How Pictures Appear on Web Pages
 by: John V. W. Howe


: Did you know that when you see a picture on a web page, the actual picture might not actually be residing on the website you are viewing, but might be residing on a website on the other side of the world?

You all know that the web page you are viewing is generated by your browser from the HTML code that it received when you told it to load this page. If you are using Internet Explorer to read this article, position your cursor in the middle of the page away from any table or graphic and right click your mouse. On the drop down box, click View Source. Notepad will open a window that will display the HTML code for the page that you are viewing.

If you do this on a page with a picture or graphic, you will not see the picture or graphic embedded in the HTML, but rather in its place, you will see some HTML code that says this:

Author’s note: If you see the HTML tags xmp and /xmp these are added in this article to tell the browser not to consider what is between them as executable HTML, but rather, print it as text.

“img src=” is the HTML tag that tells the browser where the file is located that contains the image. The numbers after it are the size of the picture in pixels on the screen.

As an example, go to this link to see the picture on our eBay Boomer Retirement Store http://members.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=e--boomer.

When our About Me page loads, position your cursor over our picture and right click (Assuming you are using MS Internet Explorer). Select Properties on the drop down box. It will tell you where the picture is located on the Net. In this case, the picture location is:

www (dot) boomer-ezine.com/images/Linda_John (dot).JPG

If you click the above link, you will be able to view a larger copy of the picture directly from the boomer-ezine.com website.

Here is the concept that is amazing. You are viewing this page on your computer located where you live, the eBay web site host is sending the page to you from California, USA, and the picture is coming from the website host for Boomer eZine located in Kentucky, USA.

Isn’t this technology great? You can post a picture on any website on the Net and you can load it into the page of any another website. The amazing thing is that all this is done in the time it takes for the browser to load and format the page. This is why sometimes you see the page text load first and the pictures loads a little slower. Also, if you see a blank picture frame with a small red X in it, this means that the link to the picture is broken or the website host is down and the picture cannot not be accessed.

If you do not have a website to host your own pictures, there are websites that provide free picture hosting. Go to the website www.eaph.com (Easy Auction Picture Hosting) and take a look. Search Google for others. There are many of them on the Net.

Good luck with building your website.

About The Author
John V. W. Howe is an entrepreneur, author, inventor, patent holder, husband, father, and grandfather. He has been involved in entrepreneurial activities for over 40 years.

He has founded http://www.boomer-ezine.com, http://www.retirement-jobs-online.com and http://www.boomer-entrepreneur.com and to help Boomers (baby boomers) become entrepreneurs when they retire.