TIP - Picture displays 101(a)

Let us step back to the original request about how to insert a picture within a post so that, when clicked, it will take the viewer to a larger version of the same picture, hence allowing more detailed examination.

The only caveat I would add here is that you should try and keep your original pic to a reasonable size, say 800 pixels wide, so that people with slower dial-up connections don't have to wait an age for them to be downloaded to their screen. The real down-side to making the pictures 'huge' is that people might stop visiting if they feel that they have to wait an unnecessarily long time for something to display!

These are views of my garden when I was lucky enough to live in Cyprus for a short time. The house and garden were perched on top of a cliff that overlooked the blue Mediterranean. Glorious!

I just uploaded the originals to Blogger, chose to have them display as 'centred' and in a 'medium' format (size) on the page, and Blogger did the rest.

Now that Blogger had done the hard work I then clicked on the 'edit' icon below the post and chose to edit the HTML version, but only to add a couple of little 'extras'.

You should make it a rule for any picture you display on your site to 'identify' it by giving it some 'alt' text. This helps the visually impaired who may be using a screen reader to access your blog. I did this in the code that Blogger generated. The second thing I did was to insert target="_blank" at the end of the code line so that when a viewer clicks on the picture it is opened in a new window. Frowned on by the W3C standards validation people, but I will explain my reasons at a later date!

Nothing difficult about that, huh?

 

Let's take another tilt at this windmill . . .

I started the 'Sandbox' on the 29th April in response to questions on David McMahon's authorblog, about how to achieve simple picture displays.

In my haste I completely overlooked the fact that I was hosting my blog on my own server, and that editing it to achieve the results I was after was a bit 'geeky' and that it concentrated on editing HTML code. Not something everybody is familiar or comfortable with!

A comment on the Sandbox by 'papoosue', who has a blog called Random Blethers, gently reminded me that not everything I assumed was a simple task, was actually that 'simple'. I gulped, and decided that, to meet the needs of the visitors to David's superb blog, who come to him with many questions and varying degrees of ability, that any explanation needed to concentrate on how things are done using Blogger's excellent built-in system of 'editing'.

The ability to edit most of your display, especially by manipulating the template you've chosen, already exists within the Dashboard elements of Blogger, so why not give your site that 'unique' look?

You could even register another blog, not publish it, but use that as the 'testbed' for any changes you wish to introduce. That way you won't break your original, and when you're satisfied that you have achieved the design of your choice, then copy it across!

So, what are you waiting for?

 

My Profile

This is information about me that does not appear on my Blogger profile. I've added it here to test out the functionality of an 'additional' profile that expands on what Blogger publishes.

• I was born in India in 1944 and studied in various English-medium (Anglo-Indian) schools, some as a day scholar, most as a boarder, until the age of 16.
• By the time I'd turned 17 my parents decided that the only hope for me to make my way in the world was to pack me off to the UK.
• I arrived in the UK in March 1962, and stayed with friends that originally came from the same Railway Colony in which I lived in India.
• I arrived on a Sunday and had landed a job by Thursday. An 'apprenticeship' that ultimately turned out to be a con, but that's for a full post some time in the future!
• Dissatisfied with the mind-numbing, repetitive task of producing 'electrical cable twists', from the sort of light stuff (pun intended) you use every day, to heavier lengths that often ended up as 'undersea cable', I applied to join the military.
• My first port of call was the Army, but they didn't have vacancies for 'tradesmen', only canon-fodder in the infantry. I declined and approached the RAF.
• The RAF welcomed me into the 'Communications' trade and that's what I spent the next 36 years doing, never bored, because you never knew what awaited you when you signed on for your shift. One of the highlights was speaking to an aircraft tasked to carry HRH, The Prince of Wales, whilst it was still on the deck in Kathmandu. I happened to be on a tiny, remote island in the Indian Ocean, thousands of miles away. That, too will appear as a post some time in the future!
• I met Maria during my last months in the RAF, and in 1998 I joined her in Portugal to start another life. Which I am still living. Eat your hearts out!

That is a quick résumé, to which I might add from time to time, as the notion takes me  ...