what's the advantage of custom style sheets?

C

coolsoldier

macrumors 6502

Original poster

• Aug 13, 2003

• #1

I was noticing that almost all browsers now (incliding Safari in the "advanced" preferences tab) let you specify a style sheet to use. What is the advantage of this feature? I thought web sites specified their own style sheets.

Forgive me if this is a stupid question.

 

tjwett

macrumors 68000

• Aug 13, 2003

• #2

there is really no advantage other than making every web site you look at appear the same, the text atleast. but it doesn't even work that great. a lot of time a site that has a CSS declared already will over ride yours and it can also slow loading down as the browser first reads all the text and then has to put it through your CSS. it's kind of a stupid feature if you ask me. the only time i could see it as useful is maybe for the visually impaired who need all text to be a specific size, or maybe for people who are severely color-blind who can only see text at specific colors and backgrounds. ok, maybe it's not so stupid. it just doesn't work very well.

 

FattyMembrane

macrumors 6502a

• Aug 13, 2003

• #3

i disagree, custom stylesheets are very useful. i don't like a focus-ring when i click on links, so i can set a:active { outline: none } and there is no longer any ring. other little visual improvements like this are nice, but what's great is that you can block content from specific servers by setting their display value to "none". this lets you block ads and automatically collapse the area where they would be. now that's useful.

 

Dale Sorel

macrumors 6502a

• Aug 13, 2003

• #4

I use a custom style sheet to remove link underlines, change the color of many links, and to block ads.

 

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coolsoldier

macrumors 6502

Original poster

• Aug 14, 2003

• #5

OK i can see how that would be sort of convenient...

 

sonofslim

macrumors 6502a

• Aug 14, 2003

• #6

there may not be much of an advantage to local style sheets for the majority of users (although blocking ads is a biggie) but like tjwett said: for the visually impaired, they can override the author's style and display fonts in larger sizes and contrasting colors.

under CSS1, the "!important" declaration allowed the author to override the user's style sheets. with CSS2, this has been reversed for the reason above, in recognition of the importance that a user's preferences would have in such a situation.