[thelist] Extracting pictures from a database

[Techwatcher]

Hi,

Just one more little note on this topic, folks: I was working on
updating a Web site (subsite?) for a very large entertainment company
(before it merged with a very large ISP). They had protocols in place
to validate pages before they were updated, and one of those protocols
was: Yes, you guessed it... IMG tags without height & width attributes -
- even with inaccurate VALUES of those attributes!!! -- were rejected.
I don't know if other firms use that sort of validator any longer. It
sure slowed down development, as well as making it impossible to resize
single-pixel color blocks, or use similar tricks.

<tip type="image size" author="Carol Stein">
Once you get the free HTML authoring system HTML-Kit downloaded and set
up properly (pointing to your images subdirectory), you can insert an
image simply by clicking on the image tool on the Action toobar, then
clicking the file you want in the images subdirectory (which
automatically opens). HTML-Kit automatically inserts the correct size
attributes! You should change the ALT text, however, which by default
is merely the file's name and size.
</tip>

Cheers --
Carol
techwatcher at accesswriters.com

[snip]
If I've got this (img tags don't really need the width and height
attributes
to work, automatic) <img
src=""> thing in a database cell...
[/snip]

However, this prevents the page from validating. Also height and width
attributes in the tag "tell" the browser to set aside exactly that much
real-estate for the image. Doing it on the fly uses more memory
resources
and may cause the page to take longer to download. Not to mention that
it is
just bad form.

You can have your upload scripting capture and assemble the proper
information and attributes if you choose to go the URL-in-the-database
route.

Jay