Text hidden in tables code

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Text hidden in tables code

Marcia

12:11 pm on Oct 16, 2000 (gmt 0)

I saw this in the code of a splash page (one line of irrelevant visible text on the page, then just a graphic).

font specs partially changed to protect the "innocent" but there's no bgcolor indicated in the body tag, and the font color in the body tag is "black"...the actual font color used is identical to the color of the background image itself. I checked it.

It's none of my business, but I've been wondering what the possible outcome of this might be, and keep going back to look. I'm a worrier. This is being used on client sites as well, who I'm sure don't have a clue. There are also multiple title tags.

Is this a new twist on an old trick? Am I concerned for nothing?

Brett_Tabke

3:49 pm on Oct 17, 2000 (gmt 0)

It is a touch of a controversial area. I've always worked under the assumption that the default bg color would be assumed to be the netscape gray. However, IE from the factory doesn't default to that any more - since 5.0, it defaults to "use windows colors". So, I think it is best to always set a bgcolor now to avoid same color font on background.

Marcia

4:27 am on Oct 18, 2000 (gmt 0)

Brett, it isn't the colors issue that concerns me, because the font color won't be a problem even with using the default - it matches the background image, which, if I'm not mistaken, won't cause problem.

The part that does concern me is the 1 pixel high table specification, the 1 pixel high TD, and the font size being specified as 1 and 1 point.

This is hiding the text on the splash pages effectively, but I am just wondering if spam filters will pick up using the tables this way to hide text. I would think this was an accidental work-around if it weren't for the multiple title tags.

It's not any of my business if the person gets their clients banned - I just like to know what the "no-no's" are so I can avoid them in advance.

Brett_Tabke

6:20 am on Oct 18, 2000 (gmt 0)

Oh ok, I was going a different route with that. I really doubt a se is going to pick up on it, but you should be aware that not all browsers are going to treat 1pt as legitimate - Opera and Moz6 won't (they'll default to a 6 or 8 point font). Also, Opera 4 has a setting for minimum allowable pixel size for fonts. All that will override the table height setting (per spec), as should IE - which it doesn't.