Alt Text: Engaged

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Alt Text: Engaged prevents alt/title
text tooltips from getting in your way
until you explicitly ask for them. And
when you ask for…Alt Text: Engaged prevents alt/title
text tooltips from getting in your way
until you explicitly ask for them. And
when you ask for them by holding down
(what else?) the ALT key, it shows them
*immediately*.

Feature Summary:

* During normal browsing
- hide all alt text tooltips
* When ALT is down
- show alt text tooltips (bottom-right
corner)
- highlight every part of the page
that contains alt text
* When ALT is released
- hide all alt text tooltips and
highlighting

Alt Text: Engaged addresses three
frustrations:

1. When alt text is annoying: Tooltips
on major news websites are
delightful. Their hobbies include
covering up text you're trying to
read and gleefully staying put until
you figure out how far you need to
move your mouse to get them to go
away. Ever tried moving your mouse
over one of them in the vain hope
that it would disappear? Oh, good,
that nudged it a barely perceptible
distance. And look, it's *still*
over the text you're trying to read!
But at least when they're off to the
side of the screen they don't do
anything distracting. Like
fade-animate in.
2. When alt text is useful but hard to
get at: Sometimes you're actually
wanting alt text to show up. Maybe
you read web comics. Nerd. You place
your mouse over the stick figures...
wait for it... nothing. Oh, the
window lost focus. Okay. Click. Oh
no, you clicked a link! Go back, go
back! Hover... wait for it... oh,
this tooltip's content is actually
pretty insightful. I especially like
his earlier point about... Wait,
what? Why'd it vanish?? Crap.
Hover... wait for it...
3. In all cases: Thankfully it's obvious
where and when alt text will pop up.
Apart from every single situation in
history.

We can do better. Alt Text: Engaged
probably does, in fact. Here's how it
deals with the above problems:

1. Chrome will never again show alt text
until you're holding down the ALT
key. It will always display in the
same place: the bottom-right of the
screen (next to that other
rarely-needed text: link URLs).
2. As soon as the ALT key hits, Chrome
will immediately show the alt text of
whatever's directly under your mouse
(if alt text exists). If your window
has lost focus, you'll know within
milliseconds because:
3. When the ALT key is down, the
location of every element on the
screen which contains alt text is
highlighted in semi-transparent
yellow. Hovering over any highlighted
area will update the bottom-right alt
text display. All input not relating
to alt text is blocked until you
release the ALT key, so that the
FaceTube ads don't have a chance to
pop out and get in the way of your
now-important alt text hunting.

Alt Text: Engaged is open source (MIT)
and available on GitHub
(https://github.com/zship/chrome-alt-text-engaged),
so you have to ability to see
everything. Please let me know if you
notice any particularly heinous crimes
against computing.