427997 - Let user know about the presence of alternate stylesheets

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Disability Access, enhancement)

Description

[Matt H]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9b3pre) Gecko/2008020509 Firefox/3.0b3pre
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9b3pre) Gecko/2008020509 Firefox/3.0b3pre

Some web pages offer multiple CSS style sheets, for example to offer a simpler layout, easier font colours (change from red on green) and remove image backgrounds. This is done through additional <link> elements in the html header.

Currently the user cannot tell from the UI which web pages offer these stylesheets, unless they happen to look in a second level menu, view / page styles. The user cannot be expected to do this on each page, nor can the web page content be counted on to alert the user (particularly if it is found difficult to read). 

The user interface should notify the user (non-intrusively) that alternate stylesheets are available, probably through an icon on the address or status bar, similar to how the orange beacon icon tells the user whether an RSS feed is attached to the page.  

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
Visit any web page
Actual Results:  
It is not apparent whether the page offers alternate stylesheets.

Expected Results:  
The UI shows an icon, notifying the user that alternate stylesheets exist, similar to how the user immediately knows whether a page offers an RSS feed without using menus.

Example implementations of alternate stylesheets
http://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/007/alternatives
http://developer.mozilla.org/samples/cssref/altstyles/

Sites in the wild offering alternate stylesheets
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/
http://www.seowebsitepromotion.com/

Comment 1

[[:Aleksej]]

This seems intentional: see bug 262065.

Confirming anyway, because this makes the menu useless often.

I’ve found this extension, though (didn’t try yet): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3032

Comment 2

[[:Aleksej]]

That extension seems to work fine and be convenient with Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; eo; rv:1.9pre) Gecko/2008041604 Minefield/3.0pre.