---
created_at: '2012-09-26T06:52:23.000Z'
title: 'Proposed new HTML tag: IMG (1993)'
url: http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q1/0182.html
author: wamatt
points: 164
story_text: ''
comment_text: 
num_comments: 62
story_id: 
story_title: 
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created_at_i: 1348642343
_tags:
- story
- author_wamatt
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objectID: '4574465'

---
[Source](http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q1/0182.html "Permalink to WWW-Talk Jan-Mar 1993: proposed new tag: IMG")

# WWW-Talk Jan-Mar 1993: proposed new tag: IMG

WWW-Talk Jan-Mar 1993: proposed new tag: IMG

# proposed new tag: IMG

Marc Andreessen (_marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu_)  
_Thu, 25 Feb 93 21:09:02 -0800_

* **Messages sorted by:** [[ date ]][1][[ thread ]][2][[ subject ]][3][[ author ]][4]
* **Next message:** [Tony Johnson: "Re: proposed new tag: IMG"][5]
* **Previous message:** [Bill Janssen: "Re: xmosaic experience"][6]
* **Next in thread:** [Tony Johnson: "Re: proposed new tag: IMG"][5]
* * *

I'd like to propose a new, optional HTML tag:  

IMG  

Required argument is SRC="http://1997.webhistory.org/url".   

This names a bitmap or pixmap file for the browser to attempt to pull  
over the network and interpret as an image, to be embedded in the text  
at the point of the tag's occurrence.  

An example is:  

<IMG SRC=""file://foobar.com/foo/bar/blargh.xbm">file://foobar.com/foo/bar/blargh.xbm">   

(There is no closing tag; this is just a standalone tag.)  

This tag can be embedded in an anchor like anything else; when that  
happens, it becomes an icon that's sensitive to activation just like a  
regular text anchor.  

Browsers should be afforded flexibility as to which image formats they  
support. Xbm and Xpm are good ones to support, for example. If a  
browser cannot interpret a given format, it can do whatever it wants  
instead (X Mosaic will pop up a default bitmap as a placeholder).  

This is required functionality for X Mosaic; we have this working, and  
we'll at least be using it internally. I'm certainly open to  
suggestions as to how this should be handled within HTML; if you have  
a better idea than what I'm presenting now, please let me know. I  
know this is hazy wrt image format, but I don't see an alternative  
than to just say ``let the browser do what it can'' and wait for the  
perfect solution to come along (MIME, someday, maybe).  

Let me know what you think.........  

Cheers,  
Marc  

    
    
    --
    Marc Andreessen
    Software Development Group
    National Center for Supercomputing Applications
    marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu
    

* * *
* **Next message:** [Tony Johnson: "Re: proposed new tag: IMG"][5]
* **Previous message:** [Bill Janssen: "Re: xmosaic experience"][6]
* **Next in thread:** [Tony Johnson: "Re: proposed new tag: IMG"][5]

[1]: http://1997.webhistory.org/date.html#182
[2]: http://1997.webhistory.org/index.html#182
[3]: http://1997.webhistory.org/subject.html#182
[4]: http://1997.webhistory.org/author.html#182
[5]: http://1997.webhistory.org/0183.html
[6]: http://1997.webhistory.org/0181.html

