Re: QUESTION: image map alt tags

Sallow,

you're not using what is usually called an imagemap, you are using a table of
individual images which may be links. In many cases there is no alt text,
which is a pain.

A number of browsers which should have known better have patchy support for
alt on real imagemaps. Your problem (apart from having lots of images with no
alt at all) is probably related to the way alt is rendered by some of those
browsers - typically it is only somtimes put into the space where an image
would be, depending on the amount of space it has allocated. Other browsers
don't have any trouble. I'm afraid there is not a lot you can do in your code
except to leave sizes unspecified for your images - they should appear
unspaced, and you can use basic CSS features such as line-height, together
with presentational hacking such as VSPACE="0" HSPACE="0" to achieve the same
effect without a table, and to have more browsers render the alt text.

(I suggest alt="" for the cases where you don't want "imagemap_r3_c1" to be
rendered everywhere...)

Charles McCN

On Sat, 14 Aug 1999, David Poehlman wrote:

  
  Date:    Fri, 13 Aug 1999 13:00:26 -0500
  From:    Sallow <sallow@twcny.rr.com>
  Subject: QUESTION: image map ALT tagsthis again comes from advhtml but
  since it concerns us here I thought I'd post it for the gentleman.
  
  
  hey there-
  
           I am having problems getting the ALT text to appear on my
  image
  maps.  The image map works as it is suppossed to (all links are good
  and
  functional) but the alt text will not appear.  I have always had this
  problem and have simply assumed it is not possible.
  
           I am an intermediate user, meaning i can write almost
  anything
  you could want in HTML but my scripting skills are only now being
  learned.  The server I am running the page on is Apache (unix).  I
  work
  from a windows 95 OS or linux redhat (pico editor) depending on where
  I
  happen to be when I sit dow to write.
  
           the URL to my home page is:
  
  http://www.io.com/~god
           the URL to the specific imagemap in question is:
  
  
  http://www.io.com/~god/warhammer/warhammer.htm
  
  any advise anyone could render would be greatly appreciated, thanks
  
  Sallow
  (Dave Brooks)
  

--Charles McCathieNevile            mailto:charles@w3.org
phone: +1 617 258 0992   http://www.w3.org/People/Charles
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative    http://www.w3.org/WAI
MIT/LCS  -  545 Technology sq., Cambridge MA, 02139,  USA

Received on Saturday, 14 August 1999 15:35:24 UTC