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Enabling alt-text pop ups

  • 4 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 40 views
  • Last reply by DenisT

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While I generally use Firefox, one of the features I find useful in Internet Explorer 8 is that "alt text" appears as a small popup on mouse-over. I've searched Firefox and Firefox Help to see if there was a feature that could be enabled for this, but have not found any references at all to alt-text. Can Firefox show "alt text"? If not, is there an add-on? If not, please submit this as a suggested feature to add in future releases.

While I generally use Firefox, one of the features I find useful in Internet Explorer 8 is that "alt text" appears as a small popup on mouse-over. I've searched Firefox and Firefox Help to see if there was a feature that could be enabled for this, but have not found any references at all to alt-text. Can Firefox show "alt text"? If not, is there an add-on? If not, please submit this as a suggested feature to add in future releases.

Chosen solution

title= was introduced later for images, and Firefox being the stickler for standards will show the title but not the alt="descriptive text"

The alt= is what shows if the image does not appear (no found, for instance),, it was/became a requirement because it supposedly would help blind people read the pictures -- that was dropped (there are better methods) and so was the requirement that alt= be always used. The two are not the same thing.

If you want to show Alt= in addition to titles there is an extension, it is messy and I believe one I tried placed a tooltip that couldn't be dismissed once you moused over it -- I'm sure it improved or others have done better. Anyone writing code now should certainly be using title.

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Chosen Solution

title= was introduced later for images, and Firefox being the stickler for standards will show the title but not the alt="descriptive text"

The alt= is what shows if the image does not appear (no found, for instance),, it was/became a requirement because it supposedly would help blind people read the pictures -- that was dropped (there are better methods) and so was the requirement that alt= be always used. The two are not the same thing.

If you want to show Alt= in addition to titles there is an extension, it is messy and I believe one I tried placed a tooltip that couldn't be dismissed once you moused over it -- I'm sure it improved or others have done better. Anyone writing code now should certainly be using title.

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Thanks for the info! I wasn't familiar with the alt= vs title= history. Not only did I find a plugin for the alt= at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/popup-alt-attribute/ but I have edited my own website using title= instead of alt= for my image-mapped labels. Very useful!

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You're welcome, I don't make global changes to my site that fast.

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It was one page that was giving me issues. The rest of my site will take a while longer. ;)