Spanning H2 Elements for Image Replacement - Review: applying Fahrner’s IR method to the H1 header of a web page
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If you haven’t read the previous chapter of this series, where I showed how to apply Fahrner’s IR method to the H1 element of a trivial XHTML page, below I reintroduced the source code corresponding to this example, along with the background image used to decorate the header.
With that being said, here’s the background image that spices up the appearance of the targeted H1 element:
And here’s the web page that puts Fahrner’s approach into action:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Fahrner Image Replacement (FIR) on H1 elements</title>
<style type="text/css">
body {
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
background: #fff;
font: 1em Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
color: #000;
}
#wrapper {
width: 960px;
margin: 0 auto;
background: #ffc;
}
#header, #content, #footer {
padding: 20px;
}
/* apply image replacement on H1 element */
#header h1 {
width: 400px;
height: 200px;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
background: url(h1.png) top left no-repeat;
}
#header h1 span {
display: none;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div id="wrapper">
<div id="header">
<h1><span>Welcome to our website</span></h1>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse auctor commodo risus, et ultrices sapien vestibulum non. Maecenas scelerisque quam a nulla mattis tincidunt. Etiam massa libero, pharetra vel laoreet et, ultrices non leo. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed posuere ullamcorper lacus et sollicitudin. Morbi ultrices condimentum lacus, sit amet venenatis purus bibendum sit amet. Quisque rhoncus sodales sapien ac blandit. Nam lacus urna, commodo eget tincidunt vitae, ullamcorper at nulla. Vivamus ac iaculis justo. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Aliquam erat volutpat. Sed quis elit erat, et ultricies diam. Phasellus non turpis malesuada erat ultrices tincidunt sed vitae magna. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Duis purus risus, lacinia at faucibus id, luctus nec diam. In nulla neque, consequat ac hendrerit ac, pulvinar eu dui. Aenean in arcu felis, non hendrerit est.</p>
</div>
<div id="content">
<h2>Main content section</h2>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse auctor commodo risus, et ultrices sapien vestibulum non. Maecenas scelerisque quam a nulla mattis tincidunt. Etiam massa libero, pharetra vel laoreet et, ultrices non leo. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed posuere ullamcorper lacus et sollicitudin. Morbi ultrices condimentum lacus, sit amet venenatis purus bibendum sit amet. Quisque rhoncus sodales sapien ac blandit. Nam lacus urna, commodo eget tincidunt vitae, ullamcorper at nulla. Vivamus ac iaculis justo. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Aliquam erat volutpat. Sed quis elit erat, et ultricies diam. Phasellus non turpis malesuada erat ultrices tincidunt sed vitae magna. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Duis purus risus, lacinia at faucibus id, luctus nec diam. In nulla neque, consequat ac hendrerit ac, pulvinar eu dui. Aenean in arcu felis, non hendrerit est.</p>
</div>
<div id="footer">
<h2>Footer section</h2>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse auctor commodo risus, et ultrices sapien vestibulum non. Maecenas scelerisque quam a nulla mattis tincidunt. Etiam massa libero, pharetra vel laoreet et, ultrices non leo. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed posuere ullamcorper lacus et sollicitudin. Morbi ultrices condimentum lacus, sit amet venenatis purus bibendum sit amet. Quisque rhoncus sodales sapien ac blandit. Nam lacus urna, commodo eget tincidunt vitae, ullamcorper at nulla. Vivamus ac iaculis justo. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Aliquam erat volutpat. Sed quis elit erat, et ultricies diam. Phasellus non turpis malesuada erat ultrices tincidunt sed vitae magna. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Duis purus risus, lacinia at faucibus id, luctus nec diam. In nulla neque, consequat ac hendrerit ac, pulvinar eu dui. Aenean in arcu felis, non hendrerit est.</p>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
In keeping with the concepts deployed in the introduction, you can see that the IR method applied to the H1 element of the above web page uses a pair of additional <span> tags for hiding the header’s inner text, a process that neatly reveals the underlying background image.
In addition, to quickly grasp the method’s driving logic, you should look at the following image, which shows how the earlier web page is rendered on the browser:
Not too bad, huh? While it’s fair to say that implementing this approach is really a breeze, on the other hand it does suffer from a serious accessibility issue. If the image isn’t properly downloaded by the browser, the header will remain invisible to the user’s eyes. Sad but true.
Despite this temporary inconvenience, the flexibility given by this method allows it to be used easily with text-based web page elements other than mere H1 tags. Thus, in the following section I’ll be discussing how to implement it with all of the H2 headers included in the previous XHTML page.
To learn the full details of this process, click on the link below and keep reading.
Next: Styling multiple H2 headers with Fahrner's IR method >>
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