Why images not shown in stackoverflow.com and "i.stack.imgur.com" errors - image

I used stackoverflow a lot. But many times when I read questions and try to figure out what people done with changes, unfortunately I cannot see images. Instead only thumbnail is shown.
For example: In this question
A question asked with image that - I think- shows what is wrong. But cannot see the preview or image.
Even if you can check the accepted answer, guy said "Screen shots of my solution" but images still not showing.
This is what shown
So funny that even image I have uploaded for this question is not shown! It says "Cannot reach to i.stack.imgur.com"

Probably your access to i.stack.imgur.com is blocked, by your company or internet provider, as the content can be unpredictable like adult content.

I have this exact same problem, it's so frustrating isn't it!?!
The only solution I have found is I use Epic Privacy Browser which has an in-built proxy. I turn that on and images from i.stack.imgur.com will actually load (whether it's the website itself or a SO post. It's not an ideal solution having to open in another browser, but it's the only solution I have found so far. Weird as my ISP isn't blocking any other site.

Related

Facebook not scraping correct specific data

I've had this problem in the past where FB scrapes the wrong data, but changing the thumbnail image name has always fixed the problem. However, today I'm unable to get the same result. The error is this:
Debugger screenshot
I've cleared my browser cache, renamed the image, inserted code at the top of the blog post with the image link, and scraped a dozen times in the debugger. My company uses Placester for our web platform (if that means anything to anyone), so I don't have quite as much freedom as with other sites. Can anyone help me with this, but put it in layman's terms?

why hosting images in google sites from google drive has stopped working?

yesterday I created a simple "quote of the day" script for my google site. The script reads the quote from a google sheet. I also wanted each quote to go
with a companion image, which I host in my google drive (the image Ids also are stored in the sheet).
I followed the instructions explained here, and everything seemed to work fine. The permissions for the images was "everyone with the link within my institution" (this is supposed to work in a website on the google apps for education).
It was a success, because the images did display correctly.
Today I opened that page again, and the images have disappeared.
I know that image hosting was discontinued in 2016, but I think it was a different way of hosting (no permalink). Indeed, as I mention, yesterday I could see the images in the website.
Also, when I write the "permalink" in chrome address bar I get "403. That’s an error. We're sorry, but you do not have access to this page. That’s all we know." This happens despite I'm the owner of the file, and I'm logged in the correct google account. Also, it happens irrespective of the browser and/or machine I use (I tried with my phone too).
I also tried what explained here, although I'm not sure I understand that completely. There should be a problem though, because instead of the image I get the alt text (NA).
Is the "permalink" method still supposed to work?
Could this be a problem of excessive traffic? I haven't even published the page yet, I only did some testing...
What is the best way of displaying images from google drive into google sites, without resorting to third party services?
Thanks a lot
Francesco
You already answered your question. Hosting on Google Drive has been stopped.
However, you can try the workaround from this SO post where you'll use the URL:
https://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id={IMAGE_FILE_ID}
It worked fine when use with the <img src="{IMAGE_URL}"> HTML tag. That's the closest thing to what you're trying to do.
You can also try Firebase Storage where you host your images on the cloud and display them on your web page.
This is at least a partial answer to the problem I tried to explain, which I'm summarizing below:
I was hosting images for a page in my google site on my google drive, via the syntax
https://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id={IMAGE_FILE_ID}
the sharing settings of the individual images was "anyone with the link within [my institution]";
this worked for one single day and then stopped working: the images stopped showing, and I could not figure out why. All this happenened a few days ago (oct 21-22 2017), and hence cannot possibly have to do with google discontinuing a previous service, which happened in 2016;
this happened despite I was logged into the account in my institution (and hence the owner of the images).
I found out that the problem appears to be in the sharing settings. Apparently, the images only display if their sharing settings are "public on the web" or "anyone with the link". Instead "anyone with the link within [my institution]", or more restrictive settings won't work. The first settings were mentioned in the webpage I linked, but I thought it would also work with "anyone with the link within [my institution]" (and, for one day, it did).
I also tried by setting the permissions of the parent folder. In that case only "public on the web" would work. With anything more restrictive than that the images won't display.
Despite I carefully double checked all this, I think this permissions thing seems to be a bit erratic though.
As I mention, on the first day (oct 21) the images would display even with "anyone with the link within [my institution]. I could swear on my life that, before the systematic tests I just finished carrying out, all was working with the folder settings to "anyone with the link [within my institution]". Now that setting won't work.
I know, I said "it appears" a bunch of times. This is because all of this is just from my point of view, so far. I still have to share the link of the page I'm preparing. As soon as I can I'm going to ask a colleague to take a look at it.
What I anyway want is that the page displaying the images is visibile only to people within my institution, for the moment being.
However, now I'm at least able to see the images hosted in drive, in my website.

How to access unrelated browser window?

