Re: IE/Netscape compatability

Mark Preston wrote:

Firstly - Does Netscape display "ALT " code on mouseover like I.E. does?

No, and they refuse to even make it a configuration option, one of the
things which makes Mozilla/Netscape inaccessible to me.


Quite so Jim - considering all the things they have done right, doing
such an easily corrected thing wrong is very suprising and stupid of
them isn't it.

Except that it's not wrong. ALT text is not supposed to be displayed as
a tooltip (mouseover, as you call it). That is the domain of the TITLE
attribute. That earlier browsers did this with ALT text is incorrect
behavior.

--

*** Remove the DELETE from my address to reply ***

==================================================
Kevin Scholl
kscholl (AT) comcast (DOT) DELETE.net
--------------------------------------------------
Web Development and Graphic Design
http://www.interimag.com/~kscholl/professional/
--------------------------------------------------
We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers
of the dreams...
==================================================

On Sun, 27 Jul 2003 21:23:09 -0400, Kevin Scholl <kscholl (AT) comcast (DOT) net>
wrote:

Mark Preston wrote:
Quite so Jim - considering all the things they have done right, doing
such an easily corrected thing wrong is very suprising and stupid of
them isn't it.

Except that it's not wrong. ALT text is not supposed to be displayed as
a tooltip (mouseover, as you call it).

Nothing in an HTML document (well of a modern strict variety) is meant
to be displayed any way at all, it's semantic information, not style
information. A User Agent can make that content available to the user
anyway it sees fit. For those of us who do not understand iconography
(and if you browser the W3's WAI lists of a couple of years ago,
you'll see Lisa Seeman turning up a considerable body of research into
such people) getting at the alt text quickly is essential important,
currently for mozilla it takes way too long to get at the information,
it's a big problem, but one that is trivially fixed with a preference.

Unfortunately it seems people who do not understand the issue have
made this such a political point that we're never going to get it,
unfortunately the one time I was with Hixie in a pub to try and
convince him the error of his ways, I completely forgot...

That is the domain of the TITLE
attribute. That earlier browsers did this with ALT text is incorrect
behavior.

Nope, it was wholly correct, it was a shame it led to the ALT
attribute being mis-used, but it was not incorrect behaviour, and
still would not be incorrect now.

Jim.
--
comp.lang.javascript FAQ - http://jibbering.com/faq/