Re: ALT as required attribute

"Gerard Torenvliet" <g_torenvliet@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:D9ABD8212AFB094C855045AD80FB40DD190026@1WFMAIL...
>
> Jim,
>
> The plug-in can be found here:
>
> http://white.sakura.ne.jp/~piro/xul/_popupalt.html.en
>
> My point about Mozilla not displaying Alt text as a tool tip was this: If
> Alt text isn't supposed to be displayed as a tool tip, it should not be.
By
> no longer displaying Alt as a tooltip, Mozilla follows specifications.

Which specification says that ALT should not be provided on tooltip?  Does
my browser which provides a link to longdesc on mouseover not a valid
browser because of that behaviour?  Why are specifications mandating how
semantic mark-up be rendered, doesn't that just make it visual mark-up?

> Iconography is a tricky issue. I would suggest that the websites you use
> that have poor iconography (i.e., that which some users cannot understand)
> should avail themselves of the use of both the Title tag and a trained
> graphic designer.

Why, I'm pretty rare in not understanding icons, and a graphic designer
would not change things, I've discussed this with others in large groups and
I'm alone in not understanding the icon.  Using the TITLE would be wrong,
and would just lead to misuse of title as we've seen with misuse of ALT,
that would hardly improve things.

> There is nothing wrong with using the same text in both
> Alt and Title; my point is that they can be different.

I think having them the same is distinctly odd and would only be right in
special cases, they're defined differently so would rarely be the same text.

> Also note that the HTML 4.01 specification does allow for the use of Title
> as a tool-tip; for alt text the door to this usage is not even opened.

It gives examples of how it might be rendered, it doesn't prohibit, or
require any particular rendering or action.

> Finally, on my point of education, I agree that users should be served. I
> believe that users are best served by user agents that insist on
> standards-compliant HTML.

A recent Masters thesis found 0.71% of pages were valid, let alone compliant
to the rest of the specification.  That would hardly be a useful user agent.

Jim.

Received on Tuesday, 4 February 2003 05:15:07 UTC