- From: Jukka K. Korpela <jkorpela@cs.tut.fi>
- Date: Sun, 18 Sep 2005 08:42:19 +0300 (EEST)
- To: "john.angela@flyslikeabird.com" <john.angela@flyslikeabird.com>
- Cc: www-validator-css@w3.org
On Sat, 17 Sep 2005, john.angela@flyslikeabird.com wrote:
> The validator demands a background colour
No, it issues a warning based on accessibility recommendations.
> so I set it as transparent.
Are you sure it is best to let the background color of the enclosing
element shine through? No matter what that color is? (It might be set in a
browser style sheet, or user style sheet.)
> A colour would run across graphics.
Indeed.
> Yet the validator still
> demands a background colour.
No, it does not. There's probably something wrong in the message's
formulation if you a) interpreted it as an error message and
b) did not understand the point in its recommendation.
The misleading use of the word "validator" in the name of the program
probably explains a) in part.
The main reason for b) is that this is a very difficult topic. Your
understanding of CSS, especially inheritance and cascade, is well measured
by your understanding of this issue, and I'm afraid most authors who use
CSS never get the idea.
The background color is relevant even to elements that contain nothing but
images and even to elements that have a background image. Consider what
happens on a browser that will not display some or all of images, for one
reason or another.
As regards to why transparent might not be good value, consider, for
example, the following user style sheet
* { background: black; color: white; }
when the author's style sheet sets just a background color (say, white or
something light) for the body element and uses black as the text color.
--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Received on Sunday, 18 September 2005 05:42:26 UTC