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<img src=your_image.gif border=0 height=50 width=190
alt="image description, this image does not exist">
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Always provide an alt string which is displayed
before the image is downloaded and/or if images are disabled.
In IE 4.72, the alt tag is also displayed when the mouse
simply points to the image.
Netscape 4.05 does not display the alt tag when loading images.
It does display when
the mouse points to the image and when images are disabled.
Specifying both the height and width speeds up the display speed.
In general, implentation is browser dependent and not reliable
(predictable).
Additional parameters
- align - top, middle, bottom, left, right
- hspace - in pixels
- vspace - in pixels
- border - in pixels, used to indicate a link (anchor)
- ismap - server-side image map, causes problems for text-only and
speech-based browsers
- usemap - client-side image map, some browsers don't support this
HTML 4.0
Almost everything about the img tag is depricated
(made obsolete) in HTML 4.0.
However, because the cost of converting
a billion web pages is astronomical, I can't imagine a browser
that won't implement all the depricated functions.
AOL JPEG Problems
AOL admits
that they are causing a problem with JPEG images.
"There have been problems with JPEG images,
particularly for AOL members.
If a member has graphics compression turned "on"
on an AOL internal browser (the default setting),
some JPEG images look fuzzy or have foreign colors
and shapes contained within the image."
In theory, graphics compression should improve the performance
of the AOL servers.
However, it causes JPEGs to look grainy.
One of my favorite sites is
Astronomy Picture of the Day
which has a different image (JPEG) every day.
Many of these are beautiful Hubble images.
On my machine, they're gorgeous.
However, on a friend's machine (with an AOL connection, of course)
they are hideous with low resolution and lots of speckles.
To fix this on your machine, turn off "Use Compressed Graphics".
My AOL / Preferences / WWW / Web Graphics
uncheck Use Conpressed Graphics
and click OK
If you're developing pages with graphics, include a warning
for your AOL users that the pictures look worse because
they don't have real internet access.
(Or be nice and suggest how they can fix it. :)
For additional information on various AOL problems, see
AOL Design Information.
Additional References
A good discussion of scanning and PhotoCD.
Contains information on using a database to track images.
How to use cookies to customize user presentation.
A comparision of JPG and GIF formats
Author: Robert Clemenzi -
clemenzi@cpcug.org