Re: Scope of :hover

John Lewis wrote:

> Ernest wrote on Tuesday, June 3, 2003 at 9:04:47 PM:
> 
> > John Lewis wrote:
> 
> >> Ernest wrote on Tuesday, June 3, 2003 at 7:06:54 PM:
> 
> >>> I presume that the intention is to provide a mechanism whereby it
> >>> is easy to determine which row and column a cell belongs to.
> >>> However, how does the use of :hover to do this achieve this when
> >>> the page is printed and interactive pseudo-classes such as :hover
> >>> are not available?
> >> 
> >> It doesn't. Nor does it do so for links or any other type of element.
> 
> > Which was my point, I was asking a rhetorical question there.
> 
> Sorry, I should have noticed that. I still don't get what you're
> implying about his example.

That using :hover to provide a viaual cue to users as to which row and 
column a table cell belongs to is insufficient as it does not work with 
non-interactive visual media such as print.  I didn't give a specific 
example of how I would do it instead, but my usual practice for those 
tables where I feel the need to provide that extra help is needed is to 
use tbody's with five rows each and use styling to make each row group 
distinctive enough as to be easily spotted by the user without being so 
distinctive as to overwhelm the appearance of the whole table.  The 
result is a visual guide that works in both interactive and static 
visual media and is fairly easy for a user to comprehend.  (More than 5 
rows per group doen't work well for this and I'll sometimes use less 
than 5 per group if I can get get a pleasing pattern (For example, I'd 
do 17 rows as groups of 3, 4, 3, 4, and 3.))

Received on Wednesday, 4 June 2003 02:19:39 UTC