Gavin Hamill wrote:
>
> On Sun, Jun 13, 2004 at 11:45:08PM +0200, J?rgen Hochwald wrote:
>
> > I saw the problem on www.wetterarchiv.de (click on a date in the
> > column 'die letzten meldungen' to get the list). Here all symbols have
> > (lage) alt-tags to display additional information for the symbol. I
> > find it a great manko that this information ist not displayed. Possibe
> > the Internet Expoder is displaying this for impotant information
> > besides it is not HTML-konform.
>
> Your theory regarding IE is correct.
>
> The intended purpose of the ALT tag is to provide a text-description
> alternative for the displayed image. Using it for a "Pop-up Tool Tip"
> is blatantly incorrect
Which is not quite correct. If you care to support older browsers, you might
look at the standard for HTML 3.2, at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html32#img . You
can see that the "ALT" tag is "used to provide a text description of the image
and is vital for interoperability with speech-based and text only user agents."
So the only requirement is that it provides a text description of the image. If
a client browser wishes to place it also in a popup, there is absolutely nothing
wrong with that.
As to the latest HTML, 4.01, it is not at all true that using ALT in a popup is
incorrect. See http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/objects.html#alternate-text
and compare to http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/global.html#title .
Indeed, IMO Konqueror (as well as Mozilla) has a very important feature missing
in that it does not display the ALT tag in a popup window (though if there is a
title attribute available I can see preferring that).
> and not only shows ignorance on behalf of lazy
> web developers,
Lazy? Personally, I don't see the point of having both "ALT" and "TITLE". On
the websites I have created they always say the same thing and I have to waste
developer resources, bandwidth and download time to repeat the same thing
twice. Why generate / send the same text twice? Being efficient != being lazy,
and the method works for the other browsers (most developers don't test w/
Konqueror or Mozilla and I don't see why web designers should redesign thousands
of websites when adding this feature to the browser is far easier).
> but also makes so many websites inaccessible to the many
> web users who are partially sighted or those who must rely totally on
> screen readers.
Please read again the HTML 4.01 spec:
Specifying alternate text assists users without
graphic display terminals, users whose browsers
don't support forms, visually impaired users,
those who use speech synthesizers, those who
have configured their graphical user agents
not to display images, etc.
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/objects.html#alternate-text. The ALT
attribute is meant for this purpose, *not* the TITLE attribute.
And the ALT attribute is meant also for the purpose of users "who have
configured their graphical user agents not to display images, etc." It is not
at all clear to me, why in all but rare cases this text should be different from
the "TITLE" attribute, and hence if the TITLE attribute is not present why the
ALT attribute should not receive the same attention. If someone indeed wants
the popup to differ from the ALT description, they can add a different TITLE
tag, but, again, it is a waste to include the same information twice.
After all, bandwidth costs time and money. Good web designers know this.
Ciao,
Dre
--
Democracy . . . not only demands the right but imposes
the responsibility of thinking for ourselves.
For in the last analysis, all tyranny rests on fraud, on
getting someone to accept false assumptions, and any man
who for one moment abandons or suspends the questioning
spirit has for that moment betrayed humanity.
-- Bergen Evans, "A Tale of a Tub" (1946)
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