Re: AREA tags

James Aylett <sja20@hermes.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>On Tue, 6 Aug 1996, Foteos Macrides answered my question about the ALT
>attribute to the AREA tag (rather completely :-) ...
>
>> 	Lynx, and in theory other text clients and GUIs with image loading
>> turned off, use that as the link name in a menu of links for the HREFs
>> of the AREA tags.  The ALT strings should describe the links.  For
>> example, if your MAP is of the United States and the links return
>> information concerning each state. the ALT strings could be the names
>> of the states.
>
>This still, however, doesn't explain why ALT is #REQUIRED here, whereas it
>is #IMPLIED for the IMG tag. Surely if it's #REQUIRED in one context, it
>should be in all such?

	It would be better, indeed, to have it #REQUIRED everywhere,
and if it's a "purely decorative" IMG inline, use ALT="" to indicate
that explicitly.  But the links with HREFs in AREA tags are *never*
"purely decorative".

	Those with NOHREF would be ignored, whether or not they had
ALT="", by any rationally designed client, but I guess that's presently
a strange aspect of the DTD.  One can live with it for the benefit of
having ALTs #REQUIRED (finally!! 8-).

				Fote

=========================================================================
 Foteos Macrides            Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Research
 MACRIDES@SCI.WFBR.EDU         222 Maple Avenue, Shrewsbury, MA 01545
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Received on Tuesday, 6 August 1996 19:30:37 UTC