CSS practices: negative positioning

Posted by Corey on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Corey
Published on 2011-02-06T01:07:07Z Indexed on 2011/02/06 7:33 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 504

Filed under:

best-practices

|

css

I'm somewhat of a novice to CSS.

Anyway, I noticed that an extremely common method used in CSS is to have negative or off-screen positioning, whether it be to hide text or preload images or what have you.

Even on SE sites, like StackOverflow and this website, have

#hlogo a { text-indent: -999999em }

set in their CSS.

So I guess I have a few questions.

is this valid CSS? or is it just a "hack"?
are there downsides to doing things this way?
why is this so common? aren't there better ways to hide content?

© Programmers or respective owner

Related posts about best-practices

Batch Best Practices and Technical Best Practices Updated

as seen on Oracle Blogs - Search for 'Oracle Blogs'
The Batch Best Practices for Oracle Utilities Application Framework based products (Doc Id: 836362.1) and Technical Best Practices for Oracle Utilities Application Framework Based Products (Doc Id: 560367.1) have been updated with updated and new advice for the various versions of the Oracle… >>> More
Partial template specialization of free functions - best practices

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
As most C++ programmers should know, partial template specialization of free functions is disallowed. For example, the following is illegal C++: template <class T, int N> T mul(const T& x) { return x * N; } template <class T> T mul<T, 0>(const T& x) { return T(0); } //… >>> More
Object Oriented PHP Best Practices

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Say I have a class which represents a person, a variable within that class would be $name. Previously, In my scripts I would create an instance of the object then set the name by just using: $object->name = "x"; However, I was told this was not best practice? That I should have a function set_name()… >>> More
Good place to look for example Database Designs - Best practices

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have been given the task to design a database to store a lot of information for our company. Because the task is rather big and contains multiple modules where users should be able to do stuff, I'm worried about designing a good data model for this. I just don't want to end up with a badly designed… >>> More
Notification Email Best Practices--From Server Setup to Programming

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
All, I'm in the process now of building a SaaS tool that allows network admins to generate notification emails to the members of the end-users of our platform (among many many other things). I'm running into a bit of an "out of my expertise" wall, as I know there are a lot of variables involved… >>> More

Related posts about css

HTMLUNIT Facebook javascript warning

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi I am trying to create simple application that would be able to search people on facebook using given e-mail. I am already able to log into an account using the HTMLunit tool and even create a page, which should throw result of my search. But when I try to print the result as XML the file is missing… >>> More
$this->headLink() includes duplicated script

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi, Just like I did before, I used the following code for my new project. <?=$this->headLink()->appendStylesheet('/Layouts/admin/css/button.css');?> <?=$this->headLink()->appendStylesheet('/Layouts/admin/css/inputText.css');?> <?=$this->headLink()->appendStylesheet('/Layouts/admin/css/fancyTable… >>> More
How much multiple style sheets slow down to website?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Here is 3 css file (one is only for IE) <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/blueprint/screen.css" type="text/css" media="screen, projection"> <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/blueprint/print.css" type="text/css" media="print"> <!--[if lt IE 8]><link rel="stylesheet" href="css/blueprint/ie… >>> More
mod_pagespeed is rewriting but not combining

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have the following problem. I installed mod_pagespeed but i am not getting the results i want! It does rewrite my css and changes the to the cache url but its not combining the css files. I have seached the web and stackoverflow for it but did not find a solution. Here are the tags <link… >>> More
CSS import or multiple CSS files

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I originally wanted to include a .css in my HTML doc that loads multiple other .css files in order to divide up some chunks of code for development purposes. I have created a test page: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional… >>> More