Insert/edit link Missing Title Field?

My assumption is just to simplify it for users. The majority of users don’t know about the title tag in links. So I’m assuming that’s why they removed it.

My javascript skills are not the best, so this may be slightly buggy, but it appears to work for me, so I figured I’d let others take a look at it before releasing it.

This is a plugin to restore the Title field. Simple and easy. WordPress 4.2 only, for obvious reasons.

https://ottopress.com/files/2015/04/restore-link-title-field.zip

Let me know how it works, doesn’t work, etc.

I’m having the same issue, I used to be able to edit the title tag when clicking on the link button. Now it’s gone and I have to scroll through lots of lines of code to change my (now) outdated title tags.

Are these no longer relevant / good for user experience? I used to change title tags many times a day (a lotto site where I update the main page with the results of the last draw, and I think it helped me to also have the exact details of that particular draw in the title tag).

Now I can edit the text I link from the link editor, not the title tag anymore. I want that back. Please?

The plugin above works fine Otto except it doesn’t play nice with other solutions like Rel Nofollow Checkbox.

Why remove SEO items like this? At least make it a toggle or something. My clients all use it, and they are upset, thinking something is broken.

What a silly change!

Silly for sure! I can’t conceive of any sensible reason to back pedal like this.

The real reason is that title attributes are bad for accessibility, and you should really not use them.

Yes, in browsers on your computer, they popup when you hover over the link, but on touch-screen browsers like mobile and such, there is no such thing as “hover” and the content you put into that attribute has no way to be seen. It’s also not visible to anybody who cannot use a mouse. No browser has a way to show you the title popup if you’re only able to use a keyboard.

In that respect, I agree with removing it from the interface. A title should only ever be used as “advisory” information, because it simply cannot be seen by a large number of users.

In another respect, I don’t agree with removing it entirely like this. If the title exists, then it should be editable. Not showing it by default is fine, but this is a case where I would say that they have broken backwards compatibility, by not providing any consideration for existing users who were actively using this functionality to continue to access it.

I’m working on making a better plugin which can add this back in a different way, and which might be more compatible going forward. The above plugin works, but should be considered temporary only. It will not be compatible with any other plugin that modifies that same wplink system, and it will likely not even be compatible going forward with the WordPress core without modification.

Thank you Otto for the plugin you’re providing!

Now, regarding this removal of the “title” field within wordpress…

I don’t pretend I’m speaking for anybody but me, and I know my opinion has no likelyhood of being statistically representative, allright ?
But, still, from my point of view, this is admirably stupid to remove the title field from the hyperlinks. A splendid, exemplary, display of poor decision-making.
As I understood the explanation, mobile users have no use of the title field, so let’s remove it ?

My point : this kind of adaptation for mobile usage is silly.
Wordpress can entirely work for BOTH mobile users, and non-mobile users, and deliver slightly different results depending on the abilities of the viewers.
Chopping any bit that isn’t what mobile viewers are experiencing is, to be blunt, incredibly agressive against non-mobile users. “We’re not like you, so you want to chop off every additional organ we have, until we’re the same at last ?!?”

Non-mobile computers allow for richer uses, depriving them of this just because mobile users can’t enjoy it, is a mistake.
The web is rich. This wordpress mover is making it poorer, with violent uniformization raised as rightful cause.

We’re talking about more than half of visitors of websites losing access to a feature.

As for accessibility, that the hover texts aren’t visible for people using accessibility programs : had they demonstrated grievance over the existence of title texts so far ? No, they haven’t, so depriving more than half of the wordpress visitors horde of titles on hyperlinks can’t be done with accessibility as an excuse.

Nothing personal here, but, really, bad job, WordPress ??

Sabinooo: That isn’t a WordPress specific opinion. It’s a general web-developer opinion.

More info:
https://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2012/01/html5-accessibility-chops-title-attribute-use-and-abuse/

@tranny, When ever I see a feature removed and I’m puzzled, re-reading the WordPress philosophy helps me understand the decisions why: https://www.ads-software.com/about/philosophy/

@samuel Wood (Otto), wow, thanks so much for writing all of that code in that plugin!

Thanks for the plugin, but it does not seem the best solution if we Need Plugins for WP updates.

Where are the People we could tell to improve WP instead of making it worse?

The same with the shortlink, which disappeared some updates before…

Here they are: https://make.www.ads-software.com/

But no way to adress them. Hopefully they are reading this here

@samuel Wood (Otto), Which team is contactable for these kinds of core changes? The Accessibility team?

First of all, Otto and others, thanks for the good clarification.

However, I’d rather see this as an option, …

So for whoever has an influence on this unwanted decision:
+1 for me to have the admin of the website decide wether he wants to drop the title tag of links or not, and NOT have the WordPress team push it through our throats …