So I know this might sound crazy, as it is technically a security concern which I understand. So I'm just trying to find out if there's any ideas on how to handle something like this.
Anyways, long story short, I was told to look into figuring out a possible way to scrape information from another browser window/tab. I have been asked to do this because, and I know this sounds crazy too, but the users of our website are incompetent enough to not be able to copy/paste and or type correctly something from a different website. I know it's tough for some to have to have several things in their workflow, but this is basically what they do: Go to their first website (after logging in) and bring up a record with information on it...including an identification number. Then, the user should take that number and go to the second website, our website (after logging in), and type it that number in a textbox (and eventually do some other stuff). But we have found that getting that identification number from the first website to ours is difficult for them. Some copy/paste correctly, some copy/paste too much text from the page, some write it down on paper then type it in our website, and some just seem to have trouble visually "copying" the number from site to site.
What I was thinking was that this could happen: the user would have already brought up the record on the first site, then they would come to ours. They could click a button, and that would run whatever I/we here come up with, that goes and finds the other browser window, finds the specific text needed, and puts it in our textbox. Sounds simple, right? HA.
The first website is not owned or managed by us in any way, otherwise this might be a little easier.
A little bit of background information: unfortunately, I'm technically targeting IE >= 10 through 9, so if there's a solution just for this (why I tagged vbscript), then that's great. If there's a broader solution (like with an applet or browser extensions... http://crossrider.com/ ), then that's even better, but not important. If it helps, we already have a hidden applet on the page that accesses the OS (yes, it has the mayscript attribute on the element so it is able to), so I thought that could be something to incorporate with. Also, the way I expect to know which window/tab to access is by URL and/or document title - either will be very specific.
We cannot install stuff on the users' computers, at least something outside of the browser (like extensions). I'm not sure how browser extensions work, so I'm wondering if they'd need to be "installed".
I know of HTML5's postMessage, but it only has partial support in IE (and none in IE <= 7)...and the partial support refers to not including exactly what I might need. It also requires that the other website be listening (which we don't have control over, but technically might be possible to include). So it doesn't count :)
The things I found with Java are to possibly find the list of processes currently running, but I don't know how to access/control one. Especially how to access the browser's Document.
And vbscript...I just don't know. I don't know if it's just me, but I can't seem to find good documentation on it, so I'm not sure what can be done with it.
Even if I could get control of the other browser window, I don't know how I would get information from it (like the DOM).
I'm not looking for code, just ideas...I'll do the research. And although it may sound impossible, don't just brush it off because Javascript can't do it - I haven't.
UPDATE:
I ended up developing a browser extension with http://www.crossrider.com/ which wasn't ideal, but works.
You could use a bookmarklet for this ... the user would have to drag the bookmarklet into their bookmarks bar on their browser, but if doing that wasn't beyond your user's abilities/the technical restrictions you've mentioned, then you'd definitely be able to send the information you need back to your site that way.
You'd just need to give your users instructions to:
i) drag the bookmarklet into their bookmarks bar on their browser
ii) go to the website in question and click the bookmarklet
you could code the bookmarklet so that it would grab the info you need, and redirect the browser to your website. All done in one click.
I think you may be thinking about it in the wrong way when you talk about posting from one 'window' to another. You could write the bookmarklet so that it would do a http post of whatever information you wanted into your site from the other site, and it could also redirect the window that they were looking at when they clicked it (the other site) to your site. Or if, for some reason, you didn't want to redirect the the window that they had the 'other' site in to your site, then you could add a listener to your site so that once the bookmarklet had posted the info you require then the window with your displaying could automatically update. The first option would make more sense and be easier though.
Maybe to open the other site from button/link resided in your site using window.open() method?

Why do my images break in Visual Studio when they have the word "order" in them?

I've been banging my head trying to find the cause of why my images weren't loading, heres my basic work flow.
create image in Photoshop CS5
export for web/device (PNG/GIF/JPG)
save to images folder
drag the images into visual studio with the
rest of them
Now I've been using this method for a very long time, and after returning from holidays I couldn't figure out why this wasn't working any more. When the page loads it shows the missing image icon. Firebug couldn't locate the image, CSS was not reading it neither would an <img> tag.
A LONG time later it turns out I found the root cause, my image was named "order_header_bg.png" if I dropped the word "order" from the title it appeared!
I can't figure out why its doing it, I can't find any docs on image naming conventions, so the only work around is not to include the word. Its not a problem but I'm more curious as to why is doesn't behave as expected. Is this unique to my environment?
Do you have any ad-blocking software installed on your machine? They can be rather aggressive about what they block.
I had a client who had Norton Ad Blocker installed and was reporting that she could not see the navigation on her site. Her particular problem was that she was running an advertising agency, and thus all of her links were deemed as spam.
To answer my own question: Its goosed.

How can a browser extension alter the image

I have an April fools prank in mind and I will probably need some time to figure it out, so that's why I'm early:
I want to install an extension in the browser (needs to target botch FF and IE, so a cross browser implementation would be best) of my friend so that if he hits the news page he is visiting every morning, a fake image will make him think that he has been selected. The problem is, that I cannot just swap the images. I have to use the actual image from that website and put his head on the body of someone else.
I do have some graphics guys that can do that sort of stuff. My problem over here is to hook into the rendering process and do my own alterations to the image before it gets rendered. That is, taking the image, doing stuff to it and then passing in the modified image to the browser so that it is being redered instead of the original one.
Is that possible using extensions? If it may be only possible with eihter FF or IE, I might get him to use the browser of choice but I'd highly appreciate your suggestions, code snippets and starting points for research. Are there browser extensions that can do similar stuff?
Cheers everyone. There is a lot of reputation in that game so I don't care if it takes weeks or even months to complete the job.
Thank you guys, looking forward to suggestions!
Max
I think your intentions are harmless, but I must warn you: not all people may find your prank funny. But if you are sure that your friend will enjoy such a prank, it's really easy to set up.
You can use BFilter with site-specific filter to replace the image URL (it is very easy, just look at its examples and documentation). So when the user tries to open the web-page he will see your image instead of original picture. BFilter can be used as transparent proxy. I do not know how to setup transparent proxy in Windows, so you have to figure this part yourself. Alternatively, you can configure all installed browsers to use your filtering proxy.
You can use any other filtering proxy instead of BFilter.

Resources