On Fri, 4 Mar 2005, David Ross wrote:
Is it valid to have the SRC attribute of an IMG tag point to an
icon file (.ICO)?
HTML validity cares nothing about the details of URL attributes, as
long as the appropriate characters are properly encoded.
Back around 10 years or so back, it was quite usual to specify
postscript files in <img src=...> attributes. I don't know any reason
in theory why one couldn't specify other kinds of resource: any client
agent which hasn't implemented your content-type is *supposed* to
display the alternative text, and offer access to your longdesc URL,
after all.
This works okay with Mozilla. However, at my local public library
(which uses a clone of IE), all I see is the ALT text.
So it's working as designed (as far as the alt text is concerned,
anyway - what about the longdesc?). And this is *despite* the fact
that IE brazenly lies about its Accept: abilities when retrieving
<img...> URLs, and therefore doesn't really deserve to play in this
particular game.