[thelist] correct use of alt and title attributes

Christian Heilmann codepo8 at gmail.com
Mon Sep 11 23:19:35 CDT 2006


> <tip type="ALT and TITLE attributes as tooltips" author="Stephen Rider">
> Internet Explorer shows ALT attributes as "tooltip" popups by
> default.  Firefox and most other browsers (correctly, it seems) does
> not.
>
> If you do *not* want browsers to show the popup, include an empty
> TITLE attribute as well, e.g.: <img src="emailbutton.gif" alt="email
> us" title="">
>
> If you *do* want the tooltip to show up, or if you want it to be
> something different than the alt attribute, then specifically
> indicate such using the title, e.g.: <img src="emailbutton.gif"
> alt="email us" title="Send us an email">
>
> In short: for consistency across browsers, include a TITLE attribute
> any time you use ALT, unless the ALT tag is empty (e.g. alt="").
> </tip>

That appears to me misguided. You provide an empty alt (which could
mean that blind users don't get any information at all) to work around
a wrong implementation of the title attribute in MSIE6. This is not a
clever move.

-- 
Chris Heilmann
Book: http://www.beginningjavascript.com
Blog: http://www.wait-till-i.com
Writing: http://icant.co.uk/



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