Invisible text

by Moe Rubenzahl <moe(at)maxim-ic.com>
Date:	Mon, 19 Jun 2000 14:50:27 -0700
To:	"HWG Techniques" <hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org>
	todo: View Thread, Original
Interesting. I received this message from a customer. I have never 
heard this suggested before but it seems to make sense. Opinions?
__________________________________________________________________________
>
>To: webmaster(at)maxim-ic.com
>Subject: invisible text on Maxim site
>Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000 14:16:33 -0700
>
>Hi.
>
>I noticed a problem on your Web site.  Much of its text is invisible on some
>systems, because its pages force a white background upon the browser, but
>they don't specify a text color.  When a page leaves the text color
>undefined, the operating system will draw the text using the default text
>color.  That color might be white.  Windows ships with inverse video (black
>text on white background) as its default, but people can go into the Control
>Panel/Display/Appearance dialog and set up any color scheme they want.
>
>For example, try white window text on a dark blue background.  Much nicer to
>look at.  Or just select the "High contrast black" color scheme, if you have
>a recent version of Windows.  Then have a look at the site.  Currently, the
>text in the "Buy online" box is invisible, the product descriptions in the
>search results are invisible, and this press release:
>dbserv.maxim-ic.com/view_press_release.cfm?release_id=125 is invisible.
>There are other scattered areas, like the fine print at the bottom of the
>home page.
>
>If a page doesn't specify ANY colors, everything will work out fine, because
>the user's settings in the Control Panel will provide a scheme that works.
>The problem here is that your page overrides the user's choice of a
>background color, without doing anything about the user's text color.  So we
>can wind up with white text on a white background.  The solution is to add
>the necessary text-color tag to the HTML (or to styles!).  If you're using a
>Web-page tool, there should be way to specify the text color for the whole
>page or for styles.  If not, you can highlight the text and then set its
>color. The resulting HTML should look something like:
>
><BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000">
>
>It's the TEXT= "#000000" tag that's missing currently.  #000000 would set
>the text to black, which I suppose is what you want.
>
>If you override the user's background color, you have to override the
>foreground color too.  There's no way to know the user's color settings, so
>the only way to prevent conflicts is to override them completely or not at
>all.
HWG hwg-techniques mailing list archives, maintained by Webmasters @ IWA