RE: Re: Clarification needed on ALT/TITLE tooltips

Simon Jessey wrote:

> Actually, I think that IE6/Win support of web standards is
> pretty good

Well. I think not. It's probably good enough for many developers,
but it lacks support for many things, and have a really wrecked
up box-model e.g.

> especially when you consider that Microsoft didn't have a
> great deal of motivation to improve it.

What motivations Microsoft did or didn't have is irrelevant.
The point is that their browser isn't particularly good, and
whatever reason they have for not improving it is of no interest.

> Thanks to the trailblazing of Tantek and the fellows who came
> up with IE5/Mac, and the gentle push from the other browser
> vendors, IE6/Win supports most of HTML, CSS1, and CSS2. 

"Most of" isn't good enough when all the standards it should
support are several years old, well specified, and much better
supported in other browsers.

> I have always been under the impression that the tooltip
> behavior in Internet Explorer is incorrect.

Good. It is. :)

> The ALT attribute is for providing a text description of an
> image.

No, not exactly. The ALT attribute is for providing an ALTern-
ative text to the image. It's a text that should be displayed
instead of the image, when the image isn't. When the image is
displayed, the ALT text can be ignored or whatever. It should
at least not be displayed.

> The TITLE attribute is for providing additional information
> for pretty much any element, and as such seems to be a more
> appropriate hook for a tooltip.

Yes.

-- 
Asbjørn Ulsberg           -=|=-          X-No-Archive: No
"He's a loathsome offensive brute, yet I can't look away"

Received on Tuesday, 1 July 2003 05:33:26 UTC