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wei wei wei @ world wide web
Jeffrey Zeldman has posted an interesting article: Is your (website’s) underwear showing? I find this article interesting not only because of its heading, but also the comments that readers left.
Actually what Jeffrey Zeldman refers to “underwear” is that some web developers forgot (or intentionally) to specify a default background-color (in css) to their web sites, if users change their browser background color they will be able to see something like the following (more examples from underwear showing collection on Flickr):
Some readers thought it should be up to the users to change their favorite background color and thus it doesn’t matter if your site’s “underwear” is shown:
If you want to change the default color of your browser then it should do exactly what you are talking about. Like changing the font size etc.
Some argues that if you have specified the font color, then you should also set a background color to prevent users from changing the browser default and getting something like “white font on white background”:
The rule is clear. If you set a font color for the text, make sure you set a background color as well. Never shall their be one without the other.
In my opinion, I agree on setting a background color instead of letting the users to change it via changing browser default. Apart from the “white font on white background” problem, I think allowing the “underwear” to be shown is like breaking a web site layout. I believe colors (background color, font color, links color) are essential parts of a successful layout, they have their meanings (e.g. a visited link will have different color than a hover link), and thus they should be kept as the same as when we designed it.
I think it is up to the web site owners to decide whether setting a default background color on their sites or not. For me, I’d love to see my site looks consistent in all ways.
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