Alt Tags on Non-descript items

[scot184]

With SEO in mind, what type of alt tag can we really assign to menu borders and other non-descript items on a webpage? Do we really want the user to scroll over a border and see the words "border left" pop onto the screen?

What is the best solution around this with both SEO and customer satisfaction in mind?

Thanks.

[ADAM Web Design]

alt="" .

If it's not that important, at least people will know.

[DrTandem1]

Yes, you need at least a blank alt field to get the page to validate.

[scot184]

wow...that was simple...so the code should look exactly like so:

alt=""


Thanks again.

[ADAM Web Design]

You're welcome.

You may also wish to consider title="" for the Firefox types.

[Orion]

Don't confuse alt and title they have very different purposes.

In IE title will override alt for the tooltip. title was meant to provide additional information in the form of a tooltip, it can be used in images, links and form elements (and more).

Alt means alternative. It came out way back in the earlier days of HTML to provide a alternative for the images in non-graphical browsers. Speech browsers will also read the alt to the site visitor.

So, you might have alt="logo" title="My wonderful online business name". Alt should describe the image, title can give additional information to the site visitor.

Having said that alt="" is just perfectly fine and leave the title="" out you shouldn't have a blank title attribute.

Hope that helps a bit!

[Faglork]

Thanks Orion for clarifying. To expand a bit: ALT attributes can only be given to IMG, AREA, APPLET, and INPUT elements. See

http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/....html#adef-alt

for information on handling the ALT attribute.

The TITLE attribute can be assigned to all elements *except* BASE, BASEFONT, HEAD, HTML, META, PARAM, SCRIPT and TITLE. See

http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/...tml#adef-title

Which attributes can be assigned to which elements? There is an overview at

http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/index/attributes.html

hth,
faglork

[ADAM Web Design]

That's all well and good, but I've found that FF tends to ignore the ALT attribute and TITLE was the only way I saw to get around this.

I always thought it was because there was something wrong with ALT.

So like...wussupwitdat?

[Faglork]

Actually, it is the other way 'round. The TITLE attribute is meant to be shown as a tooltip (but afaik that's up to the UA - it is not required).

To show the ALT as tooltip is a bit awkward, because ALT is specifically intended for use in non-graphical environments - a tooltip would make no sense here.

However, IE will display TITLE if it exists, if not, will use ALT. FF will only show TITLE.


faglork