Alternate Text

The <APPLET> has an ALT attribute. An ALT attribute is used by a browser that understands the APPLET tag but for some reason cannot play the applet. For instance, if you've turned off Java in Netscape Navigator 3.0, then the browser should display the ALT text. Note that I said it should, not that it does. The ALT tag is optional.

<applet code="HelloWorldApplet.class" 
CODEBASE="http://www.foo.bar.com/classes" width=200 height=200
ALIGN=RIGHT HSPACE=5 VSPACE=10
ALT="Hello World!">
</APPLET>

ALT is not used by browsers that do not understand <APPLET> at all. For that purpose <APPLET> has been defined to require a closing tag, </APPLET>. All raw text between the opening and closing <APPLET> tags is ignored by a Java capable browser. However a non-Java capable browser will ignore the <APPLET> tags instead and read the text between them. For example the following HTML fragment says Hello to people both with and without Java capable browsers.

<applet code="HelloWorldApplet.class" 
CODEBASE="http://www.foo.bar.com/classes" width=200 height=200
ALIGN=RIGHT HSPACE=5 VSPACE=10
ALT="Hello World!">
Hello World!<P>
</APPLET>

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Last Modified August 4, 1997
Copyright 1997 Elliotte Rusty Harold
elharo@metalab.unc.edu