--- On Thu, 5/6/10, Jukka K. Korpela <jkorp...@cs.tut.fi> wrote: > Another CSS-related issue is that many people have used alt > attributes to > create "tooltips", like annotations on the images. This > tends to interfere > with the proper use of such attributes. Moreover, the > "tooltips" are > rendered in a manner that is immune to everything you say > in CSS, using > system routines. The rendering has many drawbacks, like the > disappearance of > the "tooltip" after some seconds, which is really annoying > if the text is > long and you'd like to read it. > > Therefore, if you want to show "tooltips", it's better to > do that with CSS > (or CSS + JavaScript), e.g. including explanatory text in > document content, > hiding it with CSS, and making it visible in a particular > position. It's > useful then to add title="" (i.e., title attribute with > empty value), as > this will prevent some browsers from displaying the alt > attribute value as > "tooltip".
Actually, the title attribute is the best way of displaying tooltips, IMO. That text is available to screenreaders, and is - as you point out - handled by most browsers in a fairly consistent way, usually in keeping with the user's OS, so the behaviour should be familiar. The way I handle 'enhanced' tooltips (if required) is with a bit of javascript that extracts (and removes) the title value, adds it to the DOM, and then styles that new element. - Bobby ______________________________________________________________________ css-discuss [cs...@lists.css-discuss.org] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
