theme_feed_icon could use more meaningful alt text

How about dropping the jargon of Syndicate (because nobody really uses feeds to syndicate content these days, and hardly anyone in the real world understands what that means in relation to RSS feeds) and rewrite the alt text to something along the lines of:

"Subscribe to [page/site] RSS feed"

or even just "Subscribe to [context]"

I like the text changes very much!

+++ includes/theme.inc	14 Aug 2009 11:05:34 -0000
@@ -1683,11 +1683,11 @@ function theme_more_help_link($url) {
-function theme_feed_icon($url, $title) {
-  if ($image = theme('image', 'misc/feed.png', t('Syndicate content'), $title)) {
+function theme_feed_icon($url, $description) {
+  if ($image = theme('image', 'misc/feed.png', t('Subscribe to ') . $description)) {

Hm. Either we need both $title and $description into this function, or we need to repeat the description as the 4th function argument. The old code passed the $title along as the title attribute of the image. The new code removes the title attribute of the image. Or is that by design?

Also, t('Subscribe to ') . $description) is not translatable. Need to use placeholders like t('Subscribe to @description')

17 days to code freeze. Better review yourself.

Not to be picky but could you do

t('Subscribe to ') . $description . t(' RSS feed')

There are modules that do subscription via email and I think there can be confusion.

And I'm not a translation expert so I don't know if the form you used is preferred or if

t('Subscribe to %desc RSS feed', array('%desc' => $description))

is easier to translate (though my instinct says the first form is probably better).

@Everett - you can't translate variables, but you need the variable substitution in t() strings to give context -

So this is correct - the translator can tackle everything including the placement of %desc if subject/object/verb order is different in their language since they have access to the entire string in one place.

t('Subscribe to %desc RSS feed', array('%desc' => $description))

<?php

+1

+1 from me too.

Patch looks good to me.

this is great!

Well, the patch is a bit confusing because we always pass in the _title_ when we call theme('feed_icon'). Calling it 'description' is confusion because RSS feeds have also a description. So, we're effectively mixing up titles and descriptions. I'd suggest we reroll renaming the variable back to $title.

Let's do a quick re-roll.

Looks nice and simple now. Committed to CVS HEAD. Thanks!

The reason the title attribute was added in the first place was to give the image a tooltip description. The alt doesn't do that. There isn't any way to tell what the image links to without inspecting the HTML anymore. This is a regression.

Restores the title attribute.

From an accessibility point of view, if we add the alt-tag, can we remove the title-tag?

Alt is required for the image, how about the title on the link? Also fixed % to @.

This patch works as promised and should be committed!

The spam above this comment #24 should be deleted and sballer banned from the site.

Committed to CVS HEAD. Thanks!

@Everett, let me know if I can help.

tagging