Saturday, March 1, 2008

CSS and user preferences

Power of CSS based styling is unquestionable. In addition to being able to style the whole site from a single external (of HTML) file, it also allows for easy site style changes on the fly by the user. This usually involves a simple javascript bit and, of course, a set of styles to choose from. As an example of simple implementation of such, see:

Daniel Morrison

and click on one of the icons in top right corner. it gives you a few color schemes and a fixed vs. stretched width. This can go much farther though.

Now, in case of a photographer's site, user choices may not always be possible or specifically, wanted, since it usually involves careful design, so image presentation is to author's liking. However, in some cases, and a load of even more careful design, it's possible to set a few choices, so say images end up being displayed against a black, or grey, or white background by user's choice. By same, we could allow user to change the style of site navigation. While I can't imagine putting too much of extra work into a site that had a hard time getting there to begin with, I still see this part of CSS styling as a means to attract more visitor's to your site. In general, user's appreciate being given some control over what (or how) they view things.

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