
Proposed new tag: IMG [1993] - franzb
http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q1/0182.html
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amyjess
The interesting thing is the formats specified in Andreesen's request: Xbm and
Xpm. This was a time before JPEG and GIF (and certainly before PNG).

I have some vague memories of the old days, when compressed images were a
novelty, and people were talking about how you had to have special software to
view GIF, which was described as this special ultra-high-tech format.

I think the main program people recommended was called GIFConverter, which
itself is a telling name because it shows just how much of a new concept
compression was that you somehow had to "convert" the image in order to
display it. (edit: just checked, and not only is GIFConverter _still
maintained_ , but it's now available for iOS as well... didn't expect that)

~~~
frik
Nope, read on, GIF was supported from day one:
[http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-
talk.1993q1/0257.ht...](http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-
talk.1993q1/0257.html)

    
    
      "Back to the inlined image thread again -- I'm getting 
      close to releasing Mosaic v0.10, which will support 
      inlined GIF and XBM images/bitmaps, as mentioned 
      previously."
    

\-- Marc Andreessen (Fri, 12 Mar 93)

XBM file support had been removed in Internet Explorer 6 (IE 1-6 is based on
Mosaic code, see IE6 about dialog):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBM)

~~~
amyjess
Oh, I'm not disputing that. I just thought it was an interesting bit of
history that the original message (which OP linked to) mentioned two dead
formats and none of the formats that are integral to the modern web.

------
ojii
In the next message is this gem:

> I was proposing to use the file extension (.xbm above) to tag what format
> the image was in, but with the intention that in future, when HTTP2 comes
> along, the same format negotiation technique would be used to access images.

------
frik
Marc Andreessen proposal was simple and his Mosaic with inline image support
had been release first. Good. Otherwise it would be called ICON instead of IMG
or be part of an overly complicated A-tag. It also explains the nuance between
the HREF (A-tag) and SRC (IMG-tag) attributes.

------
terhechte
It is fascinating to go through the thread history and read the names of the
people commenting on the proposal: \- Tim Berners-Lee \- Guido van Rossum \-
Marc Andreessen

------
zeisss
Wasn't there some rule to mark old content with the year it was published? So
1993 in this case.

~~~
HerpDerpLerp
I think that would make the link much less fun!

