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Re: Hiding Legends

for

From: Tim Beadle
Date: Oct 16, 2008 3:30AM

On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 3:12 AM, Dean Hamack < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> Argh, absolutely not!
>
> Images should ONLY be hardcoded into the page when they are part of the
> content, such as a profile photo, a photo in a person's gallery, etc. When
> you hardcode images into the page you:
>
> A) lose the ability to use image sprites and thereby increase the number of
> images in your site and your load time
>
> B) lose the ability to tailor your site for print media or mobile devices
>
> C) dramatically increase the amount of time it takes to change the look and
> feel of your site at a later date
>
> These are not issues with most small sites. But when you work on massive
> fortune 500 company sites as I often do, it's a big issue. I use as few
> images as possible and CSS for almost everything.

While I agree with you on a theoretical level, this is one of those
battle plans that don't survive first contact with the enemy (in this
case, the browser). Sometimes it's more accessible, and simpler, just
to use an img element. (We had this discussion re. asterisks to
indicate "required field" only last week, and I posted a link to
Natalie Downe's presentation-plus-notes from BarCampLondon5:
http://webaim.org/discussion/mail_message.php?id=11951

It might seem offensive to purist sensibilities, but I've got to the
point where theory doesn't matter *as much as* what works for the
user. Sometimes you've got to be pragmatic.

Tim