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From: Terence de Giere
Date: Tue, Apr 15 2003 8:00AM
Subject: Re: Inline CSS Styles
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Unless a browser has settings that can override all CSS rules and
disable in line styles, and then allow a user style sheet to format a
page, in line styles have priority over an embedded style sheet which in
turn has priority over a linked style sheet. In a number of recent
browsers, it does not appear possible to completely override in line
styles. One sees is a partial application of the user style sheet.

In Internet Explorer 6 one can turn off page colors using the
accessibility settings and substitute a user style sheet that has
different background table cell colors. If the accessibility settings
are not activated, a user style sheet will not override in line style
colors. Average users tend to not know about the settings. Substituting
user page colors in the new Mozilla and Netscape browsers does not turn
off in line table cell colors specified in the web page. With these
browsers there is no user style sheet. Alternative linked style sheets
can be linked to the page, but they do not override in line styles. A
user style sheet in Opera does not override in line styles, although
Opera 7's new accessibility layout setting replaces any existing styles
with large black text on a light green background, and Opera's small
device screen mode also removes table cell colors. The few users
remaining who use older browsers without CSS support will see plain
uncolored tables.

If tables are large with long rows with many cells, on small devices, in
text browsers, etc., rows will wrap and and be difficult to
interpret because the headers do not line up with the data, and in
this case a linear, non table version of the data is necessary to make
the information comprehensible. Note if you are using color in a table
(either a data table or a layout table) to distinguish information in
different parts of the table, some other means to make those
distinctions clear must be provided in case color is not available, or
cannot be seen. For example, light red and light green appear about the
same to users with the most common forms of color blindness.Of course,
with aural rendition of tables, background colors are irrelevant.

To give a user the maximum opportunity to replace table background
colors or to at least see the table without color, styles should be
specified in a linked style sheet, and an alternative linked style sheet
should be provided that does not color the tables.

Terence de Giere
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =

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Rachel Sengers wrote:

We are working on a site that specifies background
colors for table cells using inline style attributes
(instead of putting that style information into an
external style sheet). Does using inline styles for
background colors interfere with the user's ability to
switch style sheets to their own style sheet (in the
major browsers and platforms)? We would like the user
to be able to override our background colors.







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