Browser skin VS css for fundamental elements ?!

It's possible to set up some CSS for an anchor link to make it look like a button, if that's the effect you're after. e.g.:

.pagebutton a {padding: 2px; text-decoration: none; width: 200px; color: black; background-color: #EEEEEE; border-top: 2px #999999 solid; border-left: 2px #999999 solid; border-bottom: 2px black solid; border-right: 2px black solid;}
.pagebutton a:hover {background-color: #bbbbbb; border-top: 2px black solid; border-left: 2px black solid; border-bottom: 2px #999999 solid; border-right: 2px #999999 solid;}

I hope this is what you were after.

Cheers,
Daniel

kinda like, but i'm not searching for the technique, i already know it.. the problem is that more browsers disable the detail in buttons and textareas because they apply their own skin on them...

like here, in the forum.. there is style on all the buttons in the post box... but in my mozilla/camino, i can't see them, instead i have the basic buttons with a 3D effect of silver on them... (basic skin of Camino!)

it's not a problem, i just wanted to be sure there is no real feature to make it work everywhere...

I see your dilemma. From what I know of Mozilla 1.3+ on Windows, it puts the Windows "skin" on the buttons but also allows for styling.

If I understand correctly, when you style a button in Mozilla, the windows skin is 'turned off' and replaced by the Mozilla styles, plus whatever styles you put on it.

Unfortunately I'm not sure if this holds true for other Gecko distributions or other browsers in general.

cheers

I'm going to be a pain here

I'll be interested to see whether there is a technical solution to the button style issue at hand. However, I see another issue here as well, namely whether it is appropriate to override skin settings.

A reader on a web site has presumably chosen a skin for their browser because they like the look. Is it really our place as content producers to dismiss a style choice the user has consciously made? Perhaps, perhaps not.

Personally, though, nothing bugs me more on the web than removing my control: think popups, auto-resize windows, on-close event code, back-button disabling, ...

Again, the golden rule comes to mind: distinguish sites through content, not presentation.

</lecture>

Hum.. not a good rule to send here... remember, css is pure presentation ... :twisted:

btw, i agree... problem is that when you focus on content but nobody is interested by the presentation (by ugly design), you have no readers... so we have to manage everything..

I don't in any way mean to suggest that we should ignore presentation - that would be no fun at all! Presentation is a vital aspect of delivering information, and should always be well-considered and appropriate for the content.

However, consider Google, Amazon, IBM, W3C, Ebay... all heavy-traffic sites, because of their content, and not because of their presentation. The point is that a reader does not return to a site to see the great layout, they return for the information that it contains.

CSS is a tool we can use to better manage the visual presentation of our content, but it's also a means by which we can destroy usability...