About My Pictures Photo Support

  • Article

Obsolete. My Pictures is a simple feature that allows users to more easily save, print, and e-mail images found in web pages, without having to right-click the image. The My Pictures user interface is a small set of common buttons that appear in a hovering toolbar when a user mouses over an image.

Note   As of Windows Internet Explorer 7, the My Pictures Image Toolbar feature is obsolete and no longer available.

  • Background
  • Customization
  • Advanced Topics
  • Related Topics

Background

When the user visits a web site and mouses over an image that meets particular requirements, the My Pictures hovering toolbar will appear after one half second, and will disappear immediately after the user moves the cursor off the image. The hovering toolbar has three to four buttons depending upon the browser client and user operating system. They are Save this image