IE8 and Alt tags for Images

[Michael]

I have several websites that were built using Front Page 2003, for example
http://www.oradour.info and all the images have 'Alt' tags set to give
additional information.

When I view the site using IE8, the Alt Tag text does not display, when I
press the Compatibility View button, the text displays correctly.

I would not have thought that there should be any compatibility issues here
and that the Alt Tag text should show normally, am I missing something?

Any advice welcomed, or even suggestions as to where to ask the question
.............. Michael

 

[C A Upsdell]

I have several websites that were built using Front Page 2003, for example
http://www.oradour.info and all the images have 'Alt' tags set to give
additional information.

When I view the site using IE8, the Alt Tag text does not display, when I
press the Compatibility View button, the text displays correctly.

I would not have thought that there should be any compatibility issues here
and that the Alt Tag text should show normally, am I missing something?

The ALT text should appear only if its image does not. I suspect that
you want text to appear when the cursor points to the image, and for
that you should be using the TITLE attribute, not the ALT attribute.

 

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[Michael]

You learn something everyday. I had never heard of the TITLE attribute and
had no need of it with IE7, as this allowed the text to appear when the mouse
was pointed towards the image.

Thank you for the advice ............ Michael

 

[C A Upsdell]

You learn something everyday. I had never heard of the TITLE attribute and
had no need of it with IE7, as this allowed the text to appear when the mouse
was pointed towards the image.

The problem, as I hope you have now discovered, is that the ALT
behaviour you were used to is incorrect, and always has been: IE has
supported TITLE for a long, long time, but continued to make ALT work as
you expected, in order to maintain compatibility with extinct browsers.

 

[gophigure]

This seems sporadic. One of my websites shows the "alt" text and one does
not. Both were built using the "alt" tags. I don't understand why one works
and one doesn't.

 

[C A Upsdell]

This seems sporadic. One of my websites shows the "alt" text and one does
not. Both were built using the "alt" tags. I don't understand why one works
and one doesn't.

DOCTYPES maybe? What modes are the sites rendered in? A site in quirks
mode would likely show the ALT text on hover; a site in standards mode
should not do so.

 

[crymealake]

Quickly add title and alt attributes

I noticed that image tooltips were missing in IE8 and Firefox for all web pages I had designed. I then realised I had only specified alt attributes instead of title attributes!

Having a portfolio of hundreds of Web pages, I was faced with the time-consuming task of adding title attributes to applicable images. Thankfully I stumbled upon a Windows application called Alt&Title that did this tiresome task for me!

Instead of spending hours manually adding title attributes, Alt&Title did it for me in minutes.

Give it a go. I hope you find it as useful as I have!

Here is the web page promoting it...

http://www.flysoftware.com/products/altandtitle/overview.asp