Stuart Sherwood wrote:
> I have added a hidden menu to a site for those using text browsers or
> surfing with images turned off.
Avoid creating links without text, it's bad practice. Using small images
of text in you main navigation is bad too.
Things that make me go 'huh?'....
1. If I turn off CSS while viewing you site I can see the bullet points
but no text.
2. If I view your site in Lynx (with my configuration) I see your empty
links as [Hidden Link].
3. My screen reader collects your links in it's link collection... I am
told there are 12 links but I can only see 6. (I can also collect these in
Lynx, in any configuration).
4. I have to tab past your 'hidden links' in any desktop browser (without
any feedback about what I am tabbing past) because they still appear in
the tab order.
5. I can't read your navigation labels because they are images, and my eye
sight is not good, but I do love wine.
Why not just add a span around the anchor text and move the span off-left?
Other benefits of using span are less page weight, and only one menu to
maintain.
HTML
<li><a href="someplace.html"><span>Some Place</span></a><li>
CSS
li a span {
position: absolute;
left: -9999px;
}
Even better, don't use images - the typeface is so plain I really wouldn't
notice the difference if it was helvetica, arial or something else - in
fact, it would look sharper. You can get the small caps effect with:
#textmenu a {
letter-spacing: 0.1em;
text-decoration: none;
font-variant: small-caps;
font-family: "trebuchet ms",serif; /* you could even specify the corporate
font here */
}
kind regards
Terrence Wood.
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