[thelist] Site Check

[Jon Haworth]

> wheres the rule that says i need to put an alt tag on every image?
> width and height yes, but theres not always a need for alt tags.
> navigational images - yes of course you need alt tags

Well, there's two reasons for this. 

One is the sad techie reason that "the W3C says so" (James Aylard has
thoughtfully provided the link already so I don't have to look it up :-)

The second, and better reason IMHO, is that it's the rule that says "give a
stuff about your users, including those that may not have images turned on,
or may be using screen readers or something". Have you seen images without
alt text in Lynx? 

> i would like, if anyone has got it - a test run on it with IE 4 on a pc
and
> NS 6 on a mac - they'er the only 2 browser i haven't got my hands on yet -
> and they're the ones im interested in.

The point is it's not what *you're* interested in (unless you're working in
a closed intranet where everyone's on IE6), but it's what *your users* are
interested in. 

> maybe the validator doesn't recognise the fact that its got asp detection
in
> it?

The validator doesn't give a flying fsck what cunning sniffing routines you
use. However it is worth bearing in mind that what the validator sees is
essentially what a search engine sees, so if you're confusing the validator,
you're confusing the search engines, and you'll end up as one of these sad
sites that are listed in Google as "this site requires frames" or "your
browser does not have javascript enabled".

> i just work for a compay thats given me a spec - not my fault or problem.

In that case, educate your company as to why the spec is borken. Enlighten
them as to what they're doing wrong and demonstrate how the spec can still
work as they want it to, but be better than they thought it could. Come on,
this is your business and your area of expertise. They pay you to do this.


Cheers
Jon


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