Is it good to use bullet image inplace of browser default bullets for UL to get cross browser result?

Question

Is it good to use bullet image inplace of browser default bullets for UL to get cross browser result?

Answer 1

Unless it's a very stylized/graphics heavy site, I'd say no. Users don't expect your webpage to have any particular look/feel...but they do expect it to be familiar and intuitive. If you have a completely different theme and a completely custom look, then yes, go for it. If you don't...let the user see what they're used to seeing.

Example: Checkboxes look different on different browsers, but 99% of the time, the same to the user that's always using that browser on their computer. Now using images/javascript to change what those checkboxes look like is slightly jarring, because they're suddenly unfamiliar.

If you're totally immersed in a different environment anyway (example: lots of graphics, black background, etc) then make your styles on anything fit that...for the standard-ish looking webpage that's very light on styles, I'd let the browser defaults prevail.

Answer 2

Well, if you are using list-style-image:url(), then you pretty much enter a world of pain, since different browsers will position the image differently. If, however, you're using background images + padding, then you can indeed get consistent cross-browser results at almost no cost.