#with xkit. without xkit. beta post editor. old post editor. maybe different browsers work differently too i don't know!!

[coquelicoq]

oh i keep forgetting to ask this question!

important background: i only ever use tumblr on a PC, in a browser. that is, i'm not talking about tumblr mobile/tumblr apps, which i have never used! so if i'm describing something that doesn't sound at all familiar to you, that may be why.

so for posts with images, i always want to reblog a version with an image description, if one exists. (to read a bit about why this is important, see this short post about what good even simple IDs do and/or my image descriptions tag.) it is fairly straightforward, though sometimes annoying, to find out if someone has added an ID to the body of the post - i just open up the notes and scroll past all the replies and whatnot until i see a reblog that starts with a square bracket and then "Image description". if i don't find one, sometimes i write an ID myself, but i prefer not to duplicate effort if it's already been done.

i learned fairly recently that tumblr also has a built-in "Image Description" field which the person uploading the image can access by clicking on the three dots in the bottom right corner of the image (in the beta post editor, anyway). the uploader can then write in this field a short (200 characters max) explanation of what the image is.

you know when you're scrolling the dash and there are all those blocks of color gradient because the images haven't loaded yet? in the top left corner of each block, it'll simply say "Image" if the uploader didn't write anything in that Image Description field. if they did write something in that field, it'll appear in the block. it's pretty handy because it lets you know what the image is when it's not loading, and it's accessible to screenreaders used by visually impaired people and others.

the problem i'm running into is that, when an image loads properly, i can't figure out how to tell if it has this kind of image description! the description doesn't appear as hover text, nor does it show up if i right-click the image and click Inspect Accessibility Properties. i can only ever see it when the image isn't loading, and usually images load for me and i don't know how to make them...not do that.

this means i go looking for an ID in the notes, or write my own ID, when maybe i don't have to. (sometimes 200 characters isn't sufficient to describe the image, but sometimes it is! and it's always better than nothing, if i can't find anything and can't write an ID myself for whatever reason.)

here's an example. i wrote a short description in the Image Description field associated with the image below. can you find it?

i can't find anything about this in the tumblr help index. is it super obvious or something? what am i missing??