Image Alt and Title Attributes - javascript

I have a client who hates the tooltips shown in browsers by the alt and title attributes of images. They requested they be removed. Obviously this is an issue for both SEO and Accessibility.
While the accessibility thing is not a huge deal to me, the SEO factor is. My initial thoughts are to remove the alt and title attributes of the images with a quick JS script. Anyone see any issues with that?

The alt and title attributes are two different things.
The alt attribute is used for accessibility reasons and is required by the standards set by the W3C. In the United States, it's also part of the Section 508 laws and regulations. The alt attribute behaves poorly in older versions of Internet Explorer by showing it's contents via a tooltip. I know for a fact Internet Explorer 9 no longer has this behavior.
The title attribute is used to force the browser in to showing a tooltip with it's contents.
My advice to you is use the alt attribute exclusively instead of the title attribute. Advise your client to update their browser to a more standards compliant browser if a tooltip irks them that much.
Modern screen readers read the generated DOM. This means if you remove tags via JavaScript, you are not only invalidating your code after the fact, you are possibily hurting those who will visiting the site using assistive technology.
I highly recommend you don't do it.
More information
Target was sued and settled because of the alt attribute: http://www.sitepoint.com/target-settles-accessibility-lawsuit-for-6-million/
Because of this landmark case, it's safe to say that Section 508 DOES NOT only apply to federal and government websites.

If accessibility is not an issue, I see no issues using JavaScript to remove the content. Assuming you're OK with using jQuery, this is the easiest way in my opinion:
$(document).ready(function()
{
$('[title]').removeAttr('title');
});
You could also remove the title content in the onmouseover event and then add it back on the onmouseout event for the sake of SEO.

In vanilla JavaScript, you could use:
var images = document.getElementsByTagName('img');
for (i=0; i<images.length; i++){
images[i].removeAttribute('title');
images[i].removeAttribute('alt');
}
JS Fiddle demo.
Reference:
removeAttribute() at the Mozilla Developer Center.

You should consider if you want to remove these features only under certain circumstances. I experience a lot of similar ideas in daily business, because some people do not like to understand what certain things a good for, and maybe handle them by themselves ...
... which brings me to the idea to eventually add a Greasemonkey script, which provides the desired functionality instead of worsening the website by means of accessibility, etc. At least it should be an additionally configurable option, maybe by setting a cookie or stuff like that.
Maybe you can convince the client it is a better than getting rid of something, to allow to make everyone the choice for their own, and activate the default settings for best SEO and accessibility.

Related

How to check if browser supports pseudo-elements in javascript?

I'm developing a website that should run in ancient browsers (IE 7/8/9, Safari 5.1.7). Our target customer is the old people.
I'm no expert in javascript and I searched for solution. My title question is very straight-forward.
I used input radio and others that has custom design using before and after.
If it's checked. I just toggle in after and before display property in css.
The problem is when the user is using ancient browser, the input radio will never appear. My idea is toggle display in input radio if the browser doesn't support pseudo-elements.
For CSS feature detection there really is no need to reinvent the wheel, tools like Modernizr do this perfectly and have a very small footprint, since you can select only the feature detects that you need.
Seeing as you want to support IE <8, I would strongly advise you to use it, since you're probably going to run into a lot of situations where CSS/JS features are unavailable.
Detect if they have a sufficient browser: http://caniuse.com/#feat=css-gencontent
Basically, IE8 (maybe 9 depending on what you need) and older don't work, everything else does.
You may find the library Modernizr useful in this instance. It allows you to test for browser features.
Optionally if you want to shim it so you know that the browser will support it you can use Selectivizr

