I just realised that hiding text is a bad attempt from a thread I just made,
As a sidenote, Google does not like
hidden text, and if you have a lot of
it, it will consider it deceptive
coding. One is probably fine, but
you'd be better off using the alt
attribute on the image tag.
But I sometimes need to use images for navigation link list such as the one below, so I use css image background on <a> tags and hide the actual text in the html using <span>,
<div id="header" class="align-center">
<ul id="menu-header">
<li id="menu-header-home"><span>Home</span></li>
<li id="menu-header-portfolio"><span>Portfolio</span></li>
<li id="menu-header-profile"><span>Profile</span></li>
<li id="menu-header-newsletter"><span>Newsletter</span></li>
<li id="menu-header-blog"><span>Blog</span></li>
<li id="menu-header-shop"><span>Shop</span></li>
</ul>
</div>
is it seriously lack of semantic and 'it will consider it deceptive coding.' as I have used many many hiding text due to replacing text with images?
what should I do instead if I have to use an image for a button and images for navigation link list?
thanks.
Hiding the text also means it'll be missed by some screen readers.
A better way to do this would be either to use text-indent to position the text way off screen, use absolute positioning on the spans to also position them way off-screen, or simply make them visibility: hidden.
Related
To make a span into a clickable link.
I have made a span that contains only a background image (as part of a Gilder/Levin image replacement technique) into a clickable link, and it seems to work fine -- but, so far, that is only on my own desktop computer, and on Chrome, Opera, and IE 11.
Is this viable?
<div id="logo">
<a href="[absolute url]">
<span></span>
</a>
<h1>page name</h1>
</div>
It works on my computer, with Chrome, IE11 and Opera. Will it work universally?
While it might look okay in most browsers, you're using the <a> element incorrectly, as what goes inside it should be a meaningful label. The proper thing to do would be to wrap the entire <h1> in the link, or to put the <a> within the <h1> (both are valid HTML5).
<a href="[absolute url]">
<span></span> <h1>page name</h1>
</a>
But judging from your comments, it's probably too early for you to start worrying about image replacement techniques an web semantics when you're still figuring the syntax out.
What's the point of image replacement techniques and why using an empty <a> tag is bad?
The Gilder/Levin image replacement technique involves adding non-semantic elements to a page (such as <span> elements) and using CSS to replace them with icons, so that these elements are ignored by screen readers. After all, an icon next to a menu button might make the button more visible for someone who can see, but the icon becomes redundant when you're blind and are using a screen reader which will read the text of the button out loud anyway. This also might make your website easier to parse by search engines.
However, in the original code, you didn't put any label on the link (actual text between the <a> and </a>), therefore making it especially confusing for screen readers and robots to know what this link is supposed to be. The entire title should be within the <a> element in this case, allowing the whole line to be clicked to follow the link. It's definitely not a good practice to use an empty <a> element, and the fact that there is a <span> within it changes nothing.
And since the idea of leaving an <a> element is semantically absurd, I haven't found any reliable place documenting the behavior of such an element across browsers.
wasn't pretty sure what you are asking for:: or trying to achieve.
3. wrap span in a href tag.
2. span onclick() function with javascript
1. span:hover with css.
<div id="logo">
<a href="[absolute url]">
<span>this span is now like link text.</span>
</a>
<h1>page name</h1>
</div>
<div id="logo">
<span onclick="myFunction()">this span is now like link text.</span>
<h1>page name</h1>
</div>
<style>
span:hover{color:red;}
span:active {color:green}
</style>
The css one isn't really click stuff.
Yes, it's a reliable way to put <span> or <img>(or any element you want to be a link) in a <a> tag.
click here for Definition and Usage
The tag defines a hyperlink, which is used to link from one page
to another.
The most important attribute of the element is the href attribute,
which indicates the link's destination.
(navigation layout picture)
I have the navigation-layout of tabs and sub-tabs, which i want to make accessible via text-reader/lynx. It consists of the main pages "Startseite", "Über", "Interessant", "Orte", as well as the sub-pages "Linköping", "München" and "Baustelle". The logical structure would thus be:
Startseite
Über
Interessant
Linköping
München
Baustelle
Orte
But since I use a layout of several div-tags, it only yields this in lynx:
Startseite
Über
Interessant
Linköping
München
Baustelle
Orte
The questions (or solutions I don't know how to implement yet) now are:
(1) how do I improve my layout to make it accessible via text-reader/lynx
... or
(2) how do I adjust a layout of unorderd lists and sub-lists (see code) too look like my current tabbed navigation-layout?
<nav>
<ul id="mainpages">
<li>Startseite</li>
<li>Über</li>
<li>Interessant
<ul id="sub1">
<li>Linköping</li>
<li>München</li>
<li>Baustelle</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Orte</li>
</ul>
</nav>
keep in mind that my main tasks is making it text-reader/lynx accessible. I though of using a layout like this, since it is easily styled with #some_ul_id {display: inline-block}:
<nav>
<ul id="mainpages">
<li>Startseite</li>
<li>Über</li>
<li>Interessant</li>
<li>Orte</li>
</ul>
<ul id="sub1">
<li>Linköping</li>
<li>München</li>
<li>Baustelle</li>
</ul>
</nav>
My third question is:
(3) Is this good practice? Should I do it?
It is the easiest way, though solution (2) would be nicer, since it is more logical.
From an accessibility perspective, the way to markup the solution so that it semantically represents what you are trying to achieve is to use the WAI-ARIA menubar, menu and the various menuitem roles. You should also use the aria-haspopup="true" attribute to show sub-menus and the aria-expanded attribute to track when the menu is expanded. In order to achieve the semantic markup of the hierarchy, you will want to have hierarchical lists as this is the easiest way to represent the hierarchy in an understandable way.
