Remove title attribute from Node titles

Please be sure to make note of this in the related issue: #382870: Update and Polish Node Template Output.

Well, since it's been more than a few days without a reply, that issue slipped into page three on my tracker!

Ok, I don't know who this redundant information would help. As far as I am aware this simplification would be fine.

<h2><a href="<?php print $node_url ?>" title="<?php print $title ?>"><?php print $title ?></a></h2>

Looks good, and fixes a real redundancy. The title attribute on a link should indicate where the link goes if that isn't clear from the anchor text - not repeat the anchor text. Seems to be RTBC too.

Thanks for this. I did understand it, but didn't explain it all that well.

Sounds good - I agree with the RTBC. Let's commit it. Otherwise, we'll roll it into #382870: Update and Polish Node Template Output.

Does someone have an "official" external resource regarding title best practices they could point to that explains why Drupal is doing this wrong? I don't disagree, it just would be nice to be able to point at that and go "Ah."

Interestingly W3C has an example very similar to what we are talking about: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/global.html#h-7.4.3 , but otherwise doesn't say anything directly.

Other resources seem to directly agree with removing it.

Not So Good Practices

* Adding the exact text in the accompanying the link (this kind of a moot point since the title attribute essentially adds no new information in this case)

http://fadtastic.net/2007/04/19/proper-use-of-alt-and-title-attributes

One good use of the title attribute is to add descriptive text to links, especially if the link text itself doesn’t clearly describe the link’s destination.

http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200412/the_alt_and_title_attributes/

I would agree that removing the title attribute that contains a pure duplicate makes sense, both logically and based on online agreement.

Makes sense to me. Thanks, folks!

Committed to HEAD. Marking "needs work" until this is mentioned on the converting 6.x to 7.x themes page.

1.) What do we need to tell theme designers - to copy this change to their own node.tpl.php files?

2.) Who can edit that page? I can only see the Revisions tab; is it locked or do I need to apply for a "doc team" role?

Actually this modification does not need documentation. Adding or removing the title attribute in themes do not have any compatibility impact with Drupal 6 or Drupal 7.

However, we need to update the Garland theme; so it's best to keep this at "needs work" until Garland is modified as well.

The Theming Guide seems a little weak in the area of accessibility. Well, actually, there doesn't seem to be anything at all. I've added an issue to the doc queue (http://drupal.org/node/462532) suggesting there should be at least one accessibility page in the best practices section (http://drupal.org/node/341707).

webchick - I can't edit this page - http://drupal.org/node/254940

But also not sure that it needs to be there, particularly since there's been work done on the Theming Best Practices page - http://drupal.org/node/464472

LeeHunter - thanks for pointing us to the hole in the theming documentation for accessibility. It is coming along now thanks to a great start by jmburnz.

Mike

Great patch, this is something that I noticed when I first started using druPpal, Aas some developers use the title attribute for tooltip text and some assistive technology reads this and not the linked text.

I see that this is now in head. I don't think that this really needs to be documented on http://drupal.org/node/254940 . It would be nice if Garland followed the same practice and if this was explained on the accessibility best practices page.

Is there currently an open issue to make this change to Garland?

I have created an issue to remove the title attribute from node title for Garland http://drupal.org/node/518284

I also copied the concept from the patch for this issue and uploaded a patch for review for the Garland specific issue.

The Garland specific patch has been commited to head and the issue marked as Fixed http://drupal.org/node/518284 .

What else needs to be completed to have this issue marked as Fixed?

In #13 webchick is asking for documentation. This is why it's not fixed.

However I feel that this does not require any documentation.

I second the unneeded documentation... if anything, we could say "The title attribute was removed from node titles because it's redundant."

OK. Let's mark this fixed. :-)

Er. Well assuming that Garland is not the only contributed theme that explicitly prints out the title attribute like this (and I highly doubt that's the case), the change needs to be mentioned at http://drupal.org/update/theme/6/7 (with a before/after code snippet) so that themers can make similar adjustments in their own theme. Otherwise this anti-pattern will continue to propogate, since it's what Drupal core has been doing for years.

You can also (and are encouraged to!) add it to some sort of "Theme best practices" document if such a thing exists in the handbook.

But seriously, this needs to be documented somewhere other than one of the 13K random issues in the Drupal core issue queue. :P

Speaking of theming best practices, is there a doc somewhere for that? If there isn't there should be one. I know there's some sort of coding best practices, but that's not all that visible to designers/themers...

Theming best practises are covered here: http://drupal.org/node/341707

Added the following to Designing Accessibility into Themes http://drupal.org/node/506866 in the theming guide.

Do not repeat redundant information in title attributes. Using the title attribute in a link can be a good way to communicate information about the link to assistive technology users. However, if the information in your title attribute presents the same information that is in the linked text, or does not accurately describe the link then remove it or change the text in the title attribute.