[thelist] To ALT or not to ALT?

[aardvark]

> From: "A. Erickson" <ilsa at earthlink.net>
[...] 
> Oh, but hey -- I always wonder whether to alt with the space alt=" " or
> without alt="".
> 
> Does it make a difference.

yes... in IE4 and NN4 (and a few others), do you want every spacer 
on the page to potentially show a single space tooltip or balloon 
help, or not show anything on mouseover?

single-space tooltips just look silly...

> Oh, and just to add another answer to the question. The reason why you
> should leave an alt tag blank for spacer things is because if the image
> doesn't show up -- no one needs to know. For a photo, if it doesn't show up,
> it's nice to have "Fuzzy black cat plays with string" instead of nothing or
> something unrelated. If a spacer doesn't show up then this            is
> quite peaceful.

actually, the screen reader displays no space like that... it would 
something like, "there is an here," with 'image' being the blank alt...