Dorward Online

Henny mentioned the MAMA results of uses of alt and title text on images.

Opera MAMA early results: of a small sample of 5000 URLs Title and Alt used together in same IMG element 720 times. A pet peeve of mine.

When I queried this she responded:

@dorward No to TITLE + ALT, it duplicates info for some screen reader users http://snipr.com/hzpt8 We’ll check for duplication in next crawl

I can’t imagine any circumstance where the alt text should be the same as the title text — since the alt should be an alternative to the image, the title shouldn’t be able to add any information to that which is already expressed by the image.

If there was duplication, then I’d agree with Henny that it is a bad bit of markup; sometimes repetition can help get an important point across but image metadata is not the place to do this.

Hopefully the duplicate text check crawl that she mentioned will not have a high number of matches (my cynical side is telling me that this isn’t a hope I should cling to). I’ll be keeping an eye out for the results of that.

It does raise a question thought — if alt and title were to both appear on the same image, what should they contain?

Let us see what the specifications have to say about title and alt.

Let’s deal with the alt attribute. This is nice and simple.

HTML 4.01 says that alt is for an alternative to an image for when the image is not available (and is mandatory).

The use of alt text seems obvious enough to me, but perhaps that is because I’ve been writing it for years. The HTML5 draft has a detailed collection of use cases with examples should you be interested. The late Alan Flavell wrote an excellent guide to using alt text some years ago; it includes a wondeful set of examples of what not to do.

So, given that alt is relatively simple. What about the title attribute? HTML 4.01 says that title is for advisory information about an element, but is rather short on detail or examples of what that actually means. Let us look to the HTML5 draft for guidance.

It starts out with the basics, and retreads the ground covered in HTML 4.01.

The title attribute represents advisory information for the element, such as would be appropriate for a tooltip.

We then have some specific guidence for different types of elements, including images.

it could be the image credit or a description of the image

I hadn’t considered using it to provide a credit for the image, but it does seem to be a reasonable idea. It allows, for example, credit to be provided for an image that is used decoratively without breaking into the flow of text.

Using it for a description of the image seems a little odd though. We already have the longdesc attribute (even if we see little support for it in browsers). Why would one use the title attribute instead?

A little examination of HTML5 and I find:

There has been some suggestion that the longdesc attribute from HTML4 should be included. This has been considered and rejected in the past, but if new evidence is found showing the attribute to actually help users rather than harm them, it may be reconsidered.

So, it looks like HTML5 is dropping the attribute that allows a description to be expressed in markup (allowing paragraphs, emphasis and so on) for one which allows simple text strings.

I don’t understand how the attribute is harmful; if anyone has a summary of the reasoning behind this decision, then please let me know.

What other advisory information could be provided about an image?

Ian chipped in with the observation:

@dorward I see title overused more often than underused. Have Read guidelines which said an image without alt should have a title. Erm, no.

I can just about see a use case here. If we read “without alt” to mean “with blank alt text”, then I am reminded of several instances where I have read that screen users complained that their software informed them that there was an image but that as it lacked alt text they had no idea if it was important or not. Given that, I can understand the benefits of:

<img src="example.png" alt="" title="This is a decorative image">

I don’t like it though. It feels too much like a crutch to reassure screen reader users that the author isn’t making the mistakes that some other authors make, and it creates tooltips for many other users who are left wondering why they exist.

My current CMS system involves writing blog entries on Tumblr and then (periodically) importing them onto my real blog. This gives me a convienient way to edit them and a nice preview.

A few days ago, I wrote a brief article about alt text and title attributes. Then I got into some further discussions over it, so I decided to edit it. My edits led me down a path of research involving multiple specifications and commentary and then I put it aside so I could prepare for my guests arriving for Eurovision.

At this stage, I saved my edits as a draft. Unfortunately, this removed the previously published version from Tumblr completely. “Whoops”. Clearly I didn’t understand Tumblr’s system — although I have learned from that mistake.

So, sorry for the broken links that will have appeared. I fully intend to finish my research and get it properly published. I just have some apple pie in the oven that I need to eat first.

My secret BBC contacts have let slip that a third series of the excellent radio series Bleak Expectations is being recorded next month.

I already have season 1 and have just ordered a high quality copy of season 2 so that I can remind myself of what has gone before, and fill in the missing episode after a software failure stopped my PVR from recording the conclusion.

