In our last tutorial we discussed working with forms in HTML. In this episode we will cover how to work with images, such as floating images, image maps, and background images.
Aside from making your website look pretty, images serve a number of purposes in HTML. You can use them for attractive navigational links, for backgrounds, and even to add interactivity to your website. Since font support is limited to the type of fonts a user has on their computer, images also allow for you to create images of the fonts you like and use them on your page. Be forewarned however, as the more images you put on your page, the longer it will take them to load. And too many images can make a website look busy and cluttered.
How to Insert an Image
You insert images into your web page using the <img> tag. The source part, or attribute, tells the computer where the image is located, as shown below:
<html>
<body>
<p>
Here is a sample image:
<img src="sample.gif"
width="144" height="50">
</p>
<p>
Here is the same image, only bigger:
<img src="sample.gif"
width="288" height="100">
</p>
<p>
Here is the same image, only smaller:
<img src="sample.gif"
width="77" height="50">
</p>
</body>
</html>
This code inserts three images, using the <img> tag. While all of the images are the same (sample.gif), we used the height and width properties to manipulate the size of each one, creating a normal-sized image, a small-sized image, and a large-sized image.
If you have images located in different places on your server, or another server entirely, you can link to them this way: