4354 - No user feedback for missing images given / Bad feedback

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(Core :: Layout, defect, P3)

Description

[cpratt]

Go to a URL that's missing images at the target locations specified in the
document. (I've provided a URL). On Windows, there is no visual indication that
there are images not being displayed by the browser. On Mac OS and Linux, tiny
grey dots (?) are displayed where the images would be. Expected result: we show
the 'no image available' image (cf. Nav 4.51).

Comment 1

[don]

Re-assigned to [e-mail] and changed component to Layout.

Troy, is this one for your team or somebody else in Gecko?

Comment 2

[troy]

There are several parts to this explanation.

First, see bug #1994 for what should happen when a replaced element, e.g., an
IMG element, can't be rendered. The ALT text should be displayed as the content
instead. We don't fully suppport this yet (hence bug #1994 is still open),
but even if we did because the IMG elements in this example don't have any ALT
text it's reasonable that nothing would be displayed. See the HTML 4 spec for
details

Second, the reason you're not seeing a broken image is because there are no
width/height tags specified for the IMG element. See bug #2534 for a discussion
of this case

Comment 3

[cpratt]

Hm. Well, I do disagree with you on this one; the 'broken image' that shows in
all other Web browsers is very useful from a user perspective for various
reasons. I strongly believe that we should put up some sort of broken image icon
whenever we can't display something, or at least give some kind of user
feedback. But that's not my decision to make. Marking verified wontfix.

Comment 4

[troy]

Just so it's clear. The only reason the broken image isn't being displayed is
because no width/height attribute was specified, and hence there's no room in
which to display the broken image. The reason we don't "make room" to display
the broken image and alt-text is because that would change the appearance of
the page

Anyway, the correct thing to do, which we don't do yet but will, is to display
the value of the ALT text instead. If there is no ALT text we display the image
filename (minus the extension). This is per the HTML 4 spec, and it's something
that IE and Comm 4.5 don't do, but it's the correct thing to do never the less

Comment 5

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

Regarding the comment on user feedback for broken images, see the suggestion
in bug 6211.

Regarding "the 'broken image' that shows in all other Web browsers", please
note that Lynx also uses the "alt" text to render broken images (where in
this case, broken images really means all images).

For all other image alternative text issues, see bug 5764.

Comment 6

[cpratt]

my apologies for the "all other browsers" comment - that should read
"Communicator and IE". lynx is doing the right thing according to the HTML 4
spec - the alt tag text should be used where the image can't be displayed.

Comment 7

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

This bug is one of many related to alternate text of images. All these bugs
have been marked. To find related bugs, search the description field for the
string "[ALT]".