This show is described as being “in the style of Charles Dickens after too much gin” and is well worth a listen; the cast is excellent too, featuring Anthony Head and Geoffrey Whitehead.

I learned a lesson when I went to the theatre last night - do not stand too close to large groups of school children while waiting to take your seats. Theatre staff may mistake you for Responsible Adults. This rule applies doubly when your companions for the evening include a librarian - this strange form of humankind radiates an aura of educational authority that ordinary people subconsciously sense and react to.

That lesson clued me into the fact that An Inspector Calls is still a set text on many schools’ curriculums, as it was many years ago, when I had to devote a goodly portion of my time to studying the play. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then, but the experience did leave me with some idea of what to expect from the New Wimbledon Theatre last night … or so I thought. It may have been the simple passage of time along with the experiences gathered along the way, but I think it had more to do with the direction given to the show, but this version was different. (If the changes are, in fact, due to comparisons made through the smoky passage of time, then I hope you’ll forgive me.)

I remember the play as being extremely grim, but not this time. The cast gave exaggerated performances then lent an tone of caricature to the show, although none did so as well as Sandra Duncan, playing the role of Mrs. Birling. With careful pauses, adjustments of jewellery, and movement of shoulders, she transformed the character from unlikable pomposity into someone whom it was a positive joy to hate.

There was, however, no bigger transformation from my school day memories to the stage at Wimbledon then could be seen in Inspector Goole. Previously a mysterious and largely subdued spectre who grimly haunts the family over the course of an evening while radiating stern authority around tightly controlled emotions, here he becomes an emotional roller-coaster who very obviously cares for the common man, takes ghoulish delight in ripping down the walls the Birlings have built around themselves, and invades the personal space of other characters at will.

It makes for a lively and highly entertaining performance that was far more enjoyable then I expected (I confess that my primary reason for going was for a nostalgia kick) and the show managed to exceed my expectations in just about every way.

An Inspector Calls very nearly manages to pull it off the move towards comedy. Unfortunately, there were a few moments which were particularly grim and weren’t lightened by the performances. These were incongruous enough, and soon after genuinely funny moments, that they triggered laughter among some members of the audience.

I’m not going to suggest it was perfect, as it does have some flaws. Now I am an adult, the socialist message J. B. Priestly wrote into it is far more obvious and not made any more subtle by Inspector Goole delivering his “What we have learned” message to the audience, rather than the family. It comes across in a fashion horribly reminiscent of the morals at the end of certain Saturday morning cartoons that underlined and hammered home the message with a sledge hammer in case young minds failed to pick up on it while watching the story.

As, despite its flaws, it was still a very good play, I do not want to end on a downward note, so I shall take a moment to mention the set, which was rather impressive. Rather then allowing the dining room and the stage to be one - which is the default, but pedestrian, setting for the play - a small house is erected in the centre, with the majority of the stage taking the form of the streets of Brumbly.

The house is entirely filled by the dining room, with exits leading onto the ‘street’ and to backstage, although, as the play progresses various changes are wrought on the set which parallel the Birling’s state of mind.

If I wanted to spoil it for you, I might start analysing the symbolism in more detail, and make special mention of just how everything and everybody was arranged when the curtain falls at the end - but I’ll resist the urge and instead say that this show is well worth a viewing, so if you can catch it while it is on tour, then I recommend you grab the chance.

I’m not a fan of Microsoft - that much should be clear by now.

I will complain about a compatibility mode that is triggered by a page being on an Intranet and thus render a page differently in a development environment to a live environment (unless the developer knows to look out for it).

I will be dubious about the standards mode blacklist, at least until I see it in practice.

However, I’m not going to join those who complain about IE8 failing to meet ACID3.

When IE6 came out, it was the best browser on the market. It blew the socks off the competition and dominated the market.

Microsoft rested on its laurels.

Time passes and rivals to IE6 crop up, eventually spurring Microsoft into action. Along comes IE7 - a massive improvement over IE6, but still lagging far behind the competition.

Along comes IE8 and it is, once more, fantastically better then IE7 at rendering pages.

It has a lot of dubious features, fluff, and an extremely dubious “compatibility mode”, but the ability to deal with standards conformant content is much better.

Since version 6, Internet Explorer has come a very long way on the web standards path. There is still a long way to go, but I’m not going to condemn it for lagging behind the competition when it is surely moving forwards.