Hello everyone.

I hope you are all great. It has been a minute since I posted. I need to do it more. I hope this topic is in the right place.

I am doing a website for a restaurant and it has been many years since they had an upgrade.

I found the attached as a background to their buttons.

I think I remember doing this 'back in the day'.

But can someone remind me why we did this? Was it because gradients had not been 'invented' yet, or was it to do with cross-border support?

Thanks so much for your help.

Back in the day when CSS was in its infancy using background images for button effects was the only way to go for cross browser support. As CSS evolved it became easier to use it to add things like gradients as you mention.

If you are updating their website I would bin the gradients. It makes the menu look dated.

And because people are used to scrolling you just need to show the whole menu. Forcing people to click to see the different menus reduces usability.