27 June (Part 2) - Help please
This
is how one reader’s web browser displayed yesterday’s blog. It is the
third similar report within the past 48 hours so not easily dismissed. Naturally
the new Bonkers’ site is blamed but the standard ‘postage stamp’ images have
always been a feature of the website and the code that underlies them has not changed much since then.
It has always included the instruction (known as float) to flow text around the image, if it didn't
the image would interrupt the text flow and it would sit above the text and not as
shown here. To achieve that deliberately would require a lot of more complex
code. The Bexley Council is Bonkers overlay of the banner image uses it, nothing else does.
Text flow around (float) is something that can be either switched on or switched off. Obviously it is
switched on because it needs to be. There are no other options. There is no
obvious way of coding things wrongly and in any case nothing has been changed.
Way back in 2009 the images of this type were defined as picture type 1 or p1 for short and
the definition of p1 has changed only in one respect since then. Before May 2018
the images were displayed at a fixed 233x155 pixels and since then they are
displayed at 24% of the browser window width. The latter allows them to grow or shrink as required.
There is only one instruction p1 which is applied right across the site.
It must either work all the time or none of the time but three reports say otherwise.
All my computers and browsers display the images correctly as do those of family
and friends, see below. I cannot change anything because the float command is
obviously required, so what is going on?
It is not impossible that a browser or operating system upgrade has screwed
something up but not likely.
One thing occurs to me. Before May 2018 p1 style images not only had a fixed 233x155
pixel size (scaled in Photoshop) but also a larger version which popped up when clicked. Since
May only the large version exists and the browser scales it to fit the blog page.
When it is clicked the same image is referenced and displayed at a larger size.
The code that does the job is common open source, not mine. Maybe some browsers don’t like images
that reference themselves. If that is the case, affected readers will not see
the problem in old blogs, neither will they see the problem on newer blogs which
do not reference a larger image.
There are not many of those but
5th May contains one and so does
24th June.
If anyone spots a pattern I would be pleased to hear about it. Is it only some
browsers at some image sizes or only images that expand on click which are affected?
