Re: List image bullet

On Wed, 24 Sep 1997, Jason White wrote:

> Clearly it would be best to build on the solution that has already
> been developed in CSS 2. I share the concern expressed in Daniel's
> mailing list thread, that authors might try to convey significant
> information in the image which is to be used as a list bullet. A
> means of associating a textual label or description with the
> image, for use in non-graphical media, would therefore seem to be
> warranted.

CSS1 uses the property list-style-image to set the image URL.
A simple fix would be to allow this property to take a descriptive
string following the URL, e.g.

  list-style-image: url(warning.gif) warning

where the text "warning" takes the role of alt text for
the list bullet image.

A general trend in CSS1 was to provide separate properties
corresponding to each part of a compound property, e.g. 
border-left-width versus border. It would make sense to also
provide several properties related to the list bullet image,
e.g. width, height, alt text and alignment. For instance: 

  list-style-image: url(warning.gif)
  list-style-image-text: warning
  list-style-image-width: 16
  list-style-image-height: 16

I believe that these could be added without difficulty to CSS2,
provided we insist. I don't care much about the exact names of
the properties which we can leave the CSS&FP group to decide.

Regards,

-- Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org> http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett
phone: +44 122 578 2521 (office) +44 385 320 444 (gsm mobile)
World Wide Web Consortium (on assignment from HP Labs)

Received on Wednesday, 24 September 1997 11:52:06 UTC