Re: Multiple Background Images

Ted,

> Ted Shanyfelt wrote:
> IMO, SVG has its place and CSS has its place.
> Accessability is not the issue, as either implementation
> of a decorative background doesn't generally carry with it
> accessible content. . . .

Whether or not someone wishes to present content with decorative background 
imagery has nothing to do with the accessibility of the content.  There does 
exist, of course, the possibility of low color contrast affecting 
color-blind users, but that issue is not unique to multiple background 
images and it is easily remedied by alternate styles, so I do not think it 
is relevant to this discussion.

> . . . I'm simply suggesting merging the
> graphics into one scalable image because scalable graphics
> are good open solutions that are better suited for the job.

Scalable graphics may be better suited to the job in some cases, but not in 
all of them.  For example, if the same background image is applied to two 
separate elements with different aspect ratios, a single image scaled to 
fill the background must be distorted in one of them.  The same is true for 
a single element when one dimension is fixed, but the other is variable, as 
with a text element that may vary in length through either dynamic content 
injection on a server or dynamic content changing in a client.  Even if you 
have a thousand elements with the same aspect ratio and you are sure that it 
will never change for any of them, your background still may not look right 
scaled--if you want uniformly rounded corners, for example.  And of course, 
raster images may simply look better or be otherwise more appropriate in 
some cases.

I am not sure if SVG content can programmatically determine its own 
dimensions when it is instantiated nor whether it can update itself when its 
dimensions change, but even if it can, that would likely be overly complex 
for most content creators.


Kind regards,

Brian Sexton

Received on Saturday, 11 December 2004 12:27:19 UTC