[WEB4LIB] RE: Fonts & CSS

Chris Gray cpgray at library.uwaterloo.ca
Wed Aug 7 10:03:38 EDT 2002


I was just about to use the "graceful degradation" mantra when it dawned
on me that people rarely say what that means.

It means using HTML tags semantically.  Use H1, H2, etc. for hierarchical
headings so that if a browser doesn't understand your CSS formatting of
your headings it still formats them as headings.  Use P to mark off blocks
of text, not for spacing.

If you do this, your page will be comprehensible however it is viewed.

Chris Gray
Systems Analyst
University of Waterloo Library

"general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you do, be
liberal in what you accept from others."  --Jon Postel, 1980, RFC 761, TCP

On Wed, 7 Aug 2002, Drew, Bill wrote:

> The whole idea is so your pages will degrade nicely for older browsers that
> don't use CSS.  I don't remember anything in accessibility guidelines
> requiring that font tags be used.  
> 
> Try using CSS for things you can't do with font tags.
> 
> Bill Drew
> 




More information about the Web4lib mailing list