really.
>
>Yes, I can... can she? No.... and you're fooling yourself if you think
>otherwise.
Well, from your story, she couldn't even figure out (or was aware of, more
likely) that you could re-size text in the browser at all.
Computer use is tough for the physically challenged - but there are options
in every browser (and the accessibility options in Opera, NS, or Moz aren't
much easier for someone not in the know) to re-size, re-colour, and change
the font for every page that is displayed in the browser.
Claiming that it's beyond the average visually-challenged visitor is a moot
point. If they can't read the screen they probably wouldn't have been able
to lauch the browser in the first place - or type in their name in the
logon box, or... or...
So whoever sets up their computer should be responsible for setting up
their accessibility options.
Simply, for any div whose width must be specified (in any fashion) you
cannot use keywords. They're impractical and worse, imprecise across
multiple browser platforms.
-- Jough
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