Is text-indent: -9999px a bad technique for replacing text with images, and what are the alternatives?

Question

This article say we should avoid using this technique. This one says it's awesome. Is it true that Google looks inside CSS files for text-indent: -9999px; and punishes you? :|

I'm using that property a lot to hide text. For example, I have a button that is represented by an icon:

<a href="#" class="mybutton">do Stuff</a>

The CSS:

.mybutton{
  text-indent: -9999px;
  background: transparent url(images/SpriteWithButtons.png) no-repeat 20px 20px;
  display: block;
  width: 16px;
  height: 16px;
}

I don't see any alternative to my code. If I replace that with an image I automatically get +20 HTTP requests for each button image.

If I make the link empty, it is less accessibile because screen readers won't know what that is. And empty links look weird, probably Google doesn't like that either...

So what's the best way to handle such situations?

Answer 1

A good reason not to use the -9999px method is that the browser has to draw a 9999px box for each element that this is applied to. Obviously, that potentially creates quite a performance hit, especially if you're applying it to multiple elements.

Alternative methods include this one (from zeldman.com):

text-indent: 100%; white-space: nowrap; overflow: hidden;

...or alternatively (from here):

height: 0; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 20px;

(where 'padding-top' is the height you want the element to be).

I think the first method is neater, since it lets you set height in the normal way, but I've found the second one to work better in IE7