No Writers Were Harmed in the Writing of Our Documentation

re: No Writers Were Harmed in the Writing of Our Documentation

stvmty — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 07:03:20 GMT

Derrick Pallas wrote:

"The cool thing is that when you Base64 decode that, you get

GIF89a\001\000\001\000\200\000\000\377\377\377\000\000\000!\371\004\001\000\000\000\000,\000\000\000\000\001\000\001\000\000\002\002D\001\000;

go ahead and type

data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAICRAEAOw==

into the address bar of a browser near you.. it's just a spacer GIF that is being used as a data:uri; ironically, Internet Explorer DOES NOT support data:uri. I believe that when that browser can't display an image and the image has no alt text, it uses the URL as the alt text."

re: No Writers Were Harmed in the Writing of Our Documentation

Metaf — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 06:41:38 GMT

Your blog posting contains a PNG. IE displayed it as an image instead of a base-64 encoding. WTWTF?

re: No Writers Were Harmed in the Writing of Our Documentation

Thomas — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 11:18:46 GMT

Fixing is one... but what I really like to know is what the base64 for a spacer GIF (1x1 empty GIF-image) is doing in that place. ;-)

Rob says: I have no clue.