XP Scrollbar Colouring

[abbi]

I have always used the same code whenever customizing the colour of a scrollbar, but I have never had an XP computer to test my sites on until now.
When I added in the code for the scrollbar colour it changed the traditional XP style scrollbar to the windows 2000/98 scrollbar style.
Here's the code, does anyone know why this is? And if there's a way to fix that.

<style type="text/css">
<!--
body
{
scrollbar-arrow-color: 000000;
scrollbar-track-color: 000000;
scrollbar-face-color: 000000;
scrollbar-highlight-color: 000000;
scrollbar-3dlight-color: 000000;
scrollbar-darkshadow-color: 000000;
scrollbar-shadow-color: 000000;
}
-->
</style>


And one more question, is there a way to customize the style of the scrollbar without using Flash? Somehow Im doubting that there is, because I haven't seen it done yet.

[Twey]

<style type="text/css">
<!--
body
{
scrollbar-arrow-color: 000000;
scrollbar-track-color: 000000;
scrollbar-face-color: 000000;
scrollbar-highlight-color: 000000;
scrollbar-3dlight-color: 000000;
scrollbar-darkshadow-color: 000000;
scrollbar-shadow-color: 000000;
}
-->
</style>

I was going to go through and highlight invalid CSS, then realized it would be easier to highlight the valid code, since there were only five lines of it.

Scrollbar-colour code is proprietary and IE-only. Only users of one browser out of many will so much as see the effects of your code. Is that really worth invalidating your CSS for? I wouldn't really worry about minor style differences under the glare of so much bigger a problem.

Numerical colour values should start with a hash (#), and SGML comment delimiters have no business being inside a stylesheet. Javascript makes provision for this by declaring <!-- a line-comment marker; CSS doesn't.

Here's the code, does anyone know why this is? And if there's a way to fix that.

It is because XP scrollbars have their colours hard-coded, and can't be changed. But what makes you think it's broken? If anything, I'd say it's an improvement over the standard Teletubby-style XP decorations.

is there a way to customize the style of the scrollbar without using Flash?

No. But it can be replaced using DHTML. Search for "scroller" here on DD.

[mwinter]

Javascript makes provision for this by declaring <!-- a line-comment marker; CSS doesn't.

Incorrect, though not something I'd recommend.

Only markup should contain markup comment delimiters, and neither script not style element content has required 'hiding' in years.

Mike

[Twey]

Incorrect, though not something I'd recommend.

Really? Firefox complains when it encounters <!-- in a CSS block.

[mwinter]

[CSS allows SGML comment declarations] Really?

Yep. It's in the grammar. From the lexical rules:

"<!--" {return CDO;}
"-->" {return CDC;}

From the parser grammar:

stylesheet
  : [ CHARSET_SYM S* STRING S* ';' ]?
  [S|CDO|CDC]* [ import [S|CDO|CDC]* ]*
  [ [ ruleset | media | page | font_face ] [S|CDO|CDC]* ]*

Firefox complains when it encounters <!-- in a CSS block.

Firefox does complain about a lot, but I did say I don't recommend it.

Mike

[jscheuer1]

Firefox does complain about a lot, but I did say I don't recommend it.

And, it (Firefox) seems to complain more and more with each new version. It's getting uppity if you ask me. Is there anyway to get it to skip complaining (like the earlier versions skipped complaining) so much about things that don't break either the code or the page? I actually find this new information useful many times but, would love a toggle for when I just want to get right to the heart of the matter with a troublesome page.

[Twey]

Is there anyway to get it to skip complaining (like the earlier versions skipped complaining) so much about things that don't break either the code or the page?

Unfortunately, not. Great idea for an extension, though, along with some other Javascript console enhancements (seperation of JS info, CSS info, interface/extensions info, and perhaps a seperate console for each page). I'll do it if/when I have time.

[mwinter]

Is there anyway to get it to skip complaining (like the earlier versions skipped complaining) so much about things that don't break either the code or the page?

I know how to get it to complain more.

Mike

[djr33]

I know that IE 5 will ignore anything after an open comment... probably not telling you something you don't know, though. But... just remember older browsers might not behave the same way...

[jscheuer1]

I know how to get it to complain more.

Mike

Depending upon what you mean by that, it could be useful for certain situations, could you elaborate please?

Also, in working with a client, it recently came up about the (I believe it is the w3c standard) requirement for alt attributes for image tags, even if they are empty. We were both just wondering if there were any logical and/or practical reason for this? How much better is an empty alt attribute than none at all? I notice that this is a requirement for validation so again, what if any useful purpose does the empty alt attribute serve? I was stumped but, knew that if anyone would know, you would.