image alt tag issue

Can we affect the tool-tip display time?

[fintan]

Hi I was just wondering is their away to extend the amount of time an alt tag has to display its text.
Thanks.

fintan.

[Brett_Tabke]

Yes, use the title attribute. Alt tags as popups are only shown in a few browsers and is by some accounts, against the standards. The title attribute is/has become more universal:

<img src="foo.gif" alt="foo" title="Visit the foo page">

Mozilla and Opera do not show alt tags as popups, but they do/can show title tags as popups per user prefs.

[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 12:47 pm (utc) on Aug. 20, 2002]

[Sinner_G]

Alt is only shown in a few browsers and is by some accounts, against the standards.

W3C [w3.org] says alt tag is required.

[Brett_Tabke]

I mean it is against the standards to "popup" an ALT tag as a tooltip. Yes an alt tag is required.

[txbakers]

It is required for imageless-browsers to read them. I think it was a error to make them popup with a tool-tip type help. The popup is just an added feature.

[fintan]

I checked Dreamweaver MX reference guide and it doesn't have it under (img) attributes. I was the W3C website and I couldn't find any kind of attribute corrisponding to the (img) element. Its a new one on me. Please explain what "title" does & mean. I tried it and it does work. Also it lasts for 1 or 2 secs longer but it still doesn't solve my problem. On average they both last 5 secs but I need them to last at least 10-20. Thanks for your help.

fintan.

[Brett_Tabke]

html 4.0 img tag docs [w3.org] and then click on title. (btw: hover over that link).

[Sinner_G]

Just a wild thought, but couldn't you do that with a layer that would be visible on MouseOver?

Not sure you can time that, though.

[fintan]

You see I have this image which I sliced in fireworks and made rollovers for it as a kind of highlight, so some parts would stand out on rollover then I added alt for a description of each part of the image. Now the client says that the description doesn't last long enough. So I need an alternative. Could it be done in css or javascript. Or maybe something else. The (alt) & (title) don't last long enough.

[Brett_Tabke]

I don't think there is a way you can set that. As long as the mouse remains still over the image, it is on the screen. Mine disappears in IE the second I leave the image.

[Knowles]

I mine disappears after a few secs in Mozilla 1.1, but its plenty of time to read something short. How many words are in this?

[papabaer]

The alt and title attributes are meant to provide "snippets" of information, not paragraphs. If you use them as intended, the amount of display time will be more than adequate. If the information is more than a short sentance, it needs to be included in the visible portion of your page, not "stuffed" into an alt or title attribute.

[Sinner_G]

If there is that much text, I would make a layer which show on mouseover, then the user has as much time as he/she wants to to read the content.

[fintan]

There is no browser issue since the work is for an internal intranet site and all the clients machines have IE5+ . I could do it in fireworks as part of the rollover but it would be very messy if you take into account that there is already a rollover in place. I know the (alt) is not ment to be used in this way but it was the simplest way to do it at the time.

[fintan]

Oh and there is a least a paragraph in each.

[BlobFisk]

If there is a paragraph of text you should consider using a layer that pop's up on the mouseover state. You can customise the look and feel of it to suit your sites design too.

[fintan]

Are we talking about html layers or fireworks layers.

[rewboss]

A whole paragraph, eh?

That's way too much for a title or an alt text. I suppose there might be a way in MSIE, hidden somewhere in JScript or VBScript, to affect the timing of such things, but I doubt it.

Once you get to more than six or seven words, this really isn't the way to do it.

[Iguana]

You can use a <DIV> in onmouseover and onmouseout- using setTimeout to simulate the delay before it pops up and disappears. You can make this DIV any size you want and fill it with any content.

It's very fiddly because you have to work out if the DIV would cross over the boundaries of the frame/window and position it accordingly. Also if you have a <SELECT> list in the way then that will show though the DIV

[fintan]

I'm trying this with layers but my scripting knowledge is limited. The page is basically a popup with one large image "the image is a scanned image of a form" sliced up and blue boxes being the rollovers highlighting the images underneath. Now the (alt) gave a description of the image but it didn't last long enough. Is there an easy way to do this or am I in for the long hall?
I got a few scripts of tutorials sites on how but there very script heavey.

[BlobFisk]

Fintan, good to 'meet' another Irish person on WebmasterWorld!

Is your page comprised of frames or is it one single document?

Dynamic Drive have a simple information pop-up box that appears over links that you could use (http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex5/popinfo.htm [dynamicdrive.com]) - would this do it for you?

[fintan]

No its a single page. I would like to keep it that way. I know frames would solve the problem. From a functionality point of view it would be easy to implement but from a cosmectic point of view it wouldn't look the best.

[fintan]

Worked a treat thanks.

fintan.