[thelist] In Defense of Fahrner Image Replacement

[Stephen Caudill]

Peter-Paul Koch on Thursday, August 07, 2003 7:17 PM said:

: Yes, thanks, that was the fallacy I was looking for. Image + text
: = no problem, so why bother?
: 
: It's design for design's sake. I thought we'd beaten this
: particular bugbear years ago.

I've got to disagree, here.  I think you're missing the point.  From a search engine point of view, <h*> tags weigh very well and while you /can/ style them, that is a *far* cry from real typography.  I hear you already; "print paradigm blah blah", "we're on the web blah blah"...  But if you can have the best of several worlds: accessibility, brilliant typography and an eye towards search engine optimization, what's wrong with that?  You provide a structure for the image (mind you, I would personally only use this technique for headings or pullquotes) and then place the image within this semantically correct structure.  

: More in general, most CSS hacks I see are making things
: complicated and in-crowdy for sake of making them complicated and
: in-crowdy. "You don't know Usher's Unadulterated Asterisk
: Semi-Replacement Hack? Wow, like, what are you doing in web
: developer's land?" 

Agreed.  I avoid hacks like the plague.  I make CSS designs that work in compliant browsers and don't cater to noncompliant browsers at all.  This works great for me and 95% of my audience.  However, FIR is not a hack.  It is valid use of CSS properties that should be undertaken with an awareness of the caveats.

-Stephen
http://www.mechavox.com