- From: Alan J. Flavell <flavell@a5.ph.gla.ac.uk>
- Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 19:59:42 +0000 (GMT)
- To: Nir Dagan <nir@nirdagan.com>
- cc: WAI Guidelines List <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
On Wed, 17 Nov 1999, Nir Dagan wrote: > >for spacer images, use alt=" ". > I think it would be much better to propose to use stylesheets > for spacing control I'm sorry, I may have been thinking along different lines here. Let's put aside the issue of achieving precise control of spacing, for which HTML is entirely unsuitable anyway - with or without a stylesheet, and concentrate on the issue of the presence of absence of a space when an image is not being rendered. This has real significance for the _content_, not just the presentation. > It may be pointed out that when using images for spacing, one is restricted > to pixel units that are unrelated to the font size, (Image size can be suggested in em units via CSS, but I don't want to pursue that line of discussion here as it doesn't seem to be pertinent to accessibility.) > and there is no way to predict how the space will look like when > images are turned off (some browsers even insert a rather large > and ugly image instead of the "invisible" space) No dispute about that! But while we are dismissing the idea of achieving precise control of the space occupied by an image, which is indeed a presentational detail that cannot be guaranteed, I don't want to miss the issue of whether a space is presented or not. Without intending to cause offence, I'm reminded of an old HTML joke about the sentence that could be read as "God is now here" or "God is nowhere", depending on the interpretation of a particular tag. all the best
Received on Thursday, 18 November 1999 14:59:44 UTC