Alt Tooltip Frenzy

November 9, 2004 8:01 AM

If you want to use Firefox but still want the alt text for web images to appear when you hover the mouse pointer over them, then you want this.
posted by Pretty_Generic (28 comments total)

of course, there is no reason for a plugin to display alt tags, because your title tags are already displaying just fine.
posted by quonsar at 8:14 AM on November 9, 2004

Well, this is something for people who want to see websites as their author intends them to appear, rather than how they'd look under a strict interpretation of the W3C guidelines.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 8:25 AM on November 9, 2004

Hey, there's a Mongolian language pack for Winamp!
posted by muckster at 8:27 AM on November 9, 2004

Then maybe the author should learn how to.. author properly? You have alt tags and title tags for a reason.
posted by SiW at 8:30 AM on November 9, 2004

Yeah, but they haven't learnt to author properly. It would be great if they would. But they won't. So this is a good thing.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 8:31 AM on November 9, 2004

*head explodes*
posted by 10sball at 8:32 AM on November 9, 2004

Thanks P_G, I've been too lazy to look for one of these for, oh, a few months now.
posted by sciurus at 8:36 AM on November 9, 2004

Can anyone else not access any of the mozilla sites?
posted by zelphi at 8:47 AM on November 9, 2004

Yes, they're completely swamped.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 8:48 AM on November 9, 2004

Maybe instead of hosting one page for them, they should mirror the whole site?
posted by zelphi at 8:49 AM on November 9, 2004

You can get Firefox 1.0 here.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 8:50 AM on November 9, 2004

Wow, they took that down quick.

For the confused, google had a firefox branded page up until I linked to it...bah...

On preview: That's where I'm getting it Pretty_Generic, but it sucks that people who hear about the browser the first time today won't be able to get it.

When is that NY Times ad coming out? Is that today too?
posted by zelphi at 8:52 AM on November 9, 2004

zelphi, looks like that page is still there.
posted by kenko at 8:55 AM on November 9, 2004

kenko: When I checked it 5 minutes ago it was giving me a 404 error.

I'm going to shut up.
posted by zelphi at 9:02 AM on November 9, 2004

I didn't have any trouble getting it here multiple times today.
posted by rushmc at 9:06 AM on November 9, 2004

Yeah, the Firefox release is hitting their servers hard.

Obligatory bittorrent:

http://firefoxfah.sourceforge.net/fftorrent/
posted by KirkJobSluder at 9:21 AM on November 9, 2004

Try their ftp servers.

Cause, needless to say, if you can't grab it RIGHT FUCKING NOW...well, why are we fighting the terrorists?
posted by 327.ca at 9:30 AM on November 9, 2004

Well, this is something for people who want to see websites as their author intends them to appear, rather than how they'd look under a strict interpretation of the W3C guidelines.

Hmmm.... Funny, but when I intend a title to appear, I use a TITLE attribute. Doing this via ALT attributes is merely a convention.

Also, the ALT and TITLE attributes have different functions. The ALT tag is meant to take the place of an image; the TITLE tag is meant to enhance it. They're not the same thing. Consider a use case: Suppose we have a clickable graphic for a menu option. As an ALT attribute, we would want to use the text of the button; as a TITLE attribute, we might want to use a description of what the button does. In IE, in the case of a broken image, the ALT attribute would display, and the TITLE attribute would take precedence over the ALT in the popup. In Moz or Firefox, the ALT attribute would never pop up (without an add-in like this).

In fact, I've always regarded the fact that IE pops up ALT attributes as a major pain in the ass. It means, by implication, that I have to leave empty ALT attributes or remove ALT attributes from most of the images that I use, because if I don't, IE users are going to get fscking popups all over the fscking place. And I sure as hell don't "intend" that.

Now, as for whether they'll ever learn to "author properly" or not -- who gives a good goddamn whether they do or not? I only care whether *I* do. And if I do things the way that I've described above, everyone will be happy.
posted by lodurr at 10:01 AM on November 9, 2004

lodurr, most web authors are not as knowledgeable as you. When people use the alt tag, they usually want a tooltip. It's a mistake, but since it is such a common one, it's good that this plugin exists.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 10:13 AM on November 9, 2004

I thought one of the things people hated about IE is that it let HTML monkeys get away with mistakes.
posted by bondcliff at 10:33 AM on November 9, 2004

What happens if an image has both ALT and TITLE attributes? Hopefully the TITLE still has precedence for the tool-tip as that is what it is intended for.
posted by Monk at 11:44 AM on November 9, 2004

Yes, that's what happens Monk
posted by Pretty_Generic at 11:55 AM on November 9, 2004

So, to upgrade, can I just install over 1.0PR or will that screw with my settings, extensions, and so on?

Apologies for the snarkiness above. 1.0 is much bigger news to me than the title tag, and I didn't see the point of the post. I do now.
posted by muckster at 12:12 PM on November 9, 2004

Now if the Mozilla project could fix it so that title tags display in full, rather than shortened versions when they don't fit in the box, then I'd be really happy.
posted by kerplunk at 12:20 PM on November 9, 2004

muckster-

Uninstall 1.0PR first. I didn't and now I can't get 1.0 to work properly at all. It just killed my profile and keeps timing out whenever I try to access anything with a new profile.
posted by karmaville at 1:08 PM on November 9, 2004

On the other hand, I installed right over 1.0PR (which I had installed right over 0.9), and it works just fine. YMMV, but it never hurts to be safe, I guess.
posted by rushmc at 2:04 PM on November 9, 2004

kerplunk, amen to that.
posted by quonsar at 2:52 PM on November 9, 2004

Have they fixed the runaway memory hog behavior in Windows? Or the fact that the whole app slows to a glacial crawl while it's writing downloads to disk?

And what is it with the guys on the Firefox team, that they've never seemed to be able to get an installer to work properly? Never seemed to be a problem for Mozilla...
posted by lodurr at 3:33 AM on November 10, 2004