Alt Text using iWeb?

[netdog]

I did a search and was surprised not to find a thread on this.

Does anybody know if it is possible to have alt-text associated with images in pages produced by iWeb? It's making me a little nuts.

[Mitou]

Color me stupid but I am not sure what you mean by alt-text.

[design-is]

Originally Posted by Mitou

Color me stupid but I am not sure what you mean by alt-text.

Alt Tags

I'm afraid I'm not familiar with iWeb though...

[SrWebDeveloper]

Possibly a stupid question, but WTF...

I was wondering, and this is on subject, does iWeb have a means of producing (or testing for compliance via validation) 508 Accessibility compliant code? This is mostly about government web sites and of course I realize iWeb is marketed for personal development. I don't own iWeb, but the thought came to me. This question refers to web pages being easily accessible to those with hearing and visual impairments as well as guidelines on related issues. So whoever answers the ? about the alt text, please be so kind to address basic 508 support or not in iWeb as well.

-jim

[netdog]

I just want some ALT-TEXT primarily for the search engines and the occasional user who doesn't load graphics for whatever reason.

[angelwatt]

From some Google searching I found a few references that say iWeb does support doing that, but they were all from 2007 so not sure if it continues to be true. It would be trivial for Apple to add the functionality. Here's a paper talking about how iWeb doesn't meet accessibility.

At the moment the only way I see to add the alt text is to publish the site to a folder first then edit to code by hand. I don't have iWeb on the machine I'm sitting at, but have it at home and will see if I can find any other solutions.


Edit: I got around to trying iWeb and couldn't find any support for alt text. The only way to do it is either by manually editing the code after publishing, or adding the images to the page with HTML Snippet and adding the alt attribute manually. Such a shame for Apple to make such a stupid problem.

[SrWebDeveloper]

Thanks so much, angelwatt, for your research and the link.

Manually edit them in? These days even in WYSIWYG editors for content management in web sites, such as FCKEditor, eWebEditPro, Tabula, etc., there are optional fields for alt-text and basic 508 compliance when inserting images, etc. Jeesh.

As the article noted in the link you sent me, the author considers iWeb to be a "non-professional" tool just as I said it was marketed for personal development. Meanwhile in the Getting Started PDF for iWeb in the About iWeb section it refers to the app creating "professional-looking" web pages. Note the careful language, professional "looking" - certainly not professional by the standards that exist for developers to follow and for good reason.

Yeah, yeah, I know -- iWeb has its target audience and that's that.

-jim

[netdog]

I am their target audience, and it is just crappy that they don't support Alt Text.

[bharatshah]

This is about as far as I could get with trying to insert Alternate Text on a Mac. It seems to me that indeed, there is a way for the Mac users to insert Alternate Text at least in their Pages documents. It is pretty simple. I could not make it work on the iweb, though. Maybe someone else can take us further?

Type the regular text to which you want to add Alternate Text
Type the alternate Text elsewhere on the page
Select the Alternate Text
From the Insert menu, select Hyperlink > Bookmark
Now, select the regular text
Select Insert > Hyperlink > Enable Hyperlink
From the Link To, select Bookmark
The box URL changes to Name, and offers choices
Select from that, the alternate text you want
Note that the regular text has turned blue, and the curser changes into a hand
Hold the curser over the regular text
The familiar yellow box containing the alternate text appears.

[Giovannino]

Try this: RAGE iWeb SEO Tool

From the description on the site:
"Easily change title tags, meta tags and alternate image text to help improve search engine rankings"

http://www.ragesw.com/products/iweb-seo-tool.html

[bharatshah]

Thanks Giovannino. I downloaded the free program, but it doesn't let me insert the alt text in the text part of the page. It deals with the graphics. I will keep trying.

[netdog]

Originally Posted by bharatshah

Thanks Giovannino. I downloaded the free program, but it doesn't let me insert the alt text in the text part of the page. It deals with the graphics. I will keep trying.

Hi. I am the OP of this thread. Isn't that what ALT TEXT is for? To provide a label of what the graphic is, or what information it conveys, for users who choose not to load graphics? I haven't tried this program yet, but I assume that it does exactly that, and that is a great find. Many thanks to Giavannino for providing the link!

[SrWebDeveloper]

Let me explain this fully (I deal with accessibility issues for a government website where such things are a matter of law, not just best practice):

Normally in most WYSIWYG editors you highlight text to make into a hyperlink, a dialog pops up asking you for the URL as well as the alt text for accessibility compliance. It is a best practice to do so, always.

