21 preload

csant,
They can be preloaded, just combine the image replacement method of your choice with pixys fast rollovers:
http://www.pixy.cz/blogg/clanky/cssnopreloadrollovers/update.html

posted at 05:06 am on December 13, 2003 by Levin

22 Re: I like it too!

I have noticed with the rollover technique that if the rollovers contain text – as many do – then if the browser user changes text size, other parts of the graphic show through!

On to the article: Got to say I like it, particularly the easier maintenance when changes inevitable come.

posted at 08:03 am on December 13, 2003 by John Harrold

23 V. Bad for netscape

I thought the whole idea of accessible design was to make the content accessible to anyone, regardless of browser – if you still have netscape, fire it up to see what a mess netscape 4.x makes of the links. If you’d stuck with maps you wouldn’t have that compatibility problem – this is not an accesibility idea that I’ll be adopting anytime soon.

posted at 09:07 am on December 13, 2003 by Matthew Brown

24 Great for certain instances...

Wow there’s a lot of hate on this forum… Great article on the technique used for the specific project. Will it work for EVERY design? No, nor was it ever said it would. However it does meet the needs of the project which is the first rule any designer should prescribe too. It allows for text only displays, and it allows for a freedom of design most CSS layouts wouldn’t. Good work S. Looking forward to the horror site in fact. :)

posted at 10:43 am on December 13, 2003 by Alex Cook

25 Guess I got carried away...

Sorry, I was a bit blunt… but I just don’t see how this is accessible design when you exclude in the code more people than the few extra who you include.

posted at 11:16 am on December 13, 2003 by Matthew Brown

26 Great Feedback

I just got back into town, and it’s great to see so much discussion already!

Keeping a page’s content and style seperate make it a useful technique – for me, anyway. On the other site I’m developing ( http://www.pvcomics.com/ launching Jan 5) I’m using a style-sheet switcher to serve high bandwidth users with a graphical CSS Image Map, and low bandwidth users with a regular HTML links.

As other people have mentioned, it’s not going to be the right technique for everyone, or every project… but hopefully some people will find it helpful.

posted at 12:19 pm on December 13, 2003 by Stuart

27 Critique

I do not agree with the critique of image maps. They are easy to create, they have the necessary accessibility features, they work well in modern and not-so-modern web browsers and is part of the markup languages recommended by the W3C.

This CSS-based technique is complicated and by using it one, without gaining a higher degree of accessibility, simplicity or flexibility, sacrifices backward compatibility.

The ability to hide the large image with a style switcher could be applied to regular image maps as well with display:none

posted at 09:13 am on December 14, 2003 by Rune Glerup

28 Neat trick, but

it leaves some things to be desired concerning accessibility. If I browse to the end result site in Netscape 4, I can’t click anything: the link doesn’t work somehow. Only when I read the source and see that a link should redirect my browsing to index2.html do I know where to go.

I’d have to say it’s an excellent article otherwise.

posted at 03:43 pm on December 14, 2003 by Pat Collins

29 Tag Teaming

Just like other techniques this is just one aspect of a total solution. Combine it with style sheet hiding, css no preload techniques, and a good underlying HTML foundation and you have a great site solution.

My personal belief on accessibility is that it’s about content. Not every CSS/Scripted design is going to be ultimately accessible. I think the point should be to be able to reuse the content for different designs and provide accessibility, either by designing it into the overall view or by providing a means to access just the content without CSS/Script.

I think that’s where a lot of designers are missing the mark. Yes, try to make the site within the design as accessible as possible, but if you don’t know you can for sure then leave some option to go to a down level high accessibility mode (turn off style sheets and use without scripting).

So maybe if at the top of the page you have “Accessibility Mode Page” before your “Skip Navigation/Skip to Content” link.

Gone should be the days when a designer/content creator would have to create a beautiful page of content and then recreate it for NS4, aural browsers, mobile devices. Yes I know of people who have maintained 5 or 6 different versions of code to cater to different browsers. Additionally some developers would do this in server side code (if else if else if else if else). Silverstream actually suggested to us that it was the only way our HTML output from their product could be cross browser compliant.

posted at 05:37 pm on December 14, 2003 by Michael R. Havard

30 Better XHTML

I don’t see the need for the <div id=“book”> It seems like #book and #menu can be combined (with the height/width from #menu being converted to padding). This makes it easier for a site to move to or from this type of style … don’t have to add an extra <div> around anything you want to do this with. In addition, “book” seems like a poor ID. If the site design changed, and it became a tombstone image … would the “book” ID still be appropriate? Gotta try to keep the design out of the HTML, those little leaks can be troublesome.

I also agree with Lim Chee Aun on changing it to a <ul> and removing the <i>.

posted at 10:17 pm on December 14, 2003 by Greg Pfeil