ptg16476052Troubleshooting 63723
used relative pathnames, you shouldn’t have this problem. If you’ve used full pathnames
or file URLs, the references to your images may have been broken when you moved the
files to the server. (I warned you.)
In some browsers, you get a pop-up menu when you select an image with the right mouse
button. (Hold down the Option key while you click on a Macintosh mouse.) Choose the
View This Image menu item to try to load the image directly. This will give you the URL
of the image where the browser thinks it’s supposed to be (which might not be where you
think it’s supposed to be). You can often track down strange relative pathname problems
this way.
Inspecting the image with the Google Chrome developer tools is another way to find the
problem. Open web developer tools on the page, and scroll down to the broken image.
You will then see the URL the site is using and even change it temporarily to see if you
can fix the problem.
If you’re using Internet Explorer for Windows, you can also select the Properties option
from the menu that appears when you right-click an image to see its address. You can
check the address that appears in the Properties dialog box to see whether it points to the
appropriate location.
If all the references look good and the images work just fine on your local system, the
only other place a problem could have occurred is in transferring the files from one sys-
tem to another. Try reuploading the image. And if that doesn’t work, delete the image
from your web hosting service first, waiting a few minutes, and then reuploading. By
waiting a few minutes, you give the web server a chance to update the cache and possibly
fix the problem. If none of these things work, you’ll need to talk to your webmaster or
web hosting support.
My Links Don’t Work
If your HTML and image files are working just fine but your links don’t work, you most
likely used pathnames for those links that applied only to your local system. For example,
you might have used absolute pathnames or file URLs to refer to the files to which
you’re linking. As mentioned for images, if you used relative pathnames and avoided file
URLs, you shouldn’t have a problem. The most common mistake new designers make
is in using file system paths in their links. If you see a link that starts out file:// or has
D:/// (or any other drive name), those links aren’t going to work when your page is on
the web host. These will work fine while they are on your local computer, which is how
they creep into the process. Go back and switch them to relative paths and reupload the
page.