Talk:Alt attribute

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[edit] Duplicate page

There is another page with content similar to this article: Alt text

Alan Pascoe 22:33, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Empty alt attributes

The most recent change:

once again, purely decorative images outside of CSS are inappropriate, so whether or not empty alt is appropriate for them is irrelevant

Given that the use of decorative images in HTML is very widespread, it is by no means "irrelevant" to discuss what the appropriate alt attribute value is for them. And no, CSS isn't powerful enough to replace all use of decorative images yet, so don't suggest that.

Consider this: an illustration to accompany a paragraph of text is desired. This illustration is not required to understand the topic at hand. The paragraph already has a background image. The illustration must affect the line boxes so that the text remains legible and the illustration is not obscured.

This is an extremely common design pattern in web design, and it's impossible to achieve with pure CSS alone. No, generated content is not an option, it doesn't work in Internet Explorer, and even if it did, you can't generate more than one box with it, so you are screwed if you are already using generated content for something.

I'm putting the text about decorative images back in. It should remain in until such a time as CSS is powerful enough to generate boxes of its own accord, and even then it's not a slam-dunk.

--Bogtha