RE: text as images...

Charles,

I agree with your points, and yes the site must work with CSS turned
off, but perhaps the WCAG needs to be clearer on what it means for the
site to 'work'. If I use CSS for the layout of a site, then if you turn
off stylesheets the site can become very difficult to comprehend. If you
use CSS to organise that layout of navigation, followed by text etc.
then once you've turned off CSS then these elements (in some browsers)
are laid out one after another, and the whole look and feel of the site
it lost. Not to mention the inconvenience of having to scroll three
pages of image after image in order to get to content.

As for the Department, they requested compliance with Netscape 2.0
because after some user testing they had determined that a significant
proportion of their repeat users were still using this browser level.

Cheers,
Gian

-----Original Message-----
From: charles [mailto:charles@w3.org]
Sent: Tuesday, 5 February 2002 2:57 AM
To: Gian Sampson-Wild
Cc: w3c-wai-gl
Subject: RE: text as images...


In general I recommend trying to produce a design which meets as many
checkpoints as possible of WCAG 1.0. One of those is the requirement
that the
content "work without style sheets". Given that I avoid trying to do
more
than reinforce semantic information with CSS, and make sure that a site
makes
sense without it being applied, I don't have to choose between Netscape
2 and
CSS.

In fact I generally try to ensure that my work is comprehensible with
Internet Explorer 3, which is more of a problem with CSS since it means
that
some things actually don't work.

And if people are using a small system, I tend to recommend that they
get a
well-designed modern browser that works on such a system, if they have
any
ability to download one. I realise that not all people can.

We have an open issue in the group about where to draw the line about
what
kinds of browsers people use, and input into what people really are
using
would be valuable. Do you have any information that you can provide as
to why
the departmet included support for Netscape 2 in their requirements?

cheers

Charles

On Mon, 4 Feb 2002 gian@stanleymilford.com.au wrote:

  Hi,

[snip]
  So, in essence, if I had to choose between Netscape and CSS (and I do
on
  a daily basis when recommending designs to clients) I will always
choose
  Netscape, because although IE may have attempted to take over the
  market, they haven't completely, and until that day comes (let's hope
  that the American justice system can at least waylay them) I believe
  Netscape is of more importance to my audience than CSS for navigation
  and layout.

  Gian