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Subject:Re: ALT 2, Brute'? From:Glen Warner <gdwarner -at- ricochet -dot- net> To:"Jeanne A. E. DeVoto" <jaed -at- jaedworks -dot- com>, "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Sun, 4 Jun 2000 19:04:18 -0700
>
> At 3:48 AM -0700 6/4/2000, Glen Warner wrote:
>>"Jeanne A. E. DeVoto" <jaed -at- jaedworks -dot- com> wrote:
>>> The generic advice for the alt attribute is that it should replace
>>> the graphic, not describe it. (You can use the title attribute to
>>> describe the graphic, if desired.)
>>.... which does not work in Netscape, as I recently discovered.
>
> Should work in Netscape 6.0/Mozilla, though. It is, as they say,
Part of
> the Spec.
Going to wait on the upgrade to 6.0; the developers (according to
brave souls who have tried it) took a lot of liberties (with the Mac
version): didn't use the Macintosh Toolbox calls to draw the windows,
etc. Makes for an unnecessarily large app without the appropriate
"look-'n'-feel" ... not to mention the forced installation of AOL's
Instant Messenger.
Fortunately, it's a beta ... and feedback should (hopefully) make them
rethink their UI.
>>Also, I've noticed that (on occasion), my alt tags show up and appear
>>truncated when I'm checking my work on a given page. Is there a
limit
>>to the number of characters you can have in an ALT tag, maybe?
>
> There's no hard limit, but some browsers handle alt better than
others.
> Some versions of Netscape wrap the alt attribute within the graphic's
> rectangle, other versions (and some versions of MSIE) truncate it,
some
> versions of MSIE present it as a tool tip, some browsers present it
at the
> bottom of the screen. (And of course text-based browsers just put it
inline
> with the rest of the text, so there's no length problem there.)
I think what I was seeing was the ALT text just filling the space of
the graphic. In the case of a blind customer, I'm fairly certain
their software would be able to read the ALT tag, so this should be no
problem.
I will continue to use ALT tags -- unlike a lot of web developer sites
who neglect them, so I have to wait for my slow connection to load the
image before I know what to click on .... :o\
