topic Re: icon tooltips don't show in firefox in Community Site Feedback

icon tooltips don't show in firefox

Peter_Vaughan — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 17:23:59 GMT

Many of the icons have tooltip text which does not appear when using FF2.0
Example is the top and bottom banners with 'post a reply' and 'printer' icons. None of the icons show a tooltip on FF but they do on IE7. Given the fact that they are not all obvious what they mean, the tooltip is necessary.
Some areas do work like hovering over a member name.

Re: icon tooltips don't show in firefox

Ianwild — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 20:59:56 GMT

Seconded!

Re: icon tooltips don't show in firefox

Colin — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 18:10:31 GMT

Not a problem (as such) as far as I can see. Firefox won't show you the alt tags, but they are actually there on the images...

Re: icon tooltips don't show in firefox

Peter_Vaughan — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 18:17:10 GMT

But the problem does still exist. FF needs title tags for tooltips.
I know this is a general problem with tags and the solution may not be possible (add title tags where alt tags exist) but it is still a browser related issue.

Re: icon tooltips don't show in firefox

jelv — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 08:38:48 GMT

It needs to be consistent - it either displays tooltips or it doesn't. At the moment it displays them for the icons below a posters name:

<a href="http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=1042">
	<img src="http://community.plus.net/forum/Themes/plusn/images/icons/profile_sm.gif"
		alt="View Profile" title="View Profile" border="0"></a>
<a href="http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php?action=useremail;u=1042">
	<img src="http://community.plus.net/forum/Themes/plusn/images/email_sm.gif"
		alt="Email" title="Email" border="0"></a>
<a href="http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php?action=pm;sa=send;u=1042" title="Personal Message (Offline)">
	<img src="http://community.plus.net/forum/Themes/plusn/images/im_off.gif"
		alt="Personal Message (Offline)" border="0"></a>

[quote=W3C.org]
13.8 How to specify alternate text
Attribute definitions
alt = text [CS]
For user agents that cannot display images, forms, or applets, this attribute specifies alternate text. The language of the alternate text is specified by the lang attribute.
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. Specifying alternate text assists users without graphic display terminals, users whose browsers don't support forms, visually impaired users, those who use speech synthesizers, those who have configured their graphical user agents not to display images, etc.
The alt attribute must be specified for the IMG and AREA elements. It is optional for the INPUT and APPLET elements.
While alternate text may be very helpful, it must be handled with care. Authors should observe the following guidelines:
* Do not specify irrelevant alternate text when including images intended to format a page, for instance, alt="red ball" would be inappropriate for an image that adds a red ball for decorating a heading or paragraph. In such cases, the alternate text should be the empty string (""). Authors are in any case advised to avoid using images to format pages; style sheets should be used instead.
* Do not specify meaningless alternate text (e.g., "dummy text"). Not only will this frustrate users, it will slow down user agents that must convert text to speech or braille output.
Implementors should consult the section on accessibility for information about how to handle cases of omitted alternate text.
[quote=w3c.org]7.4.3 The title attribute
Attribute definitions
title = text [CS]
This attribute offers advisory information about the element for which it is set.
Unlike the TITLE element, which provides information about an entire document and may only appear once, the title attribute may annotate any number of elements. Please consult an element's definition to verify that it supports this attribute.
Values of the title attribute may be rendered by user agents in a variety of ways. For instance, visual browsers frequently display the title as a "tool tip" (a short message that appears when the pointing device pauses over an object). Audio user agents may speak the title information in a similar context. For example, setting the attribute on a link allows user agents (visual and non-visual) to tell users about the nature of the linked resource:
...some text...
Here's a photo of
<A href="http://someplace.com/neatstuff.gif" title="Me scuba diving">
me scuba diving last summer
</A>
...some more text...
The title attribute has an additional role when used with the LINK element to designate an external style sheet. Please consult the section on links and style sheets for details.
Reading those it is quite clear that the way Firefox is handling alt and title is correct and IE is wrong (well there's a surprise!).

Re: icon tooltips don't show in firefox

hadden — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 01:22:08 GMT

This seems to be a "feature" of Simple Machines Forum (SMF) software, as it is the same on my own SMF forum.
So, I had a look and some of the icon tooltips can be fixed by editing the Sources/Display.php file. At least those within a topic. The Reply, Print, must be in a different file, but the theme I use on my forum displays text for those links rather than icons.
Do a search for alt=" in half a dozen places (as there are other images like the BCC tags) and replicate the part of the script that generates the text for the alt tag as a title tag.
For example -
Where you find:

alt="' . $txt[$alt] . '"

You can replace it with:

alt="' . $txt[$alt] . '" title="' . $txt[$alt] . '"

I've tried it on my own forum and it works...
Until the next SMF update.

Re: icon tooltips don't show in firefox

Peter_Vaughan — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 08:26:45 GMT

This is not something that PN can fix. It has to be passed back to SMF to fix properly in a future release.
We can't be the only one complaining about this but the more pressure put on SMF the more likely they will fix it properly.

Re: icon tooltips don't show in firefox

Strat — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 08:39:41 GMT

I'll occasionally get bits missing like button graphics but usually they refresh after a few seconds and appear.
If everything worked first time every time it wouldn't be IT.
Running FireFox 2.0.0.11 BTW

Re: icon tooltips don't show in firefox

hadden — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 22:42:32 GMT

I think SMF are a laid back group of volunteers who may not respond or feel pressure...
It only takes a few minutes to edit the script and, as it's not affecting the logic of the script, it shouldn't be very risky.
Any volunteers?

Re: icon tooltips don't show in firefox

Colin — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:22:43 GMT

Is the reskinned forum any better? Most of the images are now added with CSS (so have text to their right) and the ones that aren't all appear to have the correct tips as far as I can tell in Firefox 3.

Re: icon tooltips don't show in firefox

jelv — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:27:21 GMT

MSN messenger - - doesn't give a tooltip in FF2.

Re: icon tooltips don't show in firefox

hadden — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 22:21:22 GMT

It's nice to see the BBCodes with titles in FF2, thanks.
The items that were the topic of the original post are maybe not as relevant now that text links (with background images) are used (that's what I did in my own forum). 'spose that's up to OP?
However, I noticed that the post inline modification icon doesn't have a title tag. Not major, but it may not be intuitive what it's for?

Re: icon tooltips don't show in firefox

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 07:43:41 GMT

Quote from: jelv
MSN messenger - - doesn't give a tooltip in FF2.

It does in IE7 - would there be any settings in FF preventing display?

Re: icon tooltips don't show in firefox

James — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 09:32:33 GMT

I don't get the tooltip either, using FF2.0.0.12

Re: icon tooltips don't show in firefox

hadden — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 09:36:53 GMT

Firefox is following the behaviour defined in the standard:
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/global.html#adef-title
Without included all of the history of this issue, the MSN Messenger image only has an ALT tag which was technically meant to be there for a different purpose, which does not include providing the text for use in a tooltip:
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/objects.html#adef-alt
It works in IE7 because IE7 (and previous versions) were written to use the ALT tag in the absence of a TITLE tag, which I understand was a workround for those web sites that had omitted the TITLE tag.
It is not a setting in FF that is the problem, it is the HTML not providing the correct tag.