Tips on Images

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Report · Aug 26, 2009

Hi,

What you are experiencing is a bug in Internet Explorer 7 and below. I don't know if it's still in IE 8, but my guess is that it is... You will not experience this behaviour in a standard compliance browser as Firefox.

What happens is that this tooltip isn't actually a tooltip. In XHTML (Robo 8, not 7), the alt attribute is a required attribute. This alt text is the text that the browser displays when it cannot load the image. It is also the text that a screen reader will read instead of the image. The tooltip text is positioned in the title attribute, which RoboHelp does use for the tooltip.

Since the alt attribute is required, RoboHelp fills this alt text with the filename of your image. This filename isn't supposed to show as a tooltip, but because of a rendering bug/?feature? in Internet Explorer, the alt text shows as a tooltip.

Removing these texts may not be intuitive. I couldn't find a window in RoboHelp that allows you to set the alt text. You can set the alt text in HTML mode (alt="your text"), but this requires that you set the text manually for every image. You can also add the screen tip, which will sow a tooltip, but avoids the alt text being shown by Internet Explorer.

If you want to completely remove the tooltips, even from IE, you can use some kind of find and replace tool to replace all alt="filename" attributes with alt="". Your output will still be valid XHTML. For WebHelp, this isn't too hard, but for you CHM, you'll first have to decompile your CHM, replace the alt attribute and then recompile your output. You can use the Microsoft HTML workshop, but I've never tried recompiling a decompiled CHM. Another forum member may have more experience with that.

Greet,

Willam

Report · Aug 26, 2009

Hi there

@Willam - Why would the CHM need to be decompiled? They said they see the issue in CHM or WebHelp outputs, which suggests they have the source files available.

I'm a bit confused by your suggestion that RoboHelp is inserting the image file name as the alt text. I just tested RoboHelp version 8 and inserted an image. The Alt attribute was simply Alt="". I'm thinking that perhaps the behavior is simply that if the browser sees it empty, it may substitute the image file name.

One note here that wasn't explicitly mentioned is that CHM files use components of the IE browser to render the pages. This should explain why you also see the issue in CHM files.

Cheers... Rick

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Report · Aug 26, 2009

Thanks to both of you. I found out that if I enter an actually screen tip in the properties of the image, it will show instead. But it will take a long time that I do not have to fix it on my 900 images.

I cannot use Firefox due to the fact that our customers cannot read our welphelp, from here, it is black!! But that is another issue 🙂

Thanks, RMM

Report · Aug 26, 2009

Hi again

If RoboHelp hasn't added any alt text you may be able to exploit a Find and Replace tool to make this a simple process. What you may wish to try is to edit the HTML code of a single image. Look for the alt= code. Does it list anything or does it list ""? If it lists "" try inserting a space so it reads alt=" ". then view the page in IE. If that works, you could use a search and replace tool to scan through all your HTML pages and perform the replacement.

Cheers... Rick

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Report · Aug 26, 2009

Hi,

Adding the title for every element will prevent the alt text from being shown in IE. To save yourself some time, I think you best use a search and replace tool to add an empty title or a tigle with only a space to every image. I haven't tested this, but it should work. You'll have to find all al="" occurences in your source files, and replace them with alt="" title="" . Backup your files, since I haven't tested this, I don't know how RoboHelp will react to empty titles.

Greet,

Willam

Report · Aug 26, 2009

Thanks i´ll try that 🙂

Report · Aug 26, 2009

Hi,

@Rick. The problem is not with the source files... RoboHelp inserts the alt text empty (alt=""), but when you generate, it sets the filename of the image for every alt text that you haven't set. That's why you'll need to decompile the CHM. Since it uses Internet Explorer to view the content, you'll have to hack the auto filled alt text from the output files.

I don't know why Robo works this way, but it does...

Greet,

Willam

Report · Aug 27, 2009

Hi Willam

I'm the last one to want to continue thrashing what would seem to be a deceased equine, but:

Are you sure about that?

I just compiled a CHM using RoboHelp 8 and viewed a topic with an image. I right-clicked the topic in the CHM and selected View Source. The alt tag looks the same in the compiled CHM as it does in the source.

Cheers... Rick

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Report · Aug 27, 2009

@RMM

I have a question that I don't believe has been asked or addressed here.

What exactly are you using? That may seem like an odd question with a response along the lines of: RoboHelp of course! How silly of you to ask!

But here's why I ask. It occurred to me that perhaps we have all assumed you are using RoboHelp HTML, since you are creating web based output (CHM and WebHelp). So I wondered if the behavior would be different if I were to open RoboHelp for Word and compile a CHM. Sure enough, it seemed to be. I did see tooltips. Heaven only knows why, but I'm unable to do the View Source hokey pokey with a CHM compiled using RoboHelp for Word. So I had to decompile the CHM to view the pages. But sure enough, the alt= attribute is populated with the folder and image file name.

Assuming you are using RoboHelp for Word, I don't suppose you would consider switching to RoboHelp HTML? If so you could then avoid the image tooltip issue.

Cheers... Rick

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Report · Aug 28, 2009

Hi Rick,

In your New PNP project, do you have a tooltip on the image?

I checked it again this morning, and this is what I got: I inserted an image (a jpg, trough the menu) and remove the alt text in html mode. RoboHelp just adds it again, but no harm done. Next, I output WebHelp and WebHelp Pro. Both now have the filename as the alt text. This happens when generating with the W3C compliant Topics option checked and unchecked. Next, I outputted a CHM, with default options. In the source, the alt text has been completely removed, so I don't see tooltip. I'm wondering why your CHM page does have an alt attribute.

If you see a tooltip (the standard windows tooltip), without having added the title element, it must be the alt text, or you may have defined a custom tooltip using a div object or a javascript.

Greet,

Willam

Report · Aug 28, 2009

Hi Willam

Nope, no tooltip.

I'm assuming you saw my second post where I asked what RoboFlavor was in use. What is unknown at this point is whether the OP is using RoboHelp for Word or RoboHelp HTML.

Which are you using? I'm using RoboHelp HTML.

Cheers... Rick

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