Here is a link to a full dynamic ARIA menu example http://dylanb.github.io/bower_components/a11yfy/examples/menu.html
You will need to ensure that each menu item is keyboard focusable using an href attribute on an anchor tag will do this for you as long as you look for the 'click' event and don't do anything funky with mousedown/mouseup etc.
One way to achieve this could be to absolutely position the sub-menu – of course that requires that you know beforehand that there’ll be enough space, so that items don’t go over multiple lines (resp. you have an alternative at hand for smaller screens via media queries).
So you would position the outer ul (or the nav itself) relative, and then on :hover over a main menu item you make the sub-ul visible, that is positioned absolutely in such a way that it comes to lay underneath the line of main menu items – like this: http://jsfiddle.net/0rpyLqtn/
Other slight variations are easily imaginable; if you don’t want “blank space” underneath the single line of main menu items, you could f.e. give that ul a border-bottom instead of a margin-bottom, and have the border color of it visible at all times, like this: http://jsfiddle.net/0rpyLqtn/1/
Since you have accessibility in mind, you might also want to pay attention to how this kind of menu behaves on devices that do not have a “mouse” as input device. Getting such a menu to be accessible via keyboard can be tricky, and on touchscreens a menu based on :hover might not work that well either. Anyhow, such issues have been discussed on the net already, so with a little research you should be able to find solutions/workarounds for these issues as well.
I am not a HTML/CSS expert but I am in charge of developing and maintaining a website for my employer.
I have set of link in the middle of my webpage that I want to have a specific CSS applied to without affecting any of the other links, and really the only change I want to make is to move the title popup to the right. Basically, the pointing hand hover mouse icon blocks the text in the title, so I want to move the popup to the right of the pointer, so that it can be read completely during a hover.
I've seen a few different ways to manipulate the title popup but they are either way too complex for what I need, way too simple in that they affect all <a> tags on the page, or do not explain how to do what I want which is just move the popup to the right a little bit.
You can manually style any element of the page by using 'inline styling' which will not effect any of the other elements on the page.
You do this in the HTML rather than the Style sheet, for example say your style sheet has:
.tinybutton {margin:0;padding;0:}
Which would use the element in HTML as:
<a class="tinybutton" href="#"> </a>
Now let's pretend you want to move the button slightly right without editing the CSS you then use the inline styling like so:
<a class="tinybutton" style="margin-left:10px" href="#"> </a>
So in other words just add style=" " with the styling options you require to the element that you want to edit without effecting the CSS.
Now that you have answered your own question, I know that the titles you are trying to move are tool-tips generated by the browser.
Not only can those not be moved, these tooltips are browser dependent and looks different on each browser. I have no idea which one you are using but it is not Chrome because we made sure that the tooltip does not overlap the mouse cursor.
The other possibility, like the jQuery plugin you mentioned, is to write Javascript that renders each title in its own invisible HTML element. Then it makes those tooltips appear on by adding an a :hover style or mouse-event-handler.
Having done further research on this, I found several questions in StackExchange that indicate that a title cannot be modified. So given this:
<a title='stuff here' href='#'>Click me!</a>
it is not possible to manipulate the "stuff here" section using jscript, css, etc. The only option is to use a jQuery plugin or something along those lines, and that has proven to be beyond my ability to troubleshoot.
For the time being, I simply added spaces to the front of the title to push the text out, like this:
<a title=' stuff here' href='#'>Click me!</a>
The text windows needs to have fixed width and length and must auto wrap long texts. It must not have horizontal scroll bar but it needs vertical bar. You can only display text but cannot enter text into it. What html/css to use? I think the preview window in SO's ask question page meets the requirement! It is just a div. How is that done?
You can use a simple div to show chat bubbles. I would personally use something simple, such as:
<div class="chat-bubble"></div>
All the content would be wrapped inside that div. I would then style the chat-bubble class in CSS to make it look how I want it to.
Here is a pretty neat walkthrough on making chat bubbles in CSS that should be a good starting point for what you're trying to do.
I realize this question is somewhat old, but I think it's an interesting case.
Using a div HTML element is possible, but not the best solution when it comes to semantics. Keep in mind that div is the most generic HTML element. It says nothing about your markup's content other than it should be divided from the rest somehow.
A better approach would be to use a mix of more descriptive HTML 5 elements, and overwrite their default styling with something that looks like a chat bubble.
Consider this example, adapted from this article
<ul class="chat">
<li class="message">
<figure class="sender">
<img src="https://example.org/avatar.png" alt="" class="avatar" />
<figcaption>Example sender name</figcaption>
</figure>
<blockquote>
<p>Text message</p>
</blockquote>
<li>
<!-- more chat messages ... -->
</ul>
<div class="dashboard-icon">
<a href="./structure/">
<img class="admin-icon" src="<?=inc_path;?>images/icons/home.png" alt="" /></a><br />
<p>Dashboard</p>
</div>
This is part of a menu, do you think it would be better in a UL > LI? I want a label underneath the icon.
Trying to think of reasons if this is bad or not. :)
Is using <img> for a menu item wrong?
Not if it is a content image (e.g. an icon).
This is part of a menu, do you think it would be better in a UL > LI?
Menus are, typically, lists of links, and using <ul> and <li> would be appropriate. That won't prevent you from using an <img> though.
<p>Dashboard</p>
A text description for an image probably doesn't deserve its own paragraph though. I'd set display: block on the image if I wanted to force a line break, and put the text inside the <a> so the entire thing is clickable. I certainly wouldn't use a line break and a paragraph. Use margin for spacing.