
Proposed new tag: IMG (1993) - zachlatta
http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q1/0182.html
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wglass
The thread is fascinating. What I love about it is how the discussion quickly
became a variety of proposals for other generalized--and more complicated--
constructs. Lots of discussion on making a generic Mime-based embedded object
for example. The worst was "<!ENTITY ICON6 SYSTEM
"[http://blah..">&ICON6;"](http://blah..">&ICON6;") Then Marc just ignored the
comments, put the <img> tag into Mosaic and it became canon. Would HTML have
been so easy for the masses if it was horribly generalized? I'd argue the
simplicity of tags like <b>, <img>, <a> made it so popular.

~~~
goto11
Some suggestions are horrible, but some of the suggestions are pretty good and
forward thinking. Allowing img elements to have fallback content would have
have the introduction of new image formats (jpg, png, svg) much more painless.
We later got the alt-attribute for fallback text, but just using the content
for fallback would be both simpler and more powerful.

It is probably a case of worse-is-better. They chose the simplest possible
solution and shipped. Introducing the img tag is what made Mosaic dominant.

Later Netscape went to far with worse-is-better. Remember they introduced the
<SPACER> tag to allow designers to control whitespace, at a time when Internet
Explorer already had shipped with support for CSS padding and margins. Worse-
is-better only works when you ship features before the competition, it does
not mean worse features will win out over better features.

~~~
krapp
A generic <include> tag for text/hypertext could have been interesting,
particularly if it could be used with link anchors. Although the potential for
abuse when including remote content would obvious.

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flukus
Did this go far enough? Imagine if we'd had a gallery element instead:

<gallery type="slideshow" autoscroll="true"> <img src="one.jpg" /> <img
src="two.jpg" /> </gallery>

If we'd left that sort of functionality up to the browser imagine the
bandwidth saved on tbales for image galleries, javascript carousels,
slideshows, etc. Not to mention having more control over elements like
autoscroll behavior. Browsers seem to have added just enough functionality for
web developers to abuse the document format into an application layer but not
enough functionality for a good one.

Also, the first reply to that message
([http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-
talk.1993q1/0183.ht...](http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-
talk.1993q1/0183.html)) sounds like the creation of the favicon.

~~~
krapp
Most of the bandwidth for image galleries comes from the images themselves,
not the code that runs them.

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tango24
It's fun to read through this history, while I'm listening to "Where Wizards
Stay Up Late".

In reading through the thread [1], I noticed Marc and Jim Davis used an
example audio file from the NSA that no longer exists:
[http://nsa.gov/pub/sounds/gorby.au](http://nsa.gov/pub/sounds/gorby.au)

Anyone know what the story behind that was? Was that a common example?

[1] [http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-
talk.1993q1/0196.ht...](http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-
talk.1993q1/0196.html)

~~~
RickS
Interesting catch!

From the filename and context, I'm going to guess it had something to do with
Mikhail Gorbachev?

Searching for that filename yields almost exclusively links to that
conversation.

Wayback machine didn't have anything for that URL but they did have a snapshot
of the splash page for the NSA website circa 1998:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20051104005542/http://www.nsa.go...](https://web.archive.org/web/20051104005542/http://www.nsa.gov:80/)

Archive.org is truly a treasure.

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sowbug
It's interesting that the example in the proposal uses the file: protocol
rather than http. Was that a mistake? Today a browser would handle such a tag
by looking for a local file, rather than "attempt[ing] to pull over the
network."

~~~
matthewbadeau
It was probably not a mistake. It was to separate Hypertext from other files.
The file: protocol still works in the a browser with a hostname as well. IE:
file:///10.1.1.10/files/example.xlsx

~~~
sowbug
I can't believe I didn't know that until now! I've personally used file: only
to test local copies of static files/sites, and haven't had a need beyond
that.

I wonder how the browser distinguishes between a file residing on a host
addressable at 10.1.1.10, and the local path /10.1.1.10/files/example.xlsx.
Maybe it tries one and then the other if the first doesn't work.

~~~
ttmb
They would be different URIs. file://10.1.1.10/files/example.xlsx - remote vs
file:///10.1.1.10/files/example.xlsx - local

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CogitoCogito
Crazy to see Guido van Rossum comment too:

[http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-
talk.1993q1/0259.ht...](http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-
talk.1993q1/0259.html)

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labster
It will never catch on -- just look around HN.

~~~
nostrademons
Except spacer gifs. Those are totally necessary.

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jackcosgrove
"I think the IMG tag will really drive the web's growth because you could use
it for porn."

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rschoultz
I remember this. Yes, the web was in black and white for a few months, while
Mosaic only supported XBM format.

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michaelgiba
this is amazing

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danspots
wonder if marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu still works??

