Konqueror - no ALT-Tag display

[Andreas Pour]

Esben Mose Hansen wrote:
> 
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> On Monday 14 June 2004 07:10, Andreas Pour wrote:
> 
> > Gavin Hamill wrote:
> > As to the latest HTML, 4.01, it is not at all true that using ALT in a
> > popup is incorrect.  See
> > http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/objects.html#alternate-text and compare
> > to http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/global.html#title .
> 
> First, be aware that the same question caused a somewhat large debate on the
> Mozilla newsgroups. One might have a look there for additional arguments. The
> result, as you note, was not to display alt-tags. The key phrase, as remember
> was this:
> 
> <qoute>
> 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
> </quote>
> 
> Note the "when cannot be rendered normally". This precludes using ALT-tags for
> mouse-over in any reasonable interpretation of the standard. Just so that is
> clear.

Specifying one use for an item does not preclude other uses.  In fact, if you
read the sentence following the one you quote, it goes into more detail and
lists a number of uses, including "those who have configured their graphical
user agents not to display images" followed by "*etc.*".  "Etc." means, and
other reasons.

Beyond that the question is a practical one:  does showing the ALT attribute in
a tooltip help the user when no TITLE attribute is present?  In my case, yes, I
find that info very useful.

There is of course a conceptual difference b/w the two attributes:  the TITLE
attribute assumes the person sees the image and the ALT attribute assumes the
opposite.  Thus the TITLE attribute can often be much simpler than the ALT
attribute, in the rare event that someone is ambitious enough to care about
this.  But still there are many cases where the ALT and TITLE would still remain
the same (e.g., for icons and logos).

> The big question is: Should a browser do it anyways? That question is no. Try
> contacting Ian Hixie from the Mozilla QA team for a nice chat about this.
> Besides (I believe) sitting on the w3.org group that drafts these standards,
> he is a real capacity in these areas. When I did, he conjured up example
> after example of webauthour that errornously put the same text in the alt and
> title tags, which he then convinced me was near-unreadable. But try him, I
> could never explain this as he can.

I read his FAQ (http://www.hixie.ch/advocacy/alttext) and still don't agree with
it.  I think his ideas would make more sense if people spent hours labeling each
image on a website, but I don't think that will ever happen - in other words, it
suffers the typical problem of a lot of theory and "shoulds" and so but a lack
of realism and practicality.

Again, if a web author takes the time to care about the difference, the author
can use both attributes.  I am only considering the case where the author has
provided an ALT attribute and no TITLE attribute.  This is orthoganol to the
question of how a web author should complete them.

Ciao,

Dre

-- 
  Democracy . . . not only demands the right but imposes
  the responsibility of thinking for ourselves.

  For in the last analysis, all tyranny rests on fraud, on
  getting someone to accept false assumptions, and any man
  who for one moment abandons or suspends the questioning
  spirit has for that moment betrayed humanity.

  -- Bergen Evans, "A Tale of a Tub" (1946)
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