163411 - Render ALT text as tooltip in Quirk Mode

Status: CLOSED DUPLICATE of bug 25537

(SeaMonkey :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Daniel Wang]

First, I must say I DO NOT *want* this. However, there are clearly
*needs* that we do this. We cannot expect every HTML authors out
there to start doing it the right way. The Web has many old pages
that are no longer being maintained but are still revelent to
people, and rendering them as the original authors intended is
essential to people's surfing experience.

Please, if we do add <marquee> support because there are needs
for it (and there are), we must render ALT text in Quirk Mode.

Comment 1

[Daniel Wang]

And just so that we do not encourage lame (X)HTML authors continue to
use /quirky/ features, I'll set this bug to be dependent on bug 155482
(and I think all quirky features, <marquee> included, should be
released into trunk builds only after bug 155482 is fixed, but don't
flame me on that :p ).

Comment 2

[Bamm Gabriana]

I understand that you do not want this, I just want to say that it is not even
needed.

I think ALT text should not be rendered as tooltips at all. It is much easier to
evangelize people to use TITLE for ALT than it is to use javascript for
<marquee>. I think evangelism can handle this problem with old sites.

In fact the contrary might be true. Supporting ALT as tooltips in quirks mode
may encourage web authors to use it in future sites. The costs may outweigh the
benefits.

This should be wontfix.

Comment 3

[Jonas Jørgensen]

Quirks mode is for the minimum changes absolutely necessary for old pages to not
break. No page will break because you can't see the alternative text as a
tooltip. Verified WONTFIX.

Comment 4

[Peter Jacobi]

I'm very unhappy with the (non-)resolution of bug 163411

I just can't get it, why doctrine must win over usability.

- there is no standards compliance problem: when title is
present it should be clear that only the title attribute is
shown

- the affected pages (having only alt but not title attributes for
img) are (or can be, if not broken for other reasons) perfectly valid
HTML. So it's not a request to render broken pages

- giving the whole fuss a clear thought, it can be argued that the
question, which tooltips are displayed where and when, is not even
in the domain of the HTML REC, it's an application issue not totally
unlike other choices done in the browser's UI

- if you want to hide behind a configuration setting go ahead. what
about
If there's no 'title' for an image, show as tooltip:
[ ] nothing
[ ] URL of image
[ ] size of image
[ ] alt attribute

And for the reason, why this is to be done, I'll quote the 
competition (no, the other one):

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=38425&cid=4113817

Comment 5

[Peter Jacobi]

Jonas, All,

Take a look at:
http://www.fwtwr.com/fwtwr/puerto_rico/184game.htm
(and compare using a browser which shows tooltips)

This page is effectively broken when the alt tooltips 
aren't displayed, as they give vital information about
all items on the game board.

And yes, I contacted the author, and he was even positive 
about changing, but has a big practical problem about out it,
because the pages are generated by a program he cannot easily
update. And the pages are generated too often for hand changing.

BTW: Does anybody has XSLT for duplicating the alt attribute of
all img elements into a title attribute?

Comment 6

[Jonas Jørgensen]

reopening to mark dupe

Comment 7

[Jonas Jørgensen]

marking dupe

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 25537 ***

Comment 8

[Jonas Jørgensen]

verified dupe

Peter Jacobi: I will reply to your comments in that bug.

Comment 9

[Alex Hosking]

This isnt a dupe, Is it?

Comment 10

[Daniel Wang]

Doesn't matter. This issue is still wontfix.

Comment 11

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

it doesn't matter but please don't use "closed" :-)