Talk:Title text

Everyone except this wiki calls it ‘alt-text’, Randall himself included. See XKCD 45. I vote for changing all occurrences of title text in this wiki to alt-text. --173.245.51.212 20:55, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Randall also called it “title text” twice: 442, 1045. —108.162.253.174 09:07, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

The link doesn't give any evidence why calling this the 'alt text' is incorrect. But if you inspect the page source, you'll see Randall uses the 'title' attribute, rather than the 'alt' attribute for this purpose. -- Accidus (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

This is because while a "title" shows up on mouseover, the "alt" shows up only if the image doesn't load, so you know what was supposed to be there. It'd be harder to cause the image not to load just to see a little extra joke. 172.68.26.23 12:14, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Please stop writing in all-capitals in your edit summaries. It sounds like you're shouting. --162.158.93.105 08:33, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

This is also because the "alt" attribute is older than the "title" attribute and most browsers used to show the value of "alt" as a tooltip if no "title" was given. --162.158.93.105 08:33, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Are there actually any comics without title text? If not, I propose removing the first "almost." 172.68.34.4 20:54, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Is it possible to simulate title text on the wiki for pictures? ColorfulGalaxy (talk) 20:13, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

In what way? The standard comic-template already makes the title text an alt text (or whatever it is, tag-attribute-wise) to the image, if you hover/inspect the image. Which means a slow-loading page (whenever it's a bad connection) gives the placeholder TT and the subtitle TT, until the image is actually available. May depend upon browser/etc, but should be like that for most people. 172.70.91.77 20:12, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, and what about title text for text? ColorfulGalaxy (talk) 07:48, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you even mean by that (unless it's that covered by the separate Transcript section), but you can ellucidate further if you wish. 172.70.162.46 23:46, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Running joke

The title text on XKCD is similar to the edit summary on Explain XKCD. The edit summary is used normally to explain the edit, but some users use it to expand the joke. CommunityGuidelines (talk) 03:19, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

This also happens in the template:incomplete. CommunityGuidelines (talk) 01:29, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

See User:ColorfulGalaxy's, Victoria's, and User:ClassicalGames's recent edits. 172.69.22.246

Example: U-N-D-O-I-N-G

full title text stopped showing on mobile

Recently I noticed that xkcd's title text on my phone (Android with Chrome browser, regular xkcd.com site) has stopped showing me the complete title text when I long press the picture. This is obviously distressing as I miss the punch line for half the jokes. Coming to this page I discovered the existence of the mobile site m.xkcd.com which has an alt-text button, so thanks xplaincd for that one. Has anyone else noticed this behaviour recently, presumable due to either an xkcd or Chrome update? Alcatraz ii (talk) 00:45, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

I know it's long been the case on my Android Chrome browser (tails off into a "..."). I think it works better on my Android Firefox browser (which I prefer to use for other reasons), but I haven't got the tablet with me at the moment to double-check that.

If it's an update (and a different update for you... maybe related to different Android versions, yours is probably a higher number or two than mine is - which, for some reason, could mean that I got an earlier 'deal-breaker' than you did), it's with Chrome and/or the flavour of Android subsystem that Chrome picks up as its UI-handler.

Though I half remember (but can't test) that there may be an 'expand this'-type spot in the truncated infobox window. So long since I've bothered doing that (I've mainly got here, maybe Firefox, or I can even "view-source:<url>" to quickly peak at the relvent bit of the raw HTML) that I've not got a muscle-memory for it... 92.23.11.33 01:40, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Just remembered, I have another oldish tablet around her (long story).

Could check this properly on xkcd #3195 (the latest), because the TT was short enough to not need truncating.

But back a page to #3194 and long-press gives

Some surfaces may seem difficult to glue. But if you research the
materials, find tables of what adhesives work on them, and prepare you...

...above a horizontal rule and then the "Open image in new tab"/etc list.

If I tap the truncacted alt/title-text space, though, it "fills out" as:

Some surfaces may seem difficult to glue. But if you research the
materials, find tables of what adhesives work on them, and prepare
your surfaces carefully, you can fail to glue them in a fun NEW way that
fills your house with dangerous vapors.

...again, above the Open Impage/etc items. I suspect that an image with a link to go to will have a further horizontal rule for that bit and further items.

This is... let's see... Chrome 138.0.7204.179 running on Android 8.1.0 (and various sub-build info that won't matter much). No special changes to the browser's settings, that relate to this (some settings tweaks to maintain some legacy-style 'tabbing' like I prefer it, shouldn't matter for this though).

It seems that Firefox (146.0.1) also truncates (ending at "surfaces careful..."), but also gives the full text when tapped in a similar manner.

Hope that is a useful pointer and it works with yours. My builds (save for Android itself) should be the newest/nerly-newest available, give or take an update that I've not been pointed at yet. 92.23.11.33 02:02, 17 January 2026 (UTC)