Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

img Element Syntax

There are over a dozen attributes that can be applied to the img element to affect its display, but the only required attributes are src, which provides the URL of the image file, and alt for providing text for browsers that cannot (or have been asked not to) display images. The syntax for a minimal image element looks like this:

<img src="url of image" alt="alternative text" />

The URL provided by the src attribute may be absolute (including the protocol and domain name) or relative to the current document (using a relative pathname). The conventions for relative pathnames are described in detail in Chapter 4.

Figure 12-1 shows an inline image resulting from this markup.

<p>Star light<img src="star.gif" alt="star" /> Star bright.</p>

Figure 12-1. An image placed within a line of text