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Craig Grannell

"The Essential Guide to CSS and HTML Web Design"

Internet Explorer exhibits some particularly quirky behavior. In addition
to displaying alt text as a tooltip, alt text defined within an img element will override (and
therefore be displayed instead of) title text for a surrounding a element. However, if the
title and alt attributes are both placed within the img element, the title attribute wins
out. Therefore, some technically unnecessary duplication of content is required to ensure
compliance from Internet Explorer. Also, Microsoft??™s browser does not display title text
when you mouse over area elements within image maps.
Using accesskey and tabindex
I??™ve bundled the accesskey and tabindex attributes because they have similar functions??”
that is, enabling keyboard access to various areas of the web page. Most browsers enable
you to use the Tab key to cycle through links, although if you end up on a web page with
dozens of links, this can be a soul-destroying experience. (And before you say ???So what????
you should be aware that many web users cannot use a mouse. You don??™t have to be
severely disabled or elderly to be in such a position either??”something as common as
repetitive strain injury affects plenty of people??™s ability to use a mouse.)
The accesskey attribute can be added to anchor and area elements. It assigns an access
key to the link, whose value must be a single character. In tandem with your platform??™s
Firefox tends to crop tooltips after 80 characters or so.


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