Bulletproof Web Design: Improving flexibility and protecting against worstcase scenarios with XHTML and CSS [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Why It's Not Bulletproof

Getting back to my helpful reader's e-mailyou know, the one who wisely disables images when he browses on a slow dial-up connectionthe reason for his note was to inform me that the content on my site was either hard to read or just plain not there at all. Oh my. I have to admit this was rather embarrassing, but let's take a look at why this happened.

Because the content's text color was two shades of gray, when the tiled image was removed (or disabled by the reader) the text was left sitting on the default background color, which was also a dark gray. The result was a semi-unreadable page; one could barely make out the text in the wider main column, and even worse, the text in the smaller right column was invisible. The text in this column shared the same color gray as the background, leaving the text completely hidden.

Figure 6.5 shows what happens when the tiled image is removed. There's not exactly an optimal contrast between the text in the main column and the background color, which makes it difficult to read. But even worse, the right column's text disappears completely because it's the same color as the background.