MacHTTP Inline Images

Including Alternate Text for Text Based Clients

If you have a picture of a tree (tree.gif) you use as a button to link to a document about trees you should include it in the form:

<A HREF="trees.html"><IMG ALIGN=middle SRC="tree.gif" ALT="Trees"></A>

Some text based clients (including lynx) will use the alternate text instead of showing nothing or the text "[IMAGE]".

This is a proper alternative to doing something like:

<A HREF="trees.html"><IMG ALIGN=middle SRC="tree.gif"> Trees</A>

Where users of graphic clients (IE. Mosaic) end up with both a picture of a tree and the text, and users of clients like lynx end up with "[IMAGE] Trees".

Another case is where you include logos at the top of various pages. It is not presented as a button, so is entirely unneccessary for text clients. In order to have it display for graphic clients, but not have anything come up for text clients like lynx:

<IMG ALIGN=bottom SRC="mylogo.gif" ALT="">

Notice that the 'alternate' is just a string of no text.

5/7/94 - gneufeld

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