Pure CSS Rollover

Swapping backgrounds on <a>: what about this solution?

[DrOliver]

I just came up with this idea:

CSS:
a{width:100px;display:block;text-decoration:none;}
a:link{background:#000 url(off.gif);color:transparent;}
a:hover{background:#000 url(on.gif);color:transparent;}

html:
<p><a href="#" title="click here to find out how to reach us">&nbsp;</a></p>

Assume the link image is 100 px wide. It works on IE and Mozilla. It has a title attribut. Even users of text only browser should be able to find out what that link does, although it's a &nbsp;.

One could even have a a:visited with a different background-image to make clear that link has already been followed. Same goes for a:active.

I don't like my own idea too much, but... what do you think?

[Nick_W]

Looks alright. There are a few tutorials dotted around on this subject, though not being gfx gifted I tend to go with plain text rollovers.

Couple of points without testing:

• Text browsers/screen readers don't 'click'. Better to use 'follow this link'
  
• You could make it slightly more robust by enclosing the a's in a 100px wide div.
  

Other than that, looks like a nice job and that you're enjoying the whole css trip ;)

Nick

[moonbiter]

Another really nice effect with CSS: you can nest images or blocks of text and show/hide them on mouseover. Eric Meyer demonstrates the effect [meyerweb.com], which I think is pretty cool.