HTML Markup Validation: Your thoughts.

[Soquili]

I have reopened this thread for informative discussion worthy of the topic.

[raynerj1]

A dumb program checking for dotted T's a crossed i's is not a validator... It is a dumb program for dumb people. Why would I ever put an alt tag on decorative image?

Come on... reality check here guys.. Pull your heads out... Before you sufficate.

Remi, go right ahead and put alt tags one every slice and dice xara creates... then watch google throw your site in the spammer bin...

Personally, I keep the graphics to a mimimum and use text for navigation...

That is my entire take on this subject and I will not get drawn into a debate on personal preferences....

[remi]

Why would I ever put an alt tag on decorative image?

You are right, John - please don't do that, if it's only a decorative image! Use a empty alternate text (alt="") instead, to let braille outputs understand, that this image isn't important within the text. I've posted already the W3C recommendations with this point (see post #25):

• 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.

Remi, go right ahead and put alt tags one every slice and dice xara creates... then watch google throw your site in the spammer bin...

Another misunderstanding: Please don't use slice exports from Xara Xtreme or other tools which produce table tag soup! Use modern HTML/CSS code instead of such out-fashioned HTML code. To be clear: If you owns a tool, which produces correct HTML/CSS positioning, then use it, but if your tools produces bad HTML code leave them.

Why should Google "throw your site in the spammer bin" if you use ALT tags? This is wrong!

Remi

[remi]

Personally, I keep the graphics to a mimimum and use text for navigation...

That's a clever decision. Together with CSS you're able to layout nice navigations without the necessary to use images within your HTML source. It's not a must, but it's a good decision (but please use valid HTML code with this).

Remi

[handrawn]

So - what recommendations would you give me?

I'm a cartoonist and not a web designer.
I cant really afford to pay anyone to do web design for me.

There are two possibilities:

a) a portfolio site of images and work that is not intended to be 'public' so ranking in search engines and the like is not a concern as far as I can see.

b) same as above but for 'general release', but with no specific demographic in mind.

Alt tagging a visual joke is like translating poetry, a virtual re-write from scratch.
Sadly I don't have the time, maybe not even the ability

How should I go about it?
I ran my prototype site through validation and it came out with a list as long as your arm, but it does the job it was intended to do - everyone who needs to see it can.

[remi]

Hi Steve,

you could use a PhotoBlog or a Gallery Script.

If you want to learn more about HTML/CSS, there is a helpful "Web Design Resource Thread" in our "Site design and publishing" forum with interesting links to tutorials.

Remi

[handrawn]

Hi Remi

I'll look into that - thanks

[raynerj1]

Excessive use of Alt tags are what spammers used to increase the positions in search engines. Get more key words used throughout the site. So... Search engines use this to filter on.

Your suggestion to use Alt= for decorative images is a waste of bandwidth. Might as well use a WYSIWYG editor( like dreamweaver )and put all kinds of extraneous code on the page and double the bandwidth. PHFFFFFT.... No way jose.

[RTK]

Excessive use of Alt tags are what spammers used to increase the positions in search engines. Get more key words used throughout the site. So... Search engines use this to filter on.

Which is why everyone should use the alt tags as they were intended (as per the below W3C quote by remi):

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.

Keyword stuffing spam in alt-tags is easy enough to detect --- frequency of words and the cost of those words. However, Google doesn't punish anyone for using alt-text properly.

As for this whole W3C discussion --- I have never bothered with the standards as it simply looks to be so much work. Also, the websites belonging to any of us here at TG are insignificant, and mere mouse dropping on the Web (in the great scheme of things). If I had site that generated thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars per month --- or if my site consisted of tens of thousands / hundreds of thousanda, or milllion of webpages... Well, then I would of course pay attention to ensure that I don't lose ANY money if a browser software is tweaked, or new plugins for the same developed.

However, if you are going to be a professional web designer (with all doors open to you) --- I can't see how you could do without the standards? Big businesses (especially big online sites) and government (and knowledgable) people will ask for it. It might not be required for by annashomemadecatfood.com but why limit youself if you intend to do it for a living?

Me personally: I'm lazy, and I couldn't be bothered. Then again, the better WordPress themes are closer in compliance than anything I have ever attempted --- perhaps that's my in for "compliance".

Risto

[remi]

Hi John,

Excessive use of Alt tags are what spammers used to increase the positions in search engines. Get more key words used throughout the site. So... Search engines use this to filter on.

Excessive use is not what I'm talking about. You shouldn't use it like this:

XHTML code:
<img src="v_i_agra.gif" width="7" height="10" alt="Yeah, you need PRODUCT A and PRODUCT B?? Really? Buy it on this page. Yo! And give us you're email address together with your bank account number. We have really interesting news for you. btw: We also sell some cheap software packages. Original software. cheap. Photoshop for $20,-. CorelDraw for $10,-. Don't pay more. We are the biggest Online-Shop worldwide! Trust us." />

If you use a meaningful alt text, then Google is your friend. If you use wrong HTML code instead, it could be, that the Google Robot visit your site and isn't able to interprete your HTML code and therefore isn't able to include your site into his fulltext index.

Your suggestion to use Alt= for decorative images...

I know it sounds pedantic, but please don't insert Alt= within your image tags, because that's a syntax error and produces invalid HTML code (as I said before, each language has a syntax...). Use instead alt="" (together with the question marks) for decorative images. The full syntax goes:

XHTML code:
<img src="decorative_image.png" width="10" height="10" alt="" />

After that, each braille output knows, that this image is only a decorative image and not important to understand the contents of the page.

Not sure, if it makes sense to repeat the same and same again from my side. In the end you're on your own, if you're able to produce valid HTML code or not.

Remi