Tutorial Blog

Sometimes, the photos, images, pictures or graphics do not show or display in a website in Internet Explorer (“IE”) browser or an email in MS Outlook Express. Instead, where the pictures ought to be, there is a Red X or a placeholder.

Several factors could have caused this problem of images not being displayed in IE. In this Help guide, we’ll look at these reasons and the solutions to show images in IE. Some of the possible causes may only be resolved by the webmaster. If you are an owner of a Blog or a webmaster, these tips might be useful to note when you are uploading images onto your Blog or webpage.

1. Image type not supported by IE

When you see a red X or placeholder, right-click on it to view the “Properties” of the image. Look at the image “Type” and “Address (URL”). IE supports images with .art, .avi, .bmp, .emf, .gif, .jpeg, .jpg, .mov, .mpeg, .mpg, .png, .wmf, and .xbm extensions. As a webmaster, if you have to put images on your website, try to stick to the usual image formats or have alternative images in these formats.

2. “Show Pictures” option in IE not selected

If you are using IE 7, under Tools -> Internet Options -> Advanced tab, there is an option called “Show pictures” under the “Multimedia” heading. Select this option and press OK to save the change. In other IE versions, the option may fall under a different heading.

Should you wish to use an image as a background to your Header (just like the one you see above or this colorful one), get an appropriate image and crop it to size, about 660×150 pixels. A photo editing software like Google’s Photo Editing Software Picasa or Photoshop would do the trick.

After that, upload the image to a free server. You can read about using free hosts like Google Page Creator and Google Groups. We also have a rather comprehensive list of free Image Hosts and File Hosting Services in our article on Manage Blogger Image Storage Space. Check out those sites and choose one that is fast, reliable and enables hotlinking to the uploaded files. Take note of the picture URL.

Next, go back to “Edit HTML” under Template tab. Scroll to where these lines appear:

#header-wrapper {
width:660px;
margin:0 auto 10px;
border:1px solid $bordercolor;