280587 - Remove text from image alt attributes in Help

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox Graveyard :: Help Documentation, defect)

Description

[Jeff Walden (gone starting June 8)]

When the user isn't connected to the Internet, images don't load.  They're
replaced by the contents of the alt attribute, which will always be present
because it's required in strict XHTML.  Unfortunately, the alt text isn't very
helpful right now.

There are a couple solutions.  We could leave the alt text as is, but the alt
text is useless, so Help becomes no better.  We could fix alt text to describe
the screenshot, but I don't think we can do it better than the text accompanying
the screenshots already does (or so I think -- people who actually can't use the
screenshots are more than welcome to comment).  I think the best bet is to
change the alt text for our screenshots to "" (or " ", or whichever's more
kosher).  Then it won't unduly interrupt the text when the user's not connected
to the Internet, and it won't be a completely useless bit of text for users who
can't use the images themselves.

Any thoughts on this before the 1.8 branch starts?  I want to get this in before
1.1 (barring any clueful suggestions to the contrary), so this needs to be done
before branch point.

Comment 1

[zmanji]

I think that the alt text should be replaced with " ", because alt text could
confuse the user and it isn't very useful. How ever if we switched to XML (I
think) we wouldn't have this problem.

In any case I think something should be done. Hopefully before the branch.

Comment 2

[Steffen Wilberg]

Yeah, let's use alt="" everywhere. We're already using it in a couple of places.
There's no use in e.g. customization.xhtml displaying the string "Theme Manager"
when you're offline and the image is not in the chache.

Comment 3

[zmanji]

Attachment: patch v1

a patch. review and checkin if good

Comment 4

[Steffen Wilberg]

Comment on attachment 178009 [details] [diff] [review]
patch v1

r=me.
I'm taking care of prefs.xhtml in bug 279506 however.

Comment 5

[Steffen Wilberg]

Depends on bug 279506 for the prefs.xhtml part.

Checking in the rest:
Checking in mozilla/browser/components/help/locale/en-US/customization.xhtml;
/cvsroot/mozilla/browser/components/help/locale/en-US/customization.xhtml,v  <--
 customization.xhtml
new revision: 1.16; previous revision: 1.15
done
Checking in mozilla/browser/components/help/locale/en-US/download_manager.xhtml;
/cvsroot/mozilla/browser/components/help/locale/en-US/download_manager.xhtml,v 
<--  download_manager.xhtml
new revision: 1.15; previous revision: 1.14
done
Checking in mozilla/browser/components/help/locale/en-US/using_firebird.xhtml;
/cvsroot/mozilla/browser/components/help/locale/en-US/using_firebird.xhtml,v 
<--  using_firebird.xhtml
new revision: 1.20; previous revision: 1.19
done

Comment 6

[Steffen Wilberg]

prefs.xhtml part fixed by bug 279506.