Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference

Name

TITLE — NN n/a IE 3 HTML 3.2

Synopsis

TITLE=”advisoryText"

Optional

An advisory description of the element. For HTML elements that produce visible content on the page, Internet Explorer 4 renders the content of the TITLE attribute as a tooltip when the cursor rests on the element for a moment. For example, the table-related COL element does not display content, so its TITLE attribute is merely advisory. To generate tooltips in tables, assign TITLE attributes to elements such as TABLE, TR, TH, or TD.

The appearance of the tooltip is governed by the operating system version of the browser. In Windows, the tooltip is the standard small, light-yellow rectangle; on the Mac, the tooltip displays as a cartoon bubble in the manner of the MacOS bubble help system. If no attribute is specified, the tooltip does not display. Although IE 3 implements this attribute, no tooltip appears.

You can assign any descriptive text you like to this attribute. Not everyone will see it, however, so do not put mission-critical information here. Future or special-purpose browsers might use this attribute’s information to read information about the link to vision-impaired web surfers.

Although the compatibility listing for this attribute dates the attribute back to Internet Explorer 3 and HTML 3.2, it is newly ascribed to many elements starting with IE 4 and HTML 4.0.

Example

<B TITLE="United States of America">U.S.A.</B>

Value

Any string of characters. The string must be inside a matching pair of (single or ...