[WEB4LIB] Re: img ALT attribute in NS 6.2.x

[Thomas Dowling]

At 10:09 AM 4/8/2002, Andrew Mutch wrote:
>Thomas,
>
>Is it correct, as I was told, that Mozilla is following the correct
>interpretation of the W3C recommended standards? We've had this discussion 
>with
>the K-Meleon browser and in our next release, we'll be splitting the 
>difference.
>If a TITLE tag is present, that will be displayed on the mouseover and takes
>precedent over the ALT tag. The ALT tag text will be displayed only if no 
>TITLE
>tag and text is present.


Let's say this is an area where people may have an honest difference of 
opinion. There is an unfortuntate vagueness in the HTML 4.01 specification 
(see <http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/objects.html#alternate-text>).  It 
describes how ALT text should function in agents that cannot (or do not) 
display images, but it does not explicitly say what should happen in agents 
that do display images.  The complete definition of the alt attribute is: 
"For user agents that cannot display images, forms, or applets, this 
attribute specifies alternate text."  By way of comparison, the definition 
for the title attribute is, "This attribute offers advisory information 
about the element for which it is set."  It's pretty clear that the tooltip 
action we're so familiar with is better described as advisory information 
than alternate text, and that it should be marked up that way.  The fact 
that it often isn't indicates the general backwardness of many editing tools.

Part of the difference of opinion comes from differing ideas over the 
degree to which new browsers should try to shape author behavior in an 
effort to upgrade markup quality, and the degree to which they should try 
to accomodate current behavior in an effort to "work just like IE".  It 
sounds like the Mozilla community is leaning more heavily one way and the 
K-Meleon folks leaning more the other.  IMO anything that continues to 
treat any ALT text like a title discourages it from actually being used as 
an alternative to the image itself, which ultimately makes things harder 
for people browsing without images.



Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu