1] On my websites, I specify text in the ALT field of an <IMG tag so that, when the reader's mouse hovers over the image, the piece of text appears. This works OK in IE but nothing appears when I view the page with Firefox
Basically Old Hippyy's answer, but can I just repeat that this is an Explorer
error, that the text appears ('tooltip' is the usual name.).
The correct use of alt="some text" is that "some text" appears on your web page,
if the image cannot be found.IE should
not be showing the 'alt='- text as a tooltip.
There is another attribute,
title="some text" - This is the correct way to make a tooltip, and opera and firefox work correctly if you use title="some text"".
Another use of the 'alt=' attribute is
- search engines will index the text they find there. This is especially usueful when the file-name of the image doesn't say much about the image itself
- "page readers", which translate web pages to speech, for people with sight-deficiencies will read the alt-texts and translate them as well.
You can also use title="some text" on <input ...>, <table > and < href= ....>- tags.
Forms and tables are usually self-evident, but it might be handy to add some information to your links,
i.e. title="external link to .... , opens in new window/tab" etc.
Bob
