1 doH!

this is one of those things thats so bloody obvious you feel silly for not having realized it before. good write up!

posted at 07:02 am on February 20, 2004 by saintjava

2 More on print CSS?

This sounds like a fantastic idea—something I can implement with the website of the nonprofit I work for.

Do you know of any good resources for CSS for print? I tried making up a print stylesheet a couple of times, but some things (pagebreaks, for example) eluded me.

posted at 07:12 am on February 20, 2004 by Trisignia

3 What about the other side of accessibility...?

Brilliant idea!

I suppose that you could hide an extra message in there that no-one sees unless the css is off, so that users of non-css capable user-agents don’t ‘get confused’…

posted at 07:22 am on February 20, 2004 by Mike P.

4 Non-CSS-aware user agents

Embedding what amounts to, say, three different documents (one skewed to a mobile phone, one to a web browser, and one to a printed page) into one document and then hiding the context-specific content when outside that context will fall down seriously when that document is viewed with a non-CSS-aware user agent: they’ll see all three “documents” merged together, with notes about being on a mobile phone and references to printed material even if in a web browser. This is no good thing!

posted at 07:28 am on February 20, 2004 by sil

5 Non-CSS-aware user agents 2

I can see it now… in Google. Fantastic description for the site eh?

posted at 07:35 am on February 20, 2004 by David Dorward

6 Screen reader issues

Many users with screen readers will have to endure all of the context-aware content. Screen readers should ignore “display: none;”, but some, including Jaws, don’t.

See Joe Clark’s “Facts and Opinion About Fahrner Image Replacement” (http://www.alistapart.com/articles/fir/).

posted at 07:41 am on February 20, 2004 by Dan Allen

7 Solutions?

Like anything this will come down to ‘tradeoffs’ and balances => Three different documents is a bit extreme, imo; use this new ‘tool’ wisely, like any other.

For non-css capable user-agents, and the Jaws situation mentioned, why not just provide short messages and skip links for problematic situations?

posted at 08:07 am on February 20, 2004 by Mike P.

8 Response to Comments

That is absolutely right: people designing for non-CSS aware user agents should think twice before using this idea (or anything else that is dependent upon CSS, for that matter).

Thanks for making that clear.

I view that comment as part of a larger, more important point that has been discussed at length by Joe Clark and others: Accessibility is a spectrum, not a point to reach. A tradeoff must be made at some level. Define the level. Design accordingly.

posted at 08:15 am on February 20, 2004 by Joshua Porter

9 PDFs

Can similar techniques be used to create pdfs for download?

posted at 08:38 am on February 20, 2004 by Richanx

10 I printed this article...

… for future reference, and also to see if there would be any hidden text included in the printout. Obviously, I was slightly disappointed to find that there was none.

posted at 08:48 am on February 20, 2004 by Bob Sawyer