Alt Text

I was having a problem for a minute trying to figure out why my Mozilla browser won't show the alt text for pictures that I have posted and that other websites use to essentially add floating captions to their photos. I did a little research and found that proper coding protocol dictates that alt text is only to be used to provide in-line, literal descriptions of images for text only browsers and specialty browsers such as html to braille ones.

The idea is that the alt text is to display in place of the picture when the picture cannot be rendered. The floating text that Netscape and IE use to display the alt text is apparently considered bad form. Instead on the alt tag within the img src tag one should properly use the title tag if they want to display a hovering caption.

A very brief review of some internet postings suggests to me that this has been somewhat of a contentious issue for Mozilla developers, but that for the time being the point is settled, and Mozilla browsers can only see alt text by right clicking and checking out the properties of the picture. I have no idea how you Mac folks survive without the right click. See here for a slightly more in-depth discussion of the alt tag versus the title tag.

I think this issue also explains why since I switched to Mozilla, Netflix no longer shows me what the five stars in their rating system translate to. With IE when I hovered above the stars, I got floating reminders like, "didn't like it," "just ok," "really liked it," "loved it," or something along those lines. With Mozilla, I just get the five stars to click on. Hmm. Maybe I'll send them an email now that I think I've figured it out.

Many of you know a lot more about html and coding than I, so you may already be practicing clean coding. If not, please change your ways.

Vince: How does Safari handle this, do you know? I'd ask Stu who recently switched over to the rainbow side, but I'm not sure he has any idea what I'm talking about. Poor guy: he bought a Mac but is using Front Page to try and do internet publishing. If that's not the craziest thing I have ever heard...

Jonathan 8/07/2004 11:14:00 AM