Fellow Freeper needs a tutorial

[GunHoardingCapitalist]

I am trying to figure out how to post pictures in both new posts and post replies. If anybody can give me a simple step by step it would be greatly appreciated.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Leave out the space after "<", otherwise like this:

< img src ="[URL where picture is hosted]">

Jim Rob doesn't have the budget to host your snapshots ;)

Example:

< img src ="http://www.analemma.de/images/articles/dicicco.jpg">

without the space after < produces this:

[Onelifetogive]

Right click the pic and get its address.

Paste it into the following:

<img src='XXXXXXXXX'>

It will look like:

By the way, I made the code appear above by using <xmp> before it and the same thing with a "/" after it.

[FreedomPoster]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/938739/posts

[FreedomPoster]

http://www.htmlgoodies.com/primers/html/article.php/3478181

[samtheman]

<img src='http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2008-06/39958184.jpg'>

[samtheman]

What is that picture? That’s interesting.

[TexasCajun]

Search FR or Google HTML Sandbox:

All knowledge emanates from the Sandbox.

[backhoe]

OK, first, any picture you wish to show has to be "hosted on the web"-- it has got to be on a web server, not your hard drive. Google "free photo hosting" for a list where you can put your own pictures. If it's already on the web, hover your pointer and right-click-- see that "properties" in the menu? Click that, and the "http" stuff is the web address of the graphic. Copy that somewhere, then take this string: < img src="" > being sure to remove the space I added after the first bracket and before the last to make it "visible" here. You copy the web addy in between the quotes, and viola!

[True Republican Patriot]

ping

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

An analemma taken by Dennis DiCicco 1976-1977 and published in Sky and Telescope in 1978, iirc.

DiCicco was the first to do it, back in the days before digital cameras.

NASA's pathfinder did one on Mars.

On earth the southern loop is exaggerated by the phasing of the vernal equinox and perihelion. (In 12,000 years, the northern loop will be larger, in 6000, about equal.) On Mars, because of his greater orbital eccentricity and the phasing between Mars' vernal equinox and perihelion, the southern loop has been pinched into a point.

[SeafoodGumbo]

Isn't that hotlinking?

I thought we were always supposed to save photos to our hard drive, and then upload them to a free photo hosting site like shutterfly or flickr.

[Spunky]

Jim Robinson has always said to add the width and height because the thread will load up faster. I do it like this.
< img width=356 src="http://www.analemma.de/images/articles/dicicco.jpg"heigth=303>

[Spunky]

"I thought we were always supposed to save photos to our hard drive....

I never do. I just go to whatever site and copy the properties. If you want the picture to stay around for a long time it is probably best to do it your way. Otherwise they disappear.

[ThePythonicCow]

Jim Robinson has always said to add the width and height because the thread will load up faster.

This seems incorrect to me. My understanding is that specifying the height and width affects the display size, but not the download size. That is, if one specifies a smaller height and width, then each of us viewing that thread will still have to download to our PC's the same, big, old, fat image file, but then it will display in our web browser shrunk down a bit.

The only way I know to speed up handling of large images is to first convert them to a small image using some image processing program on your own PC, then uploading the shrunken image file to a web site, and setting your <img src=URL> to that uploaded, smaller, image file.

One other detail -- I would specify only one of height or width, not both, in most cases. If you specify both, and don't get their ratio the same as the height-width ratio of the original image, then you will force the displayed image to be stretched in one dimension or the other. Better to just display one of the two, height or width, and let the other default to whatever is needed to preserve the proportions of the original image.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Thanks muchly, wilco.

[ThePythonicCow]

Two steps to posting images:

1. Figure out the image's URL, perhaps by right clicking on the image as it displays on some web site and examining the properties or if your browser supports it, picking the Copy Image Location choice off the right-click menu, to put the image URL directly into your copy&paste buffer. For the next step, let me use a URL for an image of one of my favorite animals: http://www.isrealli.org/wp-content/uploads/cow.JPG
2. Given that URL, then type into your FreeRepublic post or reply:

   <img src=http://www.isrealli.org/wp-content/uploads/cow.JPG>

The above html line, if posted directly into a reply here, displays

[ThePythonicCow]

without the space after <

You can avoid having to put those spaces around < characters in such replies by typing in the four characters:

&lt;

instead of the single < character. Such details as that can really help those who are trying to figure this stuff out. The lt in there stands for Less-Than.

[ThePythonicCow]

Isn't that hotlinking?