Modifying Form Elements in CKEditor

I apologize in advance for the generality of the question. There is a surprising lack of documentation or discussion about this. If someone can point me to some source on this topic it would be much appreciated.
I'm trying to create a CMS page where users can edit custom forms. I'm using CKEditor in a pretty simple HTML/JavaScript setup like the demo on their website http://ckeditor.com/demo#full
My problem is this - Form elements can be resized (and drag-and-dropped) in IE but not in Chrome or FireFox.
If anyone has any information on editing form elements in CKEditor please let me know about it.
Thanks
It's not related to CKEditor but to contenteditable in general, which, quite frankly, is not consistent in terms of implementation because it lacks standarisation. There's nothing you can do about it unless you implement that feature from scratch, which is not a good idea really, especially because I'm not quite sure that default behavior can be disabled.
The form elements resizing feature may be supported by the browser (e.g. IE) not by javascript code. So it's hard to make the feature available in Chrome or FireFox.

Download progress in HTML5

If I have 5 javascript files and each of different size and same with CSS, is it possible to show "real time" progress bar when scripts/css get downloaded?
I know this can't be possible in HTML4 and would require Flash/Silverlight. But can I achieve this in HTML5? If yes, how would I do it?
I want to show a text like "Downloading" and as each script/css get downloaded real time, each letter of Downloading should start filling up. I am not asking for any code. Just want a high level concept of how that is possible.
Thanks.
Here's what I've been able to come up with; In HTML5 there is a <progress> element that you may be able to use. The bad news is that support for this element isn't as good as it could be. See the support chart here: http://caniuse.com/#search=progress There's no support in Safari 5 and below or IE9 and below. Partial support is in IE10 and any relevant versions of FireFox. If you need more support try a polyfil like this one: http://lea.verou.me/polyfills/progress/
If you choose to use the <progress> element here's a link about how to style it: http://www.useragentman.com/blog/2012/01/03/cross-browser-html5-progress-bars-in-depth/
Now the trick about making this work, you'll need to know the file size of the file(s) you'll be downloading and the number of bytes downloaded. As the files are being downloaded you'll have to get the header info that tells you how many bytes are transferred. You can see a sample of how to do that with jQuery here: http://markmail.org/message/kmrpk7w3h56tidxs#query:jquery%20ajax%20download%20progress+page:1+mid:kmrpk7w3h56tidxs+state:results
Note that this method will not work with IE. IE does not expose the header data of the XHR object.
At this point set the max attribute of the <progress> element to the total file size and using the setTimeout sample, update the value attribute of the <progress> element.
Knowing all this, maybe finding some kind of package solution with a built-in Flash fallback might be much easier to implement, and have better support. Anyone else have any ideas?
Good luck.

How can I target jQuery mobile capable phones?

I've made a web-app using the jQuery Mobile framework for which I would like to provide a fall-back, for lower-spec phones.
My question is... what is the best way to target JQM-capablephones? I saw a similar question posted on the jquery forum. One of the answers suggested http://detectmobilebrowser.com/ which provides a long list of handsets.
Is this the best way, or should I be testing for browser-capabilities rather than actually targeting handsets. If it is the latter what feaures are considered to be 'Grade-A' featues?
Cheers
Progressive enhancement is what you should aim for, jQuery allows you to have a single codebase and have it work across the range of devices.
Consider this:
All links to other pages are regular html links, links will still work without AJAX support because they'd just send you to the location of the required page
All major framework elements are built around lists, links, and a few divs. No HTML5 required for rendering content
At the bare minimum, all phones can display a good amount of styling, allowing you to display the content no matter how capable
Do you have custom interfaces which wouldn't work at all without full support for jQuery mobile?
I agree that graceful degradation is the best solution. I would add that using the noscript tags is also a good way to provide graceful degradation by adding adding functionality via HTML for phones that have no support for JS.
I think it will be difficult to find a browser-capability (or even a set) that defines whether the phone will work with JQM. In my own experience I have used WURFL, an open source device detection library, that provides capability information. However I used it to target specific devices to include device specific CSS and remove all JS for other devices that I know do not support it (to remove the overhead of the JS being downloaded).
WURFL: http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/
JQM advertises that it provides graceful degradation:
Graceful Degradation: jQuery Mobile uses the very best HTML 5 and CSS 3 features to provide the best possible experience in the most-capable browsers. However we don’t consider this to be an all-or-nothing proposition: Less capable browsers will still receive the best possible experience that their platform can handle. They may not have all the gradients or fancy transitions of the best platforms but they’ll still be highly usable. The most basic browsers will easily degrade back to simplified HTML and CSS.
I have also tested multiple JQM pages in a single mobile page which work great (very speedy) in JQM but suffer from the same problem mentioned (all pages show up when javascript is turned off in the browser of a smart phone). To work around this issue, only use a single page per JQM page (you give up speed and uniform page transitioning though). In regards to the NOSCRIPT tag option, that tag is NOT universally recognized in all browsers. To work around that issue, you could try something like the following:
<div id="no-js">
<!-- Place HTML without javascript here -->
</div>
<div id="js">
<script language="javascript">
// place javascript here which would be ignored by browsers not support javascript or with
// javascript turned off
document.getElementById("no-js").style.display = "none"; // be sure to hide the non javascript
// div
</script>
</div>
The above logic would work in either NOSCRIPT tag type browsers as well as those that do not recognize NOSCRIPT.
dlausch

