As always, the golden rule is "know thy audience". Using a tool like Google Analytics allows you to see browser capabilities, screen resolutions, javascript enabled/disabled. All of these things help you decide what is best for your site.
With that said, search engines (SEO) do favor html links over image links. Sometimes, I think we overestimate screen readers, but underestimate search engine rankings. Search engines still make up the majority of web navigation. This should factor into your design. Using the philosophy of progressive enhancement, one could start with HTML links and then use jQuery to replace them with Image rollovers. Using the LiveJQuery plugin, you could still bind the hover the way you normally do. This enhances presentation with those browsers that can, and still provides perfectly good html for those who cant. Glen On 9/28/07, AJ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On Sep 28, 8:27 am, "george.gsgd" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Surely this should be done with CSS. Javascript is great, but making > > your navigation rely on it is not. Also, it would be better semantics > > to mark up your menu as a list. > > I posted this in response to a similar concern posted to the blog: > > I realize this is a common argument, and I fully agree it's a viable > direction. However I see absolutely nothing wrong with using images in > navigation, especially in top-level section nav. > > That said, define "simple" as it relates to accomplishing this in css. > As a good example, just today, one of our contractors gave me a css > file where navigation was done with css. It was accomplished my > switching backgrounds on 'a' tags on hover, etc. Just the code to do > this navigation was 66 lines of css. This was for just five buttons. > Plus, my method alleviates all the extra css mojo that might be > necessary to make sure everything works in all browsers, etc. > > My solution can be compressed into very few lines of code in > comparison. And in the event someone has javascript disabled, it > doesn't exactly break the whole thing. The rollovers just won't work. > Small price to pay for the relatively tiny proportion of all > visitors. > > So yeah, point totally well taken, but I think this is still a good > solution and might still help out some users just getting started with > learning jQuery. > >
