[thelist] WHAT IF...?

[Shirley Kaiser, SKDesigns]

At 05:28 AM 3/8/2002, you typed:
>I've prepared a webpage with rollover graphic buttons and a black background
>with white text.  My question:  what if things go terribly, terribly wrong?
>That is, if a browser doesn't like rollovers for some reason, will the links
>to the rollover buttons still work (the pages I have linked to them)?

It depends on how you've written the JavaScript for your rollover buttons.
See my tutorial about search engine friendly design, which includes
accessibility issues like this and an example of the code for how to make
sure the JavaScript rollover links will work anyway, at
<http://www.digital-web.com/tutorials/tutorial_2001-4.shtml>

>And
>would some browsers have trouble with a black page background?  If so, would
>they render the page as white text on a white background? Which browsers
>would give me trouble with these things?

That one is such a broad one to answer, and the answer may also depend on
how you've created your webpage, such as with or without style sheets, for
example, if the black background is an image or just declared in the style
sheet, the body tag or both, and also the range of browsers you're
referring to here.

In addition to cross-browser, cross-platform testing, you ought to make
sure that if a visitor to your site doesn't use style sheets, JavaScript,
or that images are turned off or not available[1] that the text is still
readable, even if visually it's not necessarily identical. A fairly easy
way to check for no style style sheets, no images, and no JavaScript is
with Opera <http://www.opera.com/> since it's fast and simple to turn those
on and off, although other browsers have settings you can turn on and off,
too. And Lynx <http://lynx.browser.org/> is a free text-only browser to
check out what happens to your site with a text-only viewer (in addition to
showing you how a search engine will read your site.... very handy!).

[1] (such as with a voice browser.... or just turned off since some people
do that to load pages quickly)

HTH!

Warmly,
Shirley

--
Shirley E. Kaiser, M.A.,  SKDesigns  mailto:skaiser1 at skdesigns.com
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