[jQuery] Reconciling Tablesorter behavior in IE and FF

[narayanis]

I am using Tablesorter to work with a simple table, but have come
across an interesting difference in how it works between browsers.
One of my columns looks like this:

Row 1
img src="http://dssweb/apdashboard/images/Green.png";
class="client_status" title="1.  UAT testing Sept 09"

Row 2
img src="http://dssweb/apdashboard/images/Yellow.png";
class="client_status" title="Upgrade complete and client is happy with
the outcome."

In Firefox it sorts by image source (which is the desired behavior).
In IE7 and 8, it sorts by title.  Do I need to create a custom parser
so that it sorts the same way for both browsers, or can I simply add
an attribute to the HTML (like status = "green") and choose to sort by
that attribute?  If so, are there any good examples?  The metadata
example on the Tablesorter site is a little sparse in explaining this.

Any help is appreciated.  Thanks!