[BNM] Arguments for and against using graphical menu links of textual menu links

[Ali]

Hi

One aspect alone has me shunning the use of foreground images as navigation
every time...maintenance. So how does a CMS add a new page or edit a page
name - it generally is not acceptable to say you cannot do that without
getting hold of a graphic designer to edit or make new buttons every time a
change is needed.....That's not to say some designers don't insist on it
though and only when a page name needs changing do they really get it, well
the end client actually really gets it when they can't get hold of the
designer and their own Photoshop, FTP and nomenclature skills are not up to
it and they realise their power to change page names or add new pages is
totally compromised by this solution.

Ali

-----Original Message-----
From: bnmlist-bounces at brightonnewmedia.org
[mailto:bnmlist-bounces at brightonnewmedia.org] On Behalf Of Jason Bailey
Sent: 18 October 2008 12:37
To: Brighton New Media
Subject: Re: [BNM] Arguments for and against using graphical menu links of
textual menu links

--- On Fri, 17/10/08, David Andrew <david.andrew at gmail.com> wrote:
> <a class="button_bgd" title="Link to the
> homepage">HOME</a>
> 
> compared to
> 
> <a href="homepage.html" title="Link to
> the homepage" ><img
> src="homepage_graphic_button.jpg"
> width="200" height="40"
> alt="homepage button" /></a>
> 

I'm not really sure of the best answer to text vs. images. I would have set
text but then I saw the recent posts from someone who was working on the
?Expression? editor; the images for the tool buttons were great.

The example above looks like it's hinting at images in the CSS e.g.
...
background-image: url(buttonBackground.gif);
...

I'm not sure if I've got this right; CSS is for style and the content
doesn't go in the CSS?

To me, navigation (a home button etc) is not style it's part of the content
(part of the behaviour?). If you're putting the image for a button (or any
navigation) into the CSS then aren't you putting content into the CSS? 

I ask this as some browsers (Firefox on XP) have some really nice
accessibility features. One of which is to alter the colours of webpages;
effectively overriding the CSS of a site.  Designers, obviously, want their
work to be seen as intended but I think you have to allow for some people
who will want to override the style (is this graceful degradation?). Putting
button images into CSS is obviously a great idea as this means
re-skinning/re-theming a site is much simpler.

The effect is really to reduce the brightness/glare (produce a high contrast
page) from the screen but the side-effect is that it applies custom CSS;
which overrides the designer's CSS. The one effect is that images in the CSS
disappear. This is fine most of the time except where images for navigation
are stored in the CSS.

To replicate this effect, set XP (vista etc) to a high contrast style.
-Right click on the desktop
-Go to Properties
-Click appearance tab
-Select Colour Scheme to high contrast (black background)

Then in Firefox, go into tools>>options>>colours

-Set the text to white and the background to black. 
-Untick the option to "allow pages to choose their own colours".

I was about to say.... Then put a few items in your amazon.co.uk shopping
basket and try and look in the basket. Actually, I think they've improved
this as I can see the shopping basket now. Instead, if you know of a site
that uses a recent version of tinymce; try that out. You should see lots of
empty button shapes.

Sorry for rattling on.

Jas


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