Why HTML element's attribute "title" not been named "tooltip"? [closed]

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Closed 11 years ago.

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i think 'tooltip' would be more appropriate

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It's named title, because it is the title of an element. In HTML, we describe what things are, not how to display them. I do admit we didn't always do that, but we do it now, or at least should.

This is the same reasoning why to prefer the <em> tag over <i>. It's more important to describe the meaning then the display. The display is handled by the browser, and can be tweaked by CSS.

The fact that most browsers display title as a tooltip should be considered a detail. Good to know of course. But it's not a law; alternative browsers might do different things with it. Classic cases are talking browsers and textual browsers. But an example closer to home is iphone safari. How can you have a tooltip when you don't have a hover? I'm not sure what they do with the title attribute though.

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a user agent may choose to implement showing title in statusbar or may not show at all. its up to user agent

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Back in the day, the title attribute didn't make a tooltip. It displayed elsewhere, such as in the status bar, or even not at all. Over time the behaviour has become more consistent across browsers making a tooltip.