Using white text on color background

in a navigation bar...

[webbjs]

I am redesigning a Web site for a client and would like to use white text on a color background for the navigation bar. I plan to use a css to set the text and background parameters.

My question is... is using white text on color going to cause me any unforseen problems? I want to have the site be as accessability friendly as possible. I have found some realy nice colors that look great with white text on them.

[lorax]

Greetings webbjs,
Welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com].

White text should pose no problem at all. Those browsers that don't understand CSS will simply render the background white and the text black. The only issue might come if you run into a browser that doesn't understand the background property yet renders the text white - then the user will never see the text. But I can't think of a browser that might do this.

As for those browsers that don't support graphics or convert HTML to audible, the text color shouldn't affect the user's experience at all.

For more information re: accessibilty you may want to visit [w3.org...] if you haven't already.

<edited> reason: "pose no problem" instead of "pose a problem"</edited>

[edited by: lorax at 6:22 pm (utc) on Dec. 16, 2002]

[Tony_Perry]

You should have no problems at all with that. I have many clients who use white text on a coloured background and all have many 1st or 2nd page positions on all their keywords/phrases in all the top search engines.

Good luck
Tony Perry

[jaydash]

Please note, I'm an Editor not a website programmer but one problem we had was that we'd get periodic e-mails saying, "Why do you use black text on dark blue for your stories, it's hard to read?"

However, we didn't use that combination, we used white text on mid-dark'ish blue, via style sheets for all fonts. The problem was obviously when the style sheets hadn't loaded that they were getting problems.

Now, I have seen our site (and others) appear *on occasion* without the style sheets, very rare though. Also, when you refresh or click to go the next page, they load and all is fine. So, I wonder why those people who complained didn't just see the 'wrong look' once and then see the site the correct way on the next page? Are there some browsers that can't interpret CSS (like viewing from a Dreamcast on TV etc.)

Anyway, the w/master set the default text colour (i.e. if CSS didn't load) to white or whatever and ever since then, no-one has e-mailed.

Not sure if this makes sense to you, but hope it helps?!

[webbjs]

Thanks to those who replied. The w3.org resource is particularly helpful. I'll continue to move forward with using white text on colored backgrounds.

[WibbleWobble]

Refreshing pages (or pressing Back) that use css and dynamic content will sometimes result in no styles being applied, I couldn't tell you why exactly, I guess its not re-read as part of the document the second time around. Or something.
I don't remember encountering any pages that weren't dynamic, that had the problem, though. Is it browser specific? Probably.