- From: Jonas Sicking <jonas@sicking.cc>
- Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2010 08:15:12 -0700
- To: Lachlan Hunt <lachlan.hunt@lachy.id.au>
- Cc: public-html@w3.org
On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 3:34 AM, Lachlan Hunt <lachlan.hunt@lachy.id.au> wrote:
>>> In practice, however, we find that most authors simply avoid this hassle
>>> of
>>> styling buttons to look like links in favour of simply using a link with
>>> script to satisfy the behavioural implementation requirements. Even
>>> though
>>> from theoretical point of view, doing so may be less than ideal, web
>>> developers have to make a trade off between semantic purity and matching
>>> the
>>> client's requirements in a cost effective and timely manner. Spending
>>> time
>>> replicating the look and feel of a link by styling a button often loses
>>> out
>>> to simply using a link and getting the job done faster.
>>
>> Out of curiosity, how much CSS was required to do this? If an
>> implementation follows the recommendations of the HTML5 rendering
>> section, then I think the following CSS should be enough:
>>
>> .buttonAsLink {
>> binding: none;
>> color: blue;
>> text-decoration: underline;
>> }
>
> This was a few years ago (back when IE6 was still somewhat relevant) and
> given that no browser supports 'binding' yet, it certainly wasn't that
> simple. The main problems I remember were consistent application of
> margins, paddings, width, text alignment and positioning, which had to be
> combined in just the right way in different browsers to get the right
> result. This was further compounded by the fact that the design of the
> button on steps 2 to 5 had to match the design of the real link on step 1 as
> closely as possible, and given the vast differences between applying styles
> to links vs. buttons, this was a bit of a challenge to get right.
> Unfortunately, the site has since been redesigned more recently and so I
> can't show you.
Note that I don't think that we should add workaround in
specifications today based on lack of features in browsers of
yesteryear or today.
I'm much more concerned that writing accessible content is easy once
browsers implement HTML5.
/ Jonas
Received on Thursday, 17 June 2010 15:16:07 UTC