Tips & Tricks

Are Your Web Images Too Big?

(IE 6 or better)

You know the drill. You land on a web page with this gigantic picture. You really want to see the whole thing, but alas, it seems the only way is to use your scroll bars. Sure, you could buy a bigger monitor, better video card, then crank up your resolution, but there's just gotta be a cheaper way, right?

You bet.

As long as you're using the current version of Internet Explorer 6, you have an "Image Resize" component available to you!

Doesn't that just make your skin tingle?

Here's how it works: If you're viewing an image with Internet Explorer, it will automatically resize the image to fit in your browser. Now, this will NOT resize an image that's already embedded in a web page, it just works on regular images. So, how do we get this whole thing to work?

You need to make Internet Explorer display just the image, not the entire web page. That's actually a ton easier than it sounds. Here's the "how to":

For non-linked images - If the image you're trying to see is NOT linked to another web page (i.e. if you click it and it doesn't take you to another page), just drag and drop the image to your Internet Explorer address bar. Poof! (No it really doesn't make that sound.) The image will be displayed all by itself and within the confines of your window.

For linked images - This one is just a tad trickier. See, if you drag a linked image to the address bar, Internet Explorer will navigate to the link and not the image. So, what do you do?

In this case, just right-click the image and select Properties from the resulting screen.

Double-click the address on the resulting screen to highlight it. Now, just copy and paste to the address bar. Poof! (Again, it really won't make that sound.) The image is there for the viewing.

Cool, huh?

Try it for yourself with this really neat picture: http://geocities.com/rop92027/iceberg.htm

Bonus Trick!

Here's another cool use for this tip. Say you have a graphic sitting on your desktop or in a folder (GIF or JPEG). You can open Internet Explorer and drag and drop the image to the address bar or main window - it'll pop right open. It's a great way to see an image without taking the time to open your graphics program.

--Steve

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