> Great; I applaud.

> Now, back to 2007 and these particular bits of the information:

> "Text (such as excessive keywords) can be hidden in several ways,
> including .... Using CSS to hide text"

> Agreed, and if done for the wrong reasons, not good.

> Then this: "If you're using text to try to describe something search
> engines can't access - for example, Javascript, images, or Flash files
> - remember that many human visitors using screen readers, mobile
> browsers, browsers without plug-ins, and slow connections will not be
> able to view that content either."

> As most web developers/designers will know, the choice of fonts and
> how they look are still unfortunately severely limited when it comes
> to the web. A lot of design aware developers and web designers that
> choose to code their websites a la 2007 (ie. split content from style
> and use CSS to get the design) thus choose to make their navigation
> consist of a series of images since, let's face it, this generally
> looks a lot better and also looks the same over most browsers .... and
> as designers/developers, we are of course coding for users (like
> google always recommends!). Common practice when doing this is to
> provide a means for people on outdated browsers or browsers aimed at
> viewers with visual disabilities, to still be able to see the
> navigation, although not at it's top design wise. This is done with
> hidden text which automatically shows depending on the browsers
> capabilities.

> I guess you know the question. Does this update to the guidelines mean
> this is out or definitely in? On the one hand you're not supposed to
> hide text, yet on the other hand they specifically mention keeping
> your site readable for human visitors who have browsers that might not
> otherwise be able to see the images. The only way to do this, if you
> want to have a nicely designed image of text as your navigation, is to
> hide text (well, or have both showing underneath each other which I
> think everyone will agree is not an option).

> Have a look at the main navigation on my sitewww.travellerspoint.com
> for an example. Disable css altogether and you'll get the text version
> just like it's meant to be. But the images look better for those users
> browsing with 99% of the browsers. Just to be clear, I'm not talking
> about keyword stuffing or anything, it's exactly the same text as in
> the image, just hidden using CSS.

> I guess to be safe, the only choice is to remove the images and go
> back to text, but I hate it when having to go backwards in time/design
> just because something isn't clear in google's guidelines....