Re: Question about default colors

Błażej Ślusarek wrote:
> 
> Hello, my question is very simple: what does CSS standard say about
> setting default background and foreground (font) color? Normally I

I'm not sure if the standard says anything, although anything it says 
would be informative, not normative.  The W3C CSS validator does or did 
issue a warning if they weren't both set together, however that was 
controversial, because it is possible to set them on different selectors 
and still be sure that the combination is safe, but this may only be 
confirmable by rendering the specific document.

> shouldn't be defined, so I think setting just one color is in some way
> lack of professionalism, because the webmaster should predict that

Unfortunately, most web designers are unprofessional in that sense. 
They still think they are dealing with traditional marketing media, like 
print and television, where the consumer cannot control what the authors 
like to call the "user experience".

Although there possibly slightly greater appreciation of the problem 
now, authors will also specify both colours, but with an inadequate 
constrast between them, because it looks good to the artist in them. 
There are rules about this, but in the accessibility guidelines.

> kind of situation. Tell me what do You think about it.

Putting this sort of warning in the standards is unproductive as the 
people who actually read the standards will generally figure it out for 
themselves, but the vast majority of authors have never seen the standard.

Received on Sunday, 22 April 2007 08:06:21 UTC