Firefox and "alt text"

Not supported?

[henry0]

Does FF support alt text
mine does not show any?
thanks

[schwartz]

I've not been able to get it to display alt text either.

[Farix]

That is because the "alt [w3.org]" attribute is not supposed to be displayed as a tool tip in accordance with the W3C recommendations. Use the more appropriate "title [w3.org]" attribute instead.

[schwartz]

Thanks, Farix.

[BigBadBurrow]

You can see the alt text if you rigth click on the image and go to 'properties'

[henry0]

Interesting
I will try “title” instead

But asides the W3 recommendation
Since SEO is widely concerned by “Alt”
How does title play with search engines
Thanks

[BigBadBurrow]

I was thinking this too.

I mean, would it be classed as spamming if you set title and alt to the same text? I dunno.

[Macguru]

>>How does title play with search engines

Next to nothing. I am not even sure it counts on any search engines. I use empty title attributes an descriptive alt attributes to avoid them to show on stubborn buggy browsers such as IE.

The title attribute is not used by many peoples, so why search egines should rely on it?

[Farix]

You should ask over in one of the SE forums. But I would guess that the "alt" attribute has little weight in SEO since "alt" is only there to describe the image but can be easily missused and abused for SE spamming.

[Macguru]

>>But I would guess that the "alt" attribute has little weight in SEO

That is true. On Google, they count only in links. Still, it's better than nothing. Google a classic example : "logo"
You will see a lot of reputables sites that has nothing to do with "logos". The alt attribute in the link bombed them there.

[mattur]

There's a "Popup ALT Attributes" extension available for Firefox (complete with extensive commentary on why this is completely, utterly and unforgiveably wrong - but damn useful anyway) at:

[extensionroom.mozdev.org...]

I use it - but don't tell anyone ;)

[Macguru]

Speaking of extensions. "web developper" extension will let you see everything about images. And that is only one of it's 11 menus.

Cant live without it, and "SearchStatus" Pagerank and Alexa side by side, plus a couple of SEO related gizmoes to boot.

Luv it! (dont tell my GF)

[Purple Martin]

To clarify:

You should use the alt attribute to describe an image for users who don't have images displayed. Always use it for content images so that people using screen readers don't miss important information contained in the image. Never use it for unimportant images that are just part of the page design, because users of screen readers don't want to hear endless "spacer gif, spacer gif, spacer gif..." put in a blank alt attribute thike this: alt="" instead. The purpose of this attribute was never to be used as a tool-tip but unfortunately IE incorrectly does this.

You should use the title attribute if you want to give the title of any element, images or otherwise. This should appear as a tool-tip in all browsers (including IE and Firefox). As mentioned above you can prevent IE from incorrectly displaying alt attributes as tool-tips by using title="" even if you don't need a title for that image.

---------------------------------

Examples of (what I consider to be) good use of these attributes:

<img src="graph.gif" alt="graph shows steady increase of widgets over time" title="Widgets Over Time" ...

<img src="photo.jpeg" alt="shaggy dog running along a beach" title="" ...

<img src="spacer.gif" alt="" ...

[henry0]

Thank you all!
Good info about "Alt" and "Title"

Regards

Henry