Dream Tags
Last night I had an honest-to-Pete dream about an addition to the HTML spec. Yes, I dreamed that hyperlinks had ALT metadata. You could have a tag like:
<a href=”http://www.somewhere.com/page.html” ALT=”Archived version of article”>
If you hover over a link, you’re shown the ALT text, just as when you hover over an image. This would be occasionally useful when you don’t want to muck up your text with metadata (e.g., you want to have a link that just says “Next”) and might enable some apps to do interesting things with the metadata. It’d be especially useful as a “tool tip” when you’re walking through a process (e.g., a “Go” button that tells you “Pressing this will submit the name you just entered and will take you to the next step where you’ll press your butt against the scanner”).
I am 100% confident that this idea either exists or was rejected for good reasons; you can already use REL to specify the relationship between the link and the target and TYPE to state the nature of the target, but browsers don’t treat these like ALT tags. Anyway, I was merely a vehicle for this dream and am not responsible if the ideas contained within are old, stupid or stolen.
So, what do you make of that, Dr. Freud?
Categories: Uncategorized dw
Try the title attribute. It does exactly what you want on many, but not all, browsers. The intention of the tag is that it do what you want, but not everyone has implemented it. Still, enough have that it’s worth using.
Ok, the following link uses the title attribute to give a secret message: Google. Let’s just see if it works in your browser! (It works in IE6. Cool!)
The link pops up a tool tip in IE 5.1 and Mozilla 1.2.1 on the Mac. Opera 5 and 6 on the Mac display the title attribute in the status bar at the bottom of the window rather than as a tool tip, except that your comment window has no status bar, so the title doesn’t display. It would on your main page, though. Netscape 4.75, not surprisingly, ignores the whole thing. This is all running on Mac OS 9.1.
It works in Chimera on OS X.
By the way, href is now ubiquitous (as of the XHMTL 2.0 draft spec), so there are probably about a million (theoretical) ways to get that information across now. Of course, it’ll be a while before we see XHTML 2.0-compliant browsers. :-)
Sorry Dave,
but from a usability point of view this sucks. The link text SHOULD explain where you’re going. There really is no argument for hiding such information behind some bland, meaningless alternative like “next”.
So. Either the content of this tag is meaningful, in which case show it without making people do mouse work; or it isn’t, in which case don’t bother. I can’t think of a plausible intermediate case.
Phil, there are intermediate cases. Otherwise, we would never need Tool Tips for any menu item. Semi-hiding some info is a good way — IMO — to accommodate users with varying levels of skill and familiarity with the site.
(If we have ALT attributes that show text when you hover over an image, maybe we need an ALT attribute that shows an image when you hover over text :)
The “bookmarklet” option in Movable Type 2.51 (which I use to publish my Norwegian blog) automatically inserts the title attribute in a link when you blog a page. It uses the web page title, which in many cases can be a very handy piece of meta-info.
BTW David: I just read “Small Pieces”, which was a mindblowing experience. It was recommended to me by my girlfriend, who happens to be the Norwegian translator of the kid’s version of your web site. And oh, she’s just started her own blog. It’s in Norwegian, but the title “Andedam” means “Duck Pond”. Loosely joined, indeed. :-)
Eirik, thanks for the info and the compliment. Say hello to your girlfriend for me and wish her well on her blog.