Posted by Alan J. Flavell on 09/17/05 22:50

On Sat, 17 Sep 2005, Nick Theodorakis wrote:

> But speaking to the larger question; even if most popular browsers (or
> browser-like OS elements) will display the properties of the :hover
> pseudoclass on any element, would it be wise to apply them? It seems
> to me that users are becoming accustomed to associating the :hover
> properties with hyperlinks. Just as it would be valid, but unwise, to
> make ordinary text appear blue and underlined (even if the author
> might have good reason for doing so) I suggest it would also be
> unwise to apply :hover properties to anything except links.

This is good advice in itself, indeed, but I think it missed the point.
Or at least it did as far as my bit was concerned.

Here I inherited a page that went something like this - in the scope of a
class let's say "mymenu":

<td><div><a href="...">text</a></div></td>

The desire was to specify a :hover behaviour *for the link* which involved
also some CSS properties that are only valid for block-level elements.
The associated CSS wanted, really, to specify something like

.mymenu div:hover { "border-color change" }

and this would've worked on Mozzi etc. - but not on MessIE.

So the author of this lump of code had instead used an "onmouseover/
onmouseout", calling out some javascript in the HTML. For every
goddamned cell in this column of the menu. It was just too much.

That's why I was interested to know (haven't managed to get it to work
myself yet) whether MessIE could be persuaded to do this on the a:hover
itself - if only one could define the "a" as a block-level element within
its TD.


I'll be honest - myself I think this hover stuff is just a fad, that next
year will look as dated as HTML/3.2. But the sponsor of this site is very
happy that the links are almost indistinguishable from the surrounding
text on a typical graphical browser, until one waves a mouse at them,
whereupon they light up like Blackpool Tower - won't accept any change
in its visual behaviour. Oh well - don't mind me, I'm getting old and
crabby. I'm sure the new students at whom these pages are aimed will be
impressed.

[Back to original message]