title?

Aesir · Mar 11th, 2008, 15:08

This may be a stupid question and something I have probably overlooked but what does this title function do in this piece of code?

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" title="some title" href="/styles.css" />

At first I thought it was just the title tag in the <link> tag rather than the <head>. After removing the <title> tag in the <head> tag though it displyaed my document as untitled.

?

And whilst I think of it are meta tags worth it? Do I really need to put meta name="keywords/descriptions/author" etc.

frinkky · Mar 11th, 2008, 16:59

the title attribute tends to be used in things like div's, img's, href's to provide an opportunity to provide a semantic context for the tag, similar to the alt attribute for img tags. In a nutshell, the title element provides info on the current page, the title attribute provides info on individual elements. (correct me if i'm wrong here)

You won't be penalised for using meta tags but, accoridng to current opinion Google no longer takes into account 'keywords' and to a lesser extent 'description' for indexing. Other SE's may do, but they are by no means as crucial as they used to be a few years ago.

danny322 · Mar 12th, 2008, 12:52

To add to what frinkky said, the 'alt' attribute in an <img> tag means that in internet explorer, when a user rolls over an image they will see a pop up box come up displaying whatever text the developer entered ie alt="Me at the Zoo". The 'title' attribute acts in the same way for firefox.

aso186 · Mar 12th, 2008, 15:50

The alt tag is also required for strict markup, and (in most browsers) is used in place of images if they are disabled

Aesir · Mar 12th, 2008, 15:58

Thanks all for your feedback.