IE sets Alt-ernative standard

Posted in Spread IE by Elliott Back on November 19th, 2004.

Controversy and flame wars have erupted over this Firefox plugin which popups alt-text in Firefox when the image is moused over. According the the official W3C specification, it is the title attribute of an image, not alt, which is supposed to be displayed. But, since 90% of users with IE have seen their images happily display alt as a popup for years, alt as title is the new standard.

One commenter (#17, David) suggests that Firefox have an IE compatability mode:

It’s all very well one person re-programming their website, but what about the millions of other sites that haven’t been programmed properly? Life’s too short to worry about correct use of alt and title attributes. This plugin’s a god-send. Firefox should have it at least as a check-box option.

More at Neil’s World.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 19th, 2004 at 3:55 pm and is tagged with flame wars, firefox plugin, compatability, attribute, controversy, attributes, god, images. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.

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Anonymous 4 years ago 1 point
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Thank god for the "IE View" plugin in Firefox.

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adfkl 4 years ago 1 point
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Note that your blog is actually rendered in firefox's "Standards compliance mode"! Also, you might want to try the Firefoxview plugin for IE. Just go to mozilla.org and download firefox first and go to update.mozilla.org to download the plugin. Also, you might want to visit update.mozilla.org to see how well IE renders the page (hint...hint...PNG bug, CSS bug etc.)

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Sick of it all 4 years ago 1 point
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According the the official W3C specification, it is the title attribute of an image, not alt, which is supposed to be displayed.

The W3C spec says nothing of the sort. This is simply a case of a few self-righteous idiots reading what they think a sentence says and ignoring what it actually says.

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matty 3 years ago 1 point
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What's funny to me is -- WHO are you trying to convert? There's a distinct lack of "on the fence" users.

Those who don't care about their browsing experiences or are too naive to know better use IE.

Those who care about their browsing experiences or have lots of computer experience use something else. In fact, the more experience a user has, the more likely they don't run windows at all.

When experienced users of any kind of system do something, that's the thing to do. Most don't bash other options, they just ignore them.

I think the difference here is, computer professionals are frustrated by the work IE creates for them. IT people are sick of wasting time cleaning up spyware infections on users' PCs, so they badmouth the culprit, IE or the insecure OS.

Defending IE as something better than the alternatives is what we used to call "unlikely insistence" and my guess would be you're paid directly or indirectly to do it. Nothing else makes sense.

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elliottback 3 years ago 1 point
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I'm not trying to convert anyone. I'm simply (the only?) pro-IE advocate. I think that Internet Explorer is at least "as good" a solution as Firefox or other browsers, and is sufficient for the majority of users.

And, I receive no payment of any kind for maintaining this position, although it would be nice if I did!

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1 /people/elliottback/ /people/elliottback/following/

xXenXx 3 years ago 1 point
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Yes, it can be sufficient for others, but how many people that actually try Firefox go back to IE? And why waste resources running AntiVirus, and Pop-Up Blockers with IE, when you can get along fine without them using Firefox? I guess this has changed since, because you can now get Popup Blocking plugins for IE, but most people that use it in the first place are newbie computer users, and don't know that there is anything better.

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Phillip 3 years ago 1 point
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http://www.hixie.ch/advocacy/alt-tooltips

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http://pms.colonpee.com/

zh 3 years ago 1 point
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Yeah fuck you xXenXx! IE is far more better than some crap firefox! And yes, I have used it and went back to IE. And eventough you are using firefox, you still have to use antivirus, firewall and popup blockers, just as with IE. And yes, most newbies use IE, but ALSO people who really know coputers well. Firefox users are just guys who think they do, but they dont!

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Kouji 2 years ago 1 point
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Um zh... My dad programs computers and he doesn't even use IE... As soon as he heard about Firefox he abruptly changed and used FF. (I will abbrv. Firefox as FF) IE really really sucks, and it allows hackers to, of course, hack you. Firefox has the greatest anti-spyware, pop-up blocker, and anti-virus system around. I wouldn't even use IE, I used Netscape before FF. :)

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gajagan 1 year ago 1 point
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zh????

You must have some issues if you can't talk without swearing up a storm. Am surprised you eat with the same mouth as you speak form. IDIOT!

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