Alt text for site skin previews

[fu]

We're adding some previews when you're choosing a site skin, and I've been thinking about an appropriate level of information for the alt text.

The alt text mentions the colors, the orientation of the menus, and whether or not the menus use Javascript. Is there anything else that needs to be added, or is there any non-essential information that should be removed?

For reference, here is sample alt text for four of the site skins:

Celerity

Olive and white with vertical non-Javascript menus

Gradation Horizontal

White on black with horizontal Javascript menus

Gradation Vertical

White on black with vertical non-Javascript menus

Lynx

Simple, bare skin with minimal decoration and navigation

Comments

Re: Happy to try ...

[deborah]

both of those are JavaScript. A JavaScript menu is any web-based menu which is dynamic, and works as if it were a menu on a Windows computer or a Mac that can expand based on some prompt. That prompt could either be a mouse over or a keyboard/click or something else.

Without JavaScript, menus are static things, with links that sit on the page without moving.

So in this case, I guess the text should be "Has expanding menus". Would that be clear?

Re: Happy to try ...

[jesse_the_k]

Ahhh, thanks for the education.

I'll just say that what I want to know is how accommodating my layout is, so if you listed:

"Uses Javascript dynamic menus, pointer control required to navigate menu"

then I can choose to use a different design.

Re: Happy to try ...

[fu]

Thanks for pointing out that the text was unclear! I'd like to allow people to be able to quickly judge which layouts would/would not work for them, so all this has been very helpful.

We don't have a lot of space under there, though. Would collapsing the two clauses into one still work? Something like:

"(other description). Menu expands on mouse hover".


And re: description of Lynx upthread

I'm not quite sure what you mean by narrower text column -- I think that Lynx doesn't constrain the text width in any way, and it doesn't have any sidebars so no additional things taking up space there. Any examples so I can poke at it?