How can we give better credit for shared assets in the web revival? - ✁ ∙ Web Crafting

Melooon
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How can we give better credit for shared assets in the web revival?

« on: February 05, 2023 @670.97 »

When I started my site there were so few people making resources for web revival sites (it was basically just AN Lucas) however as more and more people are making cool resources, its starting to make me think if there are ways we can give subtle credit to them?

Having a links page is great; but its a bit disconnected form the actual media - for example if someone makes a cool button gif that I use on my site - I cant really say "XX made the button gif that I used on X page and X page etc" thats just way to verbose!

Im also not really a fan of adding too many written credits to a page because its extra effort and it potentially interrupts the pages design.

BUT maybe there are other ways!

For example could we start a culture of naming files after their creator like "red-button-anlucas.gif" or ~~maybe using the alt text "Link to my moose page - button made by XXX"?~~ (see lunas comment :grin:smile: The idea would be simply that if someone was inspecting your code trying to learn from you, they could find out where you sourced some of your images.

I also have a more ambitious suggestion!

Code

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"
[
 <!ATTLIST tag madeby CDATA #IMPLIED>
]>

This is a revision to the HTML !DOCTYPE that adds a new parameter to all HTML tags called "madeby" - it means its valid for you to do:

Code

<img src="button.gif" madeby="moose.com" />

The idea is that if everyone did this, we could create a script that would automatically generate credits pages for sites by searching for madeby tags - you could even make a browser plugin that shows a list of all the madeby tags on the page your browsing!

We could create our own list of custom web revival centric parameters like this; people could easily link this into their web pages to add extra functionality!

How do you like to do this? Do you think its important? Do you have a method you already use?


« Last Edit: February 05, 2023 @987.88 by Melooon »	Logged

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SilkSkull
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Re: How can we give better credit for shared assets in the web revival?

« Reply #1 on: February 05, 2023 @760.09 »

I'm gonna start putting mine in the alt text although I love the idea of the HTML tag. I feel like giving credit without overcrowding a page is though like you mentioned so I'm excited to hear other people's ideas and maybe look around to see what other sites do


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luna
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Re: How can we give better credit for shared assets in the web revival?

« Reply #2 on: February 05, 2023 @875.49 »

Quote from: SilkSkull on February 05, 2023 @760.09

I'm gonna start putting mine in the alt text although I love the idea of the HTML tag. I feel like giving credit without overcrowding a page is though like you mentioned so I'm excited to hear other people's ideas and maybe look around to see what other sites do

wait! please reconsider doing this!

the primary purpose of alt text is to provide descriptive info to people using screen readers. it's not meant for offloading extra info that you don't want visitors to see. something else to consider here: you are trying not to (visually) "overcrowd" a page but are putting that overcrowding on your visitors who have blindness / low vision in the form of (auditory) "noise".

it might make sense to add attribution to an alt text if that attribution text is visible in the image, for example if the image has a signature. so it would make sense to describe the image in the alt text as you normally would, and then add "signed by [artist name]". but either way, it's important to make sure that alt text is being used as a text replacement for the image itself, not an info dumping ground: HTMLImageElement.alt - Web APIs | MDN (mozilla.org)

instead of using alt text for pure attribution because you want to avoid visual overcrowding, consider a data attribute. this Mozilla article describes it very well -- it's valid to add an attribute like data-attribution to an image tag: Using data attributes - Learn web development | MDN (mozilla.org).

thank you for reading!


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SilkSkull
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Re: How can we give better credit for shared assets in the web revival?

« Reply #3 on: February 06, 2023 @44.94 »

Quote from: luna on February 05, 2023 @875.49

wait! please reconsider doing this!

the primary purpose of alt text is to provide descriptive info to people using screen readers. it's not meant for offloading extra info that you don't want visitors to see. something else to consider here: you are trying not to (visually) "overcrowd" a page but are putting that overcrowding on your visitors who have blindness / low vision in the form of (auditory) "noise".

it might make sense to add attribution to an alt text if that attribution text is visible in the image, for example if the image has a signature. so it would make sense to describe the image in the alt text as you normally would, and then add "signed by [artist name]". but either way, it's important to make sure that alt text is being used as a text replacement for the image itself, not an info dumping ground: HTMLImageElement.alt - Web APIs | MDN (mozilla.org)

instead of using alt text for pure attribution because you want to avoid visual overcrowding, consider a data attribute. this Mozilla article describes it very well -- it's valid to add an attribute like data-attribution to an image tag: Using data attributes - Learn web development | MDN (mozilla.org).

thank you for reading!

Oh thank you for the info! I never knew that. I'll look into making my website more accessible and use alternate methods to give credit!


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Cele
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Re: How can we give better credit for shared assets in the web revival?

« Reply #4 on: February 06, 2023 @423.32 »

I don't know how to add alt text or how it displays. I have added credits to images so that if you hover mouse over the image, it shows the text. But that doesn't work on mobile as far as I know.


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TheFrugalGamer
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Re: How can we give better credit for shared assets in the web revival?

« Reply #5 on: February 06, 2023 @695.54 »

So I've been reading some discussions on this, and the consensus is either to add it in the alt text, but keep it brief, or (preferred) add it via plain text. If it looks ugly or too large, use CSS to make it fit in better.

Here's a long discussion about the pros and cons:
https://www.sitepoint.com/community/t/how-to-credit-a-phot:ha:7282/25

Quote
I don't know how to add alt text or how it displays. I have added credits to images so that if you hover mouse over the image, it shows the text. But that doesn't work on mobile as far as I know.

In order to add alt text, you just add alt="[your text here]" to the img tag. It's pretty straight forward and is meant to describe the image for screen-readers or browsers that have the images turned off. I suspect you're using the title attribute, which does pop up on some browsers (FF and Chrome)

I'm intrigued by the madeby attribute idea, though. I'm curious about its accessibility, though because it's not yet in common use, I suspect we'd need to combine it with other methods until it became more normalized. The ability to search for it and compile all of them into a page sounds really neat!


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luna
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Re: How can we give better credit for shared assets in the web revival?

« Reply #6 on: February 06, 2023 @807.67 »

i like the madeby idea as well! (i think it is cleaner than data attributes on the image tag that i mentioned in my previous comment.) as Melon suggested, doing this would allow you to create a tool that collects all attribution. then you can put that attribution wherever. maybe attribution should go in a page-specific “footnotes” section that you could make collapsible (i was thinking about a collapsible details element? https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/details ). so you won’t have clutter but can still examine the list of attributions, and everything is still in context on the same page as the image being credited.

(putting aside whether it’s good to do this…) solutions that focus on putting things in alt text or title attributes are only partial solutions for making attributions accessible to all visitors — if alt text is used, then only screen reader users will know. if title is used, then only mouse users will know (since title is visible on mouse hover).

i think putting attribution in the page content itself, in an area where users can read it visually and with a screen reader, is the great way to ensure attribution is available and accessible for all visitors. footnotes (in a details element or not) or a separate attribution page would cover this.


« Last Edit: February 06, 2023 @823.10 by luna »	Logged

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