Mark Pilgrim traces the history of the humble IMG tag and the heated discussion that ensued when graphics were added to the web:
I'd like to propose a new, optional HTML tag:Why do we have an IMG element? (via Waxy)IMG
Required argument is SRC="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.
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Gosh, that's such a terrible idea. You know it'll just encourage people to not speak English like every real person does.
We do need a <SARCASM> markup tag though.
The article gets an important detail wrong: Mosaic was owned by the NCSA; when Andreessen and gang started Netscape, they didn't have the rights to that code, which they wrote for grad student "wages" (meaning less than a janitor gets), so they built a new one from scratch. They initially wanted to keep the name "Mosaic", but they were not allowed to, so they chose the name Netscape.
Grad student wages are pretty dang good if you consider the tuition waiver most get.
I could not agree more, a tag would be a great addition.
People use images on the web? Gosh, maybe it's time I stop using Lynx to browse.
@ Clifton
I agree. It will also encourage phishing.
The <img src=""> tag. When HTML really came alive and separated port 80 traffic from being just another gopher...
Yep, there was a lot of freaking out over it, but then it enabled what we have now...
It forced the John Dvorak rule, "at the heart of most technological communications innovation lies the demand for pornography"...
Thanks Joe. I think I've fixed all the Mosaic/Netscape lineage bits. Sorry for the confusion.
I fear that the new features they are creating become the ad hoc standards that will prove difficult to undo. One tag that struck me as not wanted/needed was the EMBED tag as it seems to be just an IMG tag with no inline content type specified.
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