Attribute references

[John Gruber]

Michel Fortin <michel.fortin at michelf.com> wrote on 01/09/05 at 8:07pm:

> I strongly believe that alternative text is at the right place in front 
> of the image path, because:
> 
> 1.    It is not optional, but required by the HTML specification.
>   By concept, everything inside curly brackets is optional.
> 
> 2.    Alternative text should contains a textual representation of your
>   image. But you can invert things and see the image as a alternative
>   and nicer representation of the text in the alt attribute. Both
>   should be interchangeable.
> 
>   Putting the alt attribute first puts emphasis on readability: you
>   write some text in the document, with a link-like indication of where
>   to find the image replacement for that text.

Right, #2 is pretty much exactly why this syntax is the way that it
is -- the idea is to gently promote the use of good alt text.

-J.G.