I am trying to integrate a rather large webcam image into my homepage,
but for some reasons the LOWSRC image is not displayed before the SRC
image starts to load.

What's wrong with my HTML? How do I fix it?

<img lowsrc="http://www.matthias.net/images/webcam.jpg"
src="http://mcdonaldcastlehotel.remotemanager.co.uk/image/-/-/tmp/?cam=d6fd77173d7ffe18750adf8d9a5e7eab&b=no&f=yes&c=yes&q=50&_nocache=116b83a70f42813a842d67874ec26046"
alt="Windsor Webcam" width="200" height="163">


PS: I can only control files/HTML on www.matthias.net, so please do not
suggest to put the LOWSRC image on the webcam server.

Hello mzeitler-ga,

Thank-you for your question.

There is nothing wrong with the code that you have written except that
it is using an attribute that is no longer supported by modern
browsers (and was never fully supported in the first place).  lowsrc
is not in the HTML 4.01 specification that is used with modern
browsers (that is anything later than Netscape 4 and IE5).

lowsrc used to be compatible with Netscape Navigator but I cannot find
evidence of it being supported in other browsers.

"lowsrc - In the Netscape implementation, this attribute contains the
URL of an image to be initially loaded. Typically, the lowsrc image is
a low-resolution or black-and-white image that provides a quick
preview of the image to follow. Once the primary image is loaded, it
replaces the lowsrc image."
http://www.htmlref.com/reference/appa/tag_img.htm

Therefore if you were to use the tag modern browsers will just ignore
it, the only people who will see the low resolution picture will be
people using very old versions of Netscape Navigator.

To see what attributes you can use with img in the HTML 4.01
specification (which all modern browsers are compatible with) take a
look at this page:
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/objects.html#h-13.2

I hope this answers your question but if you require any further
clarification please do not hesitate to ask.


Further reading:
http://gsgwebs.com/help/browser_compatibility.html

Thanks