Getting alt text to appear?

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Author Post
m3mph1s
Guest
I'm trying to get the alt text to display for the floatbox images that I put on a gallery style page, but for some reason it isn't working.... ? Does FB disable the alt text option or am I just way out to lunch here?

Check it out here
I put the alt text on the first two pictures under headshots as a test

It says it's missing, but it's in the code... I have it setup with the thumbnails (which it does display) just not the larger images that come up in the FB.

<a href="images/headshots/JET-HS-1full.jpg" alt="John Emmet Tracy - Photo by Pink Monkey Studios" rel="floatboxHEADSHOTS" title="John Emmet Tracy - Photo by Pink Monkey Studios"><img src="images/headshots/thumbs/JET-HS-1thumb.jpg" alt="John Emmet Tracy - Photo by Pink Monkey Studios" width="50" height="60" border="1" /></a>


Also- what might be the larger issue here is that none of the images are coming up in google image search, is that just what happens when using any javascript to link images? I understand that it's harder to make them come up in image search with galleries where there isn't much/any relevant text, but would it work with title and alt text maybe?

Any help or input is greatly appreciated
Administrator
Registered: Aug 2008
Posts: 3382
Not sure what you mean by getting the alt text to display. Display where? Alt text is not intended to be displayed by browsers, unless the images can't be displayed. It is alternate text for text-only browsers to show in place of the image. However, some browsers will show the alt text as tool-tips on images, but this is outside the spec. And floatbox doesn't touch alt attributes - doesn't read them, doesn't remove them, nothing, nada.

Can't help you with search engine placement either, other than to say that a floatbox-enabled anchor is just a regular anchor and will be crawled by robots the same as if the floatbox attribute stuff wasn't present.
m3mph1s
Guest
What I mean is in that in Firefox, when I right click on the thumbnail and go to properties it provides the correct alt text information, but if I click and view the fullsize in the floatbox, and right click on that image, it says 'missing' for the alt text (even though it's in the code).... and then if I disable javascript and click on the thumbnail, it comes up on a blank page of course and when I right click there, it says the path of the file for the alt text... that confused me and that's why I thought it had something to do with the floatbox maybe...

And then I was under the impression that the use of javascript to display the images meant that they wouldn't be crawled the same way, but what you say makes sense that there isn't really any reason why it would be I suppose...
Administrator
Registered: Aug 2008
Posts: 3382
Aah. When floatbox displays an image it creates a new <img> element that takes its src attribute from the instigating anchor's href attribute. It doesn't put an alt attribute on that dynamically created img element.
m3mph1s
Guest
Okay that makes sense, then I just won't worry about it. Thanks for clearing it up.

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