in reply to Monk images at the top of the page

I second the motion. I've run into this elsewhere. As it turns out, according to the W3C standard, the alt attribute (not tag) is for alternate viewing methods (such as for PDAs or for voice-synthesis output for blind people). As such, it's not supposed to be displayed when you hover the mouse over it. Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, of course chooses to ignore the standard, and displays it anyway.

Mozilla gets it right, and doesn't display the text. And it does display the contents of title attributes. They weren't joking when they said that Mozilla would be a standards-compliant browser. I have therefore submitted a patch to add title attribute to img elements, as well as the alt attribute.

The only debate now is whether people think it's a good idea for pop-up text to appear when you hover the mouse over an image, or not. I'm all for it, but I don't mind if it's decided that it's not worth it.

So, what do people think about this?


print@_{sort keys %_},$/if%_=split//,'= & *a?b:e\f/h^h!j+n,o@o;r$s-t%t#u'
  • Comment on Re: Monk images at the top of the page (it's an attribute, not a tag)

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Re: Re: Monk images at the top of the page (it's an attribute, not a tag)
by theguvnor (Chaplain) on Jan 24, 2003 at 01:21 UTC

    I'm all for it. After all, if one doesn't like it, one can always make sure their browser doesn't display the title tags on mouseover. Well, one can if one's using Mozilla ; )

    Jon

[reply]
Re: Re: Monk images at the top of the page (it's an attribute, not a tag)
by Wysardry (Pilgrim) on Jan 24, 2003 at 03:43 UTC

    IE handles the ALT and TITLE attributes more sensibly than you might think.

    It displays the ALT text (if available) when you hover your mouse over it only if there isn't a TITLE attribute defined (even an empty one).

    Try this code:-

    <HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Image Attribute Test</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<P>
<IMG WIDTH="50" HEIGHT="50" SRC="img.gif" ALT="Alt" TITLE="Title"><BR>
<IMG WIDTH="50" HEIGHT="50" SRC="img.gif" ALT="" TITLE="Title"><BR>
<IMG WIDTH="50" HEIGHT="50" SRC="img.gif" ALT="Alt" TITLE=""><BR>
<IMG WIDTH="50" HEIGHT="50" SRC="img.gif" TITLE="Title"><BR>
<IMG WIDTH="50" HEIGHT="50" SRC="img.gif" ALT="Alt"><BR>
<IMG WIDTH="50" HEIGHT="50" SRC="img.gif">
</P>
</BODY>
</HTML>

    [download]

    It helps if img.gif doesn't exist as it makes it more obvious what happens with the ALT text.

    __________
    "Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one instruction -- from which, by induction, one can deduce that every program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work." -- (Author Unknown)

[reply]
[d/l]
      Its debateable if 'sensible' and 'according to standard' are interchangeable, in my opinion, if it was good, it would be like that in the standard anyway. ;)
      As far as I understand it, the ALT text should be shown in the page where the image would be, if it was there/shown. And the TITLE tag is for the mouse.

      Anyfish, thanks for the positive feedback, *waits to see what happens*

      C.

[reply]

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