The alt attribute is NOT for tooltips

I’m am so tired of the never-ending misunderstanding of the alt attribute versus the title attribute.

IE’s harm on the world

Internet Explorer up to version 7 incorrectly displays the value of the alt attribute as a tooltip when you hover an image. This has led to numerous web developers thinking that alt is supposed to be used for tooltips, and has in turn led to customers, managers et al believing so too, hence incorrectly using the term for when they want a tooltip displayed.

There are still hundreds of thousands of web pages out there built on that the alt attribute will act as the tooltip. These will only work in Internet Explorer, not in Firefox, Safari, Opera or any other web browser.

The alt attribute - how it should be

Start by reading the W3C specification:

Several non-textual elements (IMG, AREA, APPLET, and INPUT) let authors specify alternate text to serve as content when the element cannot be rendered normally.

The name of the attribute, alt, is short for alternate. That means it should be display if the image fails to load, not otherwise.

The true tooltip attribute - title

If you want do display a tooltip, you should instead use the title attribute. That will work for basically any element in a web page, too, not just image elements.

Microsoft has backed down

With Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft has finally backed down, acknowledged this as a bug, and fixed it. So for anyone depending on the alt attribute, you need to reconsider, since that will not even work in IE 8.

The difference, once again

The alt attribute is there as an alternative to the image.

Tooltips, via the title attribute, is there to complement what you see.

Got it? Please, please say yes!