ARCHIVED: On a web page, what do the icons that appear in the place of images mean?

When a graphical web browser can't display an image on a web page, it will substitute an icon in place of the image. Clicking this icon will often allow you to see the image if the problem is temporary. If not, the icon may indicate why the browser wasn't able to display the image correctly:

• An icon with a circle, a square, and a triangle typically indicates that for some reason your browser has not yet opened the image. These icons will appear if you interrupt the browser before it has completely loaded a page.
  
  
• A torn icon, an icon with a question mark, or a red "X" usually means that your browser cannot find or access the image, or that the image is not of the proper type.

If the problematic image is on your own web page, make sure you have set the permissions on the image file correctly. Also, be sure that the extension matches the file type; in other words, if the image is a GIF file, the name of the file must end with .gif. Also, check whether you have used a relative URL instead of an absolute URL; see What is the difference between an absolute and a relative URL? Finally, make sure the URL is correct.

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