need help with IE 6

so i've been working on a website now for like a couple months and i test it on chrome mainly. but before i release anything big i always check it on firefox 3.something and IE7. Now i've received some complaints that that it doesn't look very good in IE6 and when i do check it... well ya it doesn't look like its supposed to. Is there any quick fix that i can add to my HTML to make it look the same in IE6 as it does every where else?
At the risk of downvotes: have you tried adding IE6 to your test matrix? If you have a significant number of users complaining that it looks bad on IE6, you clearly have a significant number of users using IE6 to use it, so it seems like it would be worth your while to just add it to the set of browsers you check before release. Just sayin'.
A really good start is http://code.google.com/p/ie7-js/ Just place it in conditional comment tags in the head of your document and it will make ie6 'standards-compliant'. After that make sure you have seperate css documents for each version of IE, and make sure all of your code is valid with w3's validator. Also declaring a doctype can fix many issues, but it MUST be on the very first line that the browser sees.
Edit: also, for png transparency, I've found that this http://www.twinhelix.com/test/ (IE PNGFIX 2.0 Alpha) works best.
There is no quick trick to getting everything to work. Pretty much have to examine each element that looks different.
That said, you might try looking at a CSS reset file.
Yahoo has one.
And if you search google I'm sure you can find others.
Read this: Internet Exporer box model bug. Also try using YUI reset or Eric Meyer's resetReloaded to set a baseline for all your styles.
And stop developing in Chrome! Try Firefox with Firebug.
How badly does your website 'break' in IE6? If it's minor, then I wouldn't worry about it.
How critical is it that it works in IE6? It's share of the market is slowly but surely declining (Looking at my own logs from a Government website also shows that IE6 is definitely going away). Can you display a message on your website letting users know if they use IE6 and advising that they upgrade?
There are many reasons to upgrade, and educating your users as to why they should upgrade might also be worthwhile?
Uhm... if there is a simple solution I really want to know it. :)
But you can anyway use this good Microsoft tool to cross-test your pages.
It can be usefull for compare the final render of a website.
CSS resets will probably do nothing if it looks fine in IE7. Things like double margins when floating and overflow:auto bugs are things that need to be manually added for each occurance. I'd suggest adding the following line to your head tag:
<!--[if lt IE 7]><style type="text/css">#import "/stylesheets/ie6.css";</style><![endif]-->
and then writing an ie6.css file to fix all the bugs (yes, one at a time)
Probably not what you wanted to hear, but it is why everyone hates IE6 so much
you can check version of client browser and include css fixing for that browser. but most simple solution is to show an alert or notification to client that his browser is outdated and provide links to download latest browser
here are some way to show that notification
http://garmahis.com/tools/ie6-update-warning/
i like this solution
http://www.browser-update.org/

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