What is Alternate Text ?

The APPLET element can have an ALT attribute. An ALT attribute is used through a browser which understands the APPLET tag but for some purpose 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. Remember that I said it should, not that it does. The ALT tag is optional.

ALT is not used through browsers which do not know < APPLET> at all. For that reason < APPLET> has been described to require an end-tag, < /APPLET>. All raw text among 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 among them. For example the following HTML fragment says Hello to people both with and without Java capable browsers.