J. Robinson wrote:
This is all good stuff but the "real world" as Molly Holzschlag puts
it in her book "Using html 4" Que 2000, has been so influenced by M$'s
IE, and its use of the Alt string in the way I described, that for a
browser NOT to behave like that makes it *look* sub-standard. What a
predicament!
The statistics for a site I manage shows over 90% of the visitors use
IE 5.x.
Holzschlag stated that M$ was a more compliant member of W3C than
Netscape (in the period relevant to her book). I therefore wonder how
IE 6 behaves - haven't got around to trying it yet ...
Victor Bien
> This behaviour is actually per HTML spec for the alt tag (to quote):
> "alt = text [CS]
> For user agents that cannot display images, forms, or applets, this
> attribute specifies alternate text. The language of the alternate text
> is specified by the lang attribute.
>
> Several non-textual elements (IMG, AREA, APPLET, and INPUT) let
> authors specify alternate text to serve as content when the element
> cannot be rendered normally. Specifying alternate text assists users
> without graphic display terminals, users whose browsers don't support
> forms, visually impaired users, those who use speech synthesizers,
> those who have configured their graphical user agents not to display
> images, etc.
>
> The alt attribute must be specified for the IMG and AREA elements. It
> is optional for the INPUT and APPLET elements.
>
> While alternate text may be very helpful, it must be handled with
> care. Authors should observe the following guidelines:
>
> * Do not specify irrelevant alternate text when including images
> intended to format a page, for instance, alt="red ball" would be
> inappropriate for an image that adds a red ball for decorating a
> heading or paragraph. In such cases, the alternate text should be the
> empty string (""). Authors are in any case advised to avoid using
> images to format pages; style sheets should be used instead.
> * Do not specify meaningless alternate text (e.g., "dummy text").
> Not only will this frustrate users, it will slow down user agents that
> must convert text to speech or braille output.
>
> Implementors should consult the section on accessibility for
> information about how to handle cases of omitted alternate text."
> (
> http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/struct/objects.html#h-1
> 3.8 )
>
> There is instead another tag which is intended to be used in the way
> we've been trained by other browsers; the "title" tag:
> "title = text [CS]
> This attribute offers advisory information about the element for which
> it is set.
>
> Unlike the TITLE element, which provides information about an entire
> document and may only appear once, the title attribute may annotate
> any number of elements. Please consult an element's definition to
> verify that it supports this attribute.
>
> Values of the title attribute may be rendered by user agents in a
> variety of ways. For instance, visual browsers frequently display the
> title as a "tool tip" (a short message that appears when the pointing
> device pauses over an object). Audio user agents may speak the title
> information in a similar context. For example, setting the attribute
> on a link allows user agents (visual and non-visual) to tell users
> about the nature of the linked resource:
>
> ..some text...
> Here's a photo of
> <A href="http://someplace.com/neatstuff.gif"; title="Me scuba diving">
> me scuba diving last summer
> </A>
> ..some more text...
> "
> (
> http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/struct/global.html#adef
> -title )
>
> I had noticed this at first too... it's funny what we become
> accustomed to and assume is "correct".
>
> Jeff
>
> On Thu, 3 Jan 2002 11:30:23, Victor Bien <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
>
>
>> I'm not sure, but I think Alt text strings associated with images
>>have stopped appearing.
>>
>>Victor Bien
>>
>>
>
>
![http://someplace.com/neatstuff.gif"](http://someplace.com/neatstuff.gif"){kind=link}