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Re: title attribute?

for

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Nov 18, 2013 6:55AM

2013-11-18 15:09, Nancy Johnson wrote:

> I'm confused: When it is appropriate to use the title attribute. Can
> someone clarify?

My short answer is: Never.

It might be somewhat useful in its original use (in the early days, it
was allowed for links only), to help users see what a link points to
before they decide to follow it. But even for such use, CSS tooltips are
now better. The do not suffer the implementation problems of title
attributes in popular browsers (tiny font that cannot be enlargened,
disappearance of the text after some seconds).

> I've always stayed away from it because it is a mouse event and I
> didn't think all screen readers read the title tag by default.

That's part of the problem, but even if these things are fixed, the
other problems remain.

Mostly, when authors write title attributes, they are avoiding the task
of designing understandable, well-structured content and presentation,
throwing some texts into title attributes since they do not know how to
fit them into their design.

Yucca