Script Enhanced Stylesheets

CSS 2.1 + JS = CSS 3

Many web designers get misty-eyed when they look at the possibilities of DOM-cruising abilities in CSS 3. Mist turns open floodgates when they see their beautiful stylesheets in archaic browsers, even if they hold Hagrid’s share of the market. To make matters worse, in order to increase accessibility for all users in many media, the World-Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has depricated the target attribute on links and other nifty HTML 3 and 4 qualities, such as bgcolor attributes on all elements.

The friction between old, ugly code with robust features and forward-thinking designs hampered by browser bugs force web designers to make trade-offs, they’d rather avoid; it makes the forward-racing potential of web design slow to a sloth’s pace.

A way out

Instead of hanging from branches upside-down, I’m cutting my way out of the box. The following scripts offer accessible, browser-friendly solutions for functionality and design problems that standards-compliant designing appears to offer. The scripts included here all follow the following guidelines:

Unobtrusive
These scripts do not add any code to the pages they affect. Simply linking to the script in the document head is enough to start its engine.
Standards-friendly
Although they require JavaScript to operate, the scripts must use W3C DOM and Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) guidelines.
Customizable
These scripts must apply class attributes to the elements involved, by so doing allow web designers more control over the visual appearance of their sites
Elegant Tables
Vibrant Tables allow extra touches for which CSS 2.1 hasn’t provided: alternating row colors and highlighting rows when hovered over. All within an accessible, DOM-compatible Javascript.
Extensible Drop Shadows
This script allows you to add drop shadows to elements of any size.
Offsite Links
OpenBlank causes links with offsite as part of their class attribute to open in a new window, without relying on the target attribute. It also appends “(opens in a new window)” to the title attribute. This should be combined with additional visual indication of its difference from a standard link.