[Year 12 IT Apps] Alt tags showing in IE, not in Firefox - DreamWeaver help please

[Joseph Papaleo]

Interesting Mark.

I checked the World Wide Web Consortium site and found that Firefox didn't
create an extension. Read on ...

According to the World Wide Web Consortium's specifiactions for HTML 4.01
(written 1999) and HTML 5 Draft recommendations written July 2008, both
state alt should be used.

According to http://www.w3.org/html/wg/html5/#the-img "It is important to
realize that the alternative text is a *replacement* for the image, not a
description of the image."
and
"The title <http://www.w3.org/html/wg/html5/#title> attribute represents
advisory information for the element, such as would be appropriate for a
tooltip"  http://www.w3.org/html/wg/html5/#title

So, the alt tag is used to replace an image when braille output is required
or a speech synthesiser is used.  So Firefox is correct and Macromedia is
correct, leaving Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7, umm, not following the
standards.

Didn't Microsoft recently announce that they would follow the standards in
IE8 which is now in beta form?  If that happens, how many other tags have I
been incorrectly teaching?  How many web pages will have to be re-written?
Hmmm...

Joseph Papaleo
Ivanhoe Grammar School


2008/7/25 Mark Kelly <kel at mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au>:

> This puzzled me too, but a quick google revealed this:
>
> http://gadgetopia.com/post/3206
>
> "The ALT tag for images is NOT supposed to produce a little tooltip when
> you mouseover an image, according to the HTML spec. This is supposed to be
> the job of the TITLE tag.
>
> "Firefox has never done this for ALT tags, correctly obeying the spec. This
> always confused me, because some images would pop a tooltip and others
> wouldn't. Apparently the ones that did also had a TITLE tag, unbeknowst to
> me.
>
> "However, IE has always done it for the ALT tag too, which actually seems
> reasonable to me. I don't see the harm.
>
> "So someone created an extention for Firefox to "fix" this problem. Not
> everyone was pleased..."
>
>
> Joseph Papaleo wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Can someone advise me why alt tags created in html pages using DreamWeaver
>> appear in IE, but not in Firefox?  I'd like to remove this problem from
>> their upcoming online documentation task for U4O1.
>>
>> Any advice appreciated
>>
>> --
>> Joseph Papaleo
>> Ivanhoe Grammar School
>> Plenty Campus
>>
>>
>
> --
> Mark Kelly
> Manager - Information Systems
> McKinnon Secondary College
> McKinnon Rd McKinnon 3204, Victoria, Australia
> Direct line / Voicemail: 8520 9085
> School Phone +613 8520 9000
> School Fax +613 95789253
> kel AT mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au
>
> Webmaster - http://www.mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au
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> Moderator: IT Applications Mailing List
>
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>
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