28822 - The alt tag is not used with area.

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 8131

(Core :: Layout, defect, P3)

Description

[Marc Gueury]

When I use an image map, that I defines area(s) I do not see the alternate
text (alt) as I move the cursor on the image.

Testcase Step by step
---------------------
1) Go on the URL: http://aurora.portage.k12.oh.us/
2) Move with the mouse on the image. There is no yellow tooltip.
   Compare this with Netscape 4.7 and IE 5.0

Platform
--------
Mozilla build 13 on Microsoft NT/SP5

Here is the description of W3C: (HTML 4.01)
-------------------------------------------
The MAP element content model allows authors to combine the following:

1.One or more AREA elements. These elements have no content but specify the 
geometric regions of the image map and the link associated with each region. 
Note that user agents do not generally render AREA elements. Therefore, authors 
must provide alternate text for each AREA with the alt attribute (see below for 
information on how to specify alternate text).

Comment 1

[Sean Richardson]

This looks like a cousin of bug 19425, "'title' of AREA elements should appear 
as tooltip in image map".

Quoting from bug 1995:
 > - Additional Comments From py8ieh=[e-mail]  2000-02-08 14:12 -
 > I was referring to the 'title' attribute causing a tooltip to appear in IE4 
 > and above. (Nav4 does this for the 'alt' attribute, which is wrong but is 
 > basically the same idea.)

That said, the spec does require an ALT attribute for each <AREA>, and I would
have hoped for some access to that data inline on the page, not elsewhere. 
If that can't happen, having ALT show as a tooltip like TITLE would be better
than nothing. But that would leave the issue of unloaded <MAP> images...

Saving the URL to a file and opening that file defeats the image load for the 
<MAP>, but the ALT text for the <AREA>s is not made available in its place. 
Simple text links like _Community_ would be far more useable than the big empty 
rectangle that shows now.

Tooltips will arrive sometime after the first beta, see bug 12057, "[FEATURE] 
Partial tooltips hookup", P1, M15.

Confirming this bug on the simplest level: right now the user has no access of
any kind to the mandatory ALT text for <AREA> in imagemaps.
Tested with 2000-02-22-08-M14 nightly binary on Windows NT 4.0

Comment 2

[Sean Richardson]

Ah, bug 8131, "Behaviour of image maps with broken images", applies here.
It seems that inline presentation of the <AREA> alt text will not happen for 
5.0.

For that reason, the 4xp behaviour, making the ALT text appear in a tooltip,
while not adhering to the spec, would be better than no access to it at all.

Comment 3

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

This is a DUP of 8131. For FCS (first release) we should be showing the alt
attribute in the place of the image, but we will be doing this in an image
frame, pretty much like IE does it, instead of inline. The alt text should be 
visible. Add yourself to bug 8131 if you want to make sure this happens...


*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 8131 ***

Comment 4

[Chris Petersen]

Marking verified dup of 8131.