Trivial or Abusive? (HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide, 4th Edition)

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17.2. Trivial or Abusive?

There is perhaps no more abused or abusive feature than the <blink> tag extension for text content currently supported by, thank heaven, only the Netscape browser.[87]

[87]Internet Explorer is just as guilty; be thankful you don't find many documents using the browser's equally tacky <marquee> feature.

It works by alternating the color of the text enclosed between the <blink> tag and its end tag (</blink>) -- incessantly! It's not only ugly (reminiscent of the very bad video-text displays on a hotel TV), but it's excruciatingly annoying. The reader can't turn it off except to scroll beyond that portion of the document or hyperlink out of the document altogether. Section 4.5, "Physical Style Tags"

Okay, so it grabs readers' attention to make an important point. Just make sure it's a very important point. And here's a tip: Make it easy for the reader to get by the blinking segment in your document. Surround it with empty space or with pleasant, but vacuous content that they don't have to read. Better yet, don't use the blink tag. Consign it to the scrap heap of Web history where it belongs, where it may rest in peace with counters for page visitors.


17. Tips, Tricks, and Hacks		17.3. Custom Bullets