Alt text refers to the "alt" attribute in the img tag, intended to describe the graphic and its purpose when graphics are disabled or when users use screen readers or other devices intended to assist them if disabled.

<img src="usflag.gif" alt="Picture of an American flag waving..." border="0">

If you want to devote an entire web page to describe the image, i.e. the text is too long to fit into an alt attribute, use "longdesc" instead although not supported on all browsers and usually unecessary if you ask me:

<img longdesc="image1_desc.html" src="image1.gif" border="0">

If you want to use alt text for a text based hyperlink, you can do this as well. In such a situation, the alt text is a "functional link" meaning it's shown in screen readers for the visually impaired as "Select here to continue to my home page..." instead of a hyperlink text which might say "click here to continue". Links with "click" in the text technically are non-compliant as not everyone uses a mouse to click, so either change to select or use select in a title or alt tag:

<a href="mypage.html" title="Select this link to visit my page...">Visit my page</a>

Use title in the anchor tag instead of alt in the image tag when linking an image. You can also use both, but most people do the former.

Welcome to the Land of Confusion! 508 is a headache, folks. The fact iWeb doesn't support 508 is, as I hinted at earlier, pathetic.

-jim

[angelwatt]

Originally Posted by netdog

Isn't that what ALT TEXT is for?

I think bharatshah is using a different definition of 'alt text' than the rest of us. SrWebDeveloper did a good job describing what most people refer to as alt text and that bharatshah is likely referring to the title tag on links. bharatshah may also be referring to some technique that will switch out text for other text when the mouse hovers over it, but less likely. I couldn't follow bharatshah's instructions for iWeb, but it sounds the results would have been accomplishing a title attribute for some text.

[SrWebDeveloper]

If they mean a rollover or swap effect as a result of an onMouseOver and onClick event, I've never heard it referred as "Alt text".

Here is a popular DHMTL trick that simulates alt text browser behavior, but of course looks much nicer, you can control and customize the content and look very easily:

http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamici...tmltooltip.htm

For the record, the above is commonly referred to as a tooltip or popup information dialog box, or words to that effect.

Beyond that, not a clue what the other poster meant either! But we sure as heck covered the most common possibilities so the OP will respond and let us know, I guess.

-jim

[netdog]

<img src="filename.gif" alt="Alternative description goes here">

[SrWebDeveloper]

This thread is now starting to repeat itself!

[netdog]

Sorry. I was the OP. I was just looking for a tool to recreate the markup above in iWeb files. Looks like I found it. That was always known as ALT TEXT back in the day of simple HTML. Don't know what it is known as now. Probably as ALT TEXT?

[SrWebDeveloper]

If you mean the alt attribute in an img tag, yep, it's called alt text (short for alternate text) as mentioned by others, earlier. Here is the official documentation on it from W3C, the folks who recommend, test and create the standards for HTML and other web related development.

Glad you got it all worked out. Cheers.

-jim

[bharatshah]

I don't know whether I inadvertently opened up another thread. Sorry about that. This is the problem I have:

I am running a free website (www.myindiaheritage.com) to teach Gujarati, Hindi, Sanskrit languages from India to Indian 2nd generation born and brought up in the USA. I want to type the matter in an Indian language, and want its English translation or pronunciation appear in the yellow box, when one mouses over the original text. I refer to the yellow box text as "Alternate Text", as advised by someone more knowledgeable. My earlier post described how I managed to do that in a Pages document, but that did not work on the website. Can someone help me with that, in the least technical terms?

[angelwatt]

Originally Posted by bharatshah

I don't know whether I inadvertently opened up another thread. Sorry about that. This is the problem I have:

I am running a free website (www.myindiaheritage.com) to teach Gujarati, Hindi, Sanskrit languages from India to Indian 2nd generation born and brought up in the USA. I want to type the matter in an Indian language, and want its English translation or pronunciation appear in the yellow box, when one mouses over the original text. I refer to the yellow box text as "Alternate Text", as advised by someone more knowledgeable. My earlier post described how I managed to do that in a Pages document, but that did not work on the website. Can someone help me with that, in the least technical terms?

That would be a different topic than this thread. I advise creating a new thread, or better yet, click on the red and white triangle icon at the left of your post and ask the admins to move your post into a new thread. Off hand I'm not sure if you'll be able to accomplish what you want with iWeb, at least not easily. Also, as SrWebDeveloper mentioned, the effect you want is more commonly referred to as a tool tip, rather than alternate text.