http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,671522,00.asp

The Big Picture
By Neil J. Rubenking
December 3, 2002


I put my digital photos in a directory on my Web site, with a series of <A> tags linked directly to the pictures. The problem is, the pictures are huge (2,048-by-1,536), and they don't fit on the screen. Should I resize them before uploading? Also, some of the URLs look peculiar, like Edwin%20and%20 Morcar.jpg. What is the %20?

Diane Harris

Here is a simple HTML example that will cause the picture to display smaller and function as a link to the larger image:

<P><A HREF="http://.../ Edwin%20and%20Morcar.jpg">
<IMG SRC="http://.../Edwin%20and%20Morcar.jpg"
width=256 height=192/>
<BR>Click for full-size image</A></P>

The <IMG> tag displays the image at 256-by-192, an eighth of its actual height and width. You can choose any size you like. Clicking the image or the text line below it opens the full-size image.

You could speed the display by resampling the images at the smaller size. Put the link to the smaller image in the <IMG SRC=> tag, but leave the larger image in the <A HREF=> tag.

The %20 elements represent the space character. When a character is not valid in a particular HTML element, it gets replaced by its character code in hexadecimal and preceded by a percent sign.