I have issues

[jpskewedthrone]

Computer issues. Regarding snerching pics from the internet and using them in my blog posts. I was hoping someone more computer savvy than me could explain what's going wrong.

With my old computer, I'd find the pic I'd want online somewhere, right click on it, save it as a jpg file, upload it to my server, and then refer back to it in my blogs posts with the proper HTML code. Everything worked fine.

With my new computer, when I find the image and right click on it, I no longer get the option to save the pic as a jpg file. To get around that, I've been emailing the pic file to myself, then downloading it as a jpg file. I upload that file to my server, refer to it in my blog posts, and when I view the blog post, I can see the pic just fine. However, numerous people can't it seems. In fact, it seems to have something to do with the browser, since pbray did some testing for me and she could see it when she was logged onto AOL and looking at the blog through there, but not when she was using Explorer.

So, does anyone know what's going on here? I'm assuming that it's something I'm doing to get ahold of the file, since the only options I get when I right click to save it are art files and btmp files. What do I need to do to get the jpg files from the web directly? Any suggestions?

Comments

[hominysnark.livejournal.com]

No, it is not respectful to the image owner--it's called hotlinking, and it costs the image owner bandwidth on his or her server.

Joshua, the best advice I can give you is to stop using Internet Explorer, but failing that, what kerrikins said above should work fine--when you're saving the file as, just type dot whatever file extension you want, and that should do it.

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

I was completely ignorant of the hotlink issue! I do it all the time. Well, not any more, eh?

[jpsorrow.livejournal.com]

I didn't know about the hotlinking either, although I've never done it that way. I've always downloaded it to my own website. It's probably a control thing. *grin*

I'm only "stealing" the cover art of books to help advertise the books. I know that the agreements with the artist for the covers states that authors and publishers can use the cover art for the purposes of publicizing the book, as long as it contains the title and author and such, so I think I'm safe in what I'm "stealing" in terms of copyrights and such.

[hominysnark.livejournal.com]

I discovered it when I was attempting to view a pic on someone else's site and the original owner had replaced with a graphic that read, essentially, "This person is a thief who is stealing bandwidth from me by not knowing squat about the internets." That's actually a pretty polite response, considering some of the other hotlink-replaced graphics I've seen.

And then I had my own hotlinker, whom I tracked down with the help of StatCounter and Babelfish, as it was a Dutch website and I don't speak Dutch. I explained the issue as politely as I could (in Babelfished Dutch, which I'm sure was highly amusing) and they immediately removed the hotlink.

I don't think most people are aware of hotlinking, and most also seem to be willing to knock it off once it's explained, but there are a lot of idjits out there who just don't care.