CSS Misused?
May 1st, 2004 • General
It doesn’t matter to me whether it’s a bug or a feature, but when using tabs,
Mozilla doesn’t fetch images referenced in a CSS file until you switch to an
unvisited tab. I like that, it works just fine for websites that use
background-image for decoration, I open a page in a background tab, and
I don’t need to worry whether or not the images are downloaded, the content is
still readable.
But what do I do if an image is the content? I was browsing
Intersmash, and middle-clicked some links (to open in background tabs)
I didn’t even think that I wouldn’t see at least something when I open those tabs,
but when I did, I still had to wait for the main image to load only because it’s
a background-image for a layer.
I’m all the way behind CSS, but it’s really frustrating to see such an abuse.
It might not be something big, it might not even be the fault of the author, but
still, why does XHTML 1.1 still supports the img tag if the “right”
thing is to use CSS? XHTML 2.0, although the deprecated img, still has
an object element that does pretty much the same thing, or at least it
should. A background-image is for background images, period. It’s not
for main content, it doesn’t matter if the browser downloads it or not, in most
cases it should be of secondary importance.
I’m the author in question. It’s a fair argument. I suppose I hadn’t opened enough pages in enough tabs to notice that. Thanks for that tip!
Since I never publicized the project, its original intent was for my close circle of designer peers to gaze at. I had no idea the exhibit would explode and generate the world-wide exposure that it has.
Now that it pulls some traffic, in addition to the tab-loading issue, my larger concern is that I have 6 or 7 documents which are virtually empty for Googglebot and other spiders to wonder about. Does inter-linking between content-less pages hurt your SEO? It’s not going to help anyone, that’s for sure.
So, a couple of lessons were learned for the sake of an easy solution of positioning the image centered X and Y in the window.
Okay class, you may be excused.