- From: Etan Wexler <ewexler@stickdog.com>
- Date: Sat, 18 May 2002 06:01:11 -0700
- To: Joe Clark <joeclark@joeclark.org>, www-style@w3.org
Joe Clark commented on the Color module Working Draft:
> > * If you use a background image or set the background color,
> >then be sure to set the various text colors as well.
>
> I wish that advice were fine-tuned. If you have a CSS that does
> nothing but add a background colour and you assume foreground will
> inherit (I use these all the time), it is actually better not to set
> the foreground so that the background-setting style will be more
> easily applied to a range of entities.
The only reason that one should not set background and foreground together is to avoid
interrupting the appearance of a background image on some other element's boxes.
Ignoring this advice can lead to blatantly inaccessible color combinations. Imagine that
a user has a style sheet as follows.
h1 { color: yellow; background: brown }
Now imagine that the user encounters a document with 'h1' elements that uses a style
sheet as follows.
h1 { background: yellow }
The result is unreadable text.
> The CSS validator warns me all
> the time about this even though I of all people know what I'm doing.
> I suppose the validator cannot quite be educated enough to know when
> the user is smart or stupid. And anyway, they're just warnings, not
> errors.
The validator can take a directive not to issue warnings.
--
Etan Wexler <mailto:ewexler@stickdog.com>
Received on Saturday, 18 May 2002 09:17:45 UTC