Well, -all- image posting has to have a URL pointing to some server on the world-wide-web that is hosting that image. One can do one of:

• Hot link to the original site using that image, which is the easiest way, but fails if that original image is no longer available from that site
• Copy the image over to a free photo hosting site, as you suggest, which then depends on that free site continuing to display it. Free sites that don't have some way to make money tend to vanish, or at least, tend to quit serving up such images for free hot links from other sites.
• Provide your own web site, and host the image there, which lasts as long as you pay the monthly bill for your own web site.
• Use the limited web space provided by your ISP (for some ISP's) for hosting the images, which lasts until you change to a different ISP.
• Probably other choices for web servers that I haven't thought of here.

For quickie posts, I hot link, being lazy. This avoids having to copy the image to some other web server.

For posting of some critical image that I don't want to go away for a long time, say if I had conclusive proof that a letter "proving" that George W. Bush had skipped out of National Guard duty was really a forgery on a modern day word processor, I'd upload that image to the most reliable web server I could afford (and keep backup copies of that image in multiple, off-site, secure, locations.)

[HAL9000]

For best results, add the dimensions of your image to the HTML. This will help the web page to load in everyone's browsers without a lot of unnecessary page redrawing and jumping around.

For example, if you have an image file called "myImage.jpg" uploaded to your server with an eponymous domain name, and the size of the image is 640 pixels wide and 480 pixels tall, the HTML would look like this -

<img src="http://www.GunHoardingCapitalist.com/myImage.jpg" width="640" height="480">

Just type that HTML into your FreeRepublic.com text box, and it will embed the image in your message.

Of course, you would substitute the correct domain name for your host, the correct file name for your image, and the correct dimensions for your image.

Adding the dimensions is an especially good idea if your image was not stored with the standard resolution - 72 dots-per-inch (DPI). If you used your digital camera to create the image, it is is probably using a higher resolution.

[Spunky]

"This seems incorrect to me."

Well, I would think Jim Rob knows what he is talking about. I specifically asked him and he said height and width are good. I think mostly for those who have dial up. It makes it load up a lot faster.

You can find the height and width when you look at the properties. There are two numbers there next to Dimensions. The width is the first number and the height is the second number.

[AppyPappy]

It will not affect the speed but it will affect the size.

[AppyPappy]

95% of the time, this question is asked by someone who is really asking this question “Someone sent me a picture in an email. How do I post it here?”. The short answer is “You cannot”.

If you want more detail, see the responses above.

[Spunky]

"It will not effect the speed but it will effect the size."

I have never tried it without the demensions so I am going to try it now to see if there is a difference in the size. Here goes.

It looks the same to me.

If I recall what was said by Jim Rob was that without demensions it takes way long for those on dial up to read the postings as it is taking forever to load a picture that does not have demensions on it. I remember that was the way it was for me before I got broadband.

[ThePythonicCow]

Ah - the difference might be this.

If you put in both height and width, as you say Jim recommends, then this allows your web browser to paint the screen faster, before the image is entirely downloaded, because at least it knows how much screen space to reserve for the image. But I'm pretty sure that you will end up still downloading the entire image, in its original full blown size.

So, depending on which web browser they are using, and how long (big images over slow lines take longer) it will take for the image to download, the user could see a more useable experience, by having the -rest- of the page displayed reasonably, before the image is downloaded.

Here are some web pages discussing this in more detail:

• HWG-News Tips Early August 2000 - Speeding Up Download Time
• WebMasterWorld.com: HTML and Browsers

In short, the height and width attributes can help improve rendering speed (how quickly the rest of the page paints on the screen) but it does not enable downloading images faster.

However ... for responding to posts asking how to post images on FreeRepublic.com, I tend to think it is more important to Keep It Simple Stupid, and intentionally describe the simplest way to post images that will usually work.

[Spunky]

"If you put in both height and width, as you say Jim recommends, then this allows your web browser to paint the screen faster, before the image is entirely downloaded, because at least it knows how much screen space to reserve for the image.

That's it. I just didn't know how to say it. :-)

[ThePythonicCow]

That's it.

Good - thanks for persisting. It led me to make sense of this common controversy.

[ThePythonicCow]

If you distort the ration of height to width enough, it sure looks different:

---

Height=50 Width=500

---

Height=500 Width=50

[ThePythonicCow]

Oops - ration ratio

[AppyPappy]

You can shrink pictures. But the download time is determined by the byte size of the picture which doesn’t change with the shrinkage.