And (3), a meta-point: I think it adds to the danger in people getting caught up in using technology for the sake of it, rather than for any real reason. This makes the interface more confusing, because there’s just too many options.

Ironically, I think my site actually fails the second point, and maybe the third too: my menus don’t work without JavaScript, at all. And the reason they’re there in that way was because I was wanting to try out some new technology. But in my defense, I have a disclaimer to all this on my homepage.

The gist: Some of the most transient dynamic content on certain websites out there are the most in need of being made more static. The example I gave was those javascript menus on many corporate sites that present submenus on mouseover. You then get subsubmenus on mouseovering a submenu item, and so forth. How many times has your mouse slipped and you’ve been forced to start all over at the top of the hierarchy. This is not just a problem on the web, many layered menus like this have the same problem in seversl OSs out there (including OS X). The solution is simple - keep the menus around on a click (such as your site does).

Anyway - the point of my now dead comment, and this should not be read as a pointed remark, was to say that dynamic content can be useful, but that more people need to think about whether that content is better served to the user statically (or where on the spectrum of… dynamicity… it should lie).

I do, however, think that there can be a use for tooltips. Consider the navigation buttons at the top of my site. Though I’ve not actually used tooltips, the text below serves the same function. It’s not vital, but makes the site that little bit more navigable. Well, I think so anyway!

It’s not a bug - it’s sloppy coding. And likely the bane of many visually impared people, lynx users, cell-phone web browsers and the like. Alt has a specific purpose: it defines what to display when the image can’t be seen. Using it for any other purpose has always been a terrible idea. Who the hell wants a icon that says “send” on it to display a “send” tooltip when you hover over it? Annoying. If you can’y figure out what an image link does without having a tooltip, your site is designed poorly. On the other hand, you definately need an alt tag of “send” for an send icon, so people who can’t see images know what link to click (or you could just use a real send button). That’s why alts are alts and titles are titles.

All images should have alts (not that any at my site do, but certainly commercial sites should use them for everything), but very few images should have tooltips. Why would you need them? A lot of dynamic crap on web sites these days just makes things harder to use without presenting more information than an analogous static display. But when you do need extra information to be associated with images (maybe photographs or equations or something), for the love of all that is beautiful and ergonomic, use title not alt. You’ll be making your site more accessible and less annoying.