Itsdanny
Posts: 8

Does anyone know why Alt tags don't work in Firefox (v 0.9.2), is there something i can do within the HTML to make it work?
thanks
Dan

Baxter
Posts: 157

They work fine for me. Sure you're not thinking of title tags, which is what's SUPPOSED to give you your tooltips, but IE gets it wrong and assigns title's behavior to alt?

Itsdanny
Posts: 8

I mean when you hold the mouse over an image you get a desc of the image/hint on what to do. I've tested the same sites (mine and others) and no alt/tool tip tags work within firefox but do within IE6, Just tested this on the bbc site and still no pop ups, alt tags or anything. I've quickly been through the accessibility features on firefox but nothing there.

Joe Gillespie
Posts: 528

The title attribute of the anchor tag works as it should in Firefox.

<a title="product catalog" onclick="mon(2)" onmouseover="mover(2)" onmouseout="mout(2)" href="products.html"><img id="m2" src="images/m2out.gif" alt="products" height="14" width="76" border="0" /></a><br />

The alt attribute is part of the image tag and is not supposed to act as a tooltip, it's there for accessibility.

Baxter
Posts: 157

Danny, that's what I thought.
IE misuses the alt attribute. For tooltips, use the title attribute. To REALLY do it right, you can use both (at least on images). As Joe said, alt is for accessibility (and a fallback for when your images don't load). Title is for tooltips.

Title works on both links and images, although if you had a linked image and different titles, I suspect the results would be kinda freaky.

Also note different browsers handle title truncate title differently, so keep 'em short for best results.

Vladimir
Posts: 53

Most websites that have ALT descriptions assume that they are displayed as tooltips due to the dependence on IE.

Stan
Posts: 44

I use "title" if I want a tool tip to show the text. Alt tags are for blind people, search engines and for before the picture downloads.

Paddymick
Posts: 1

So, if you don't use alt tags for tips, how do you put a tip in an image that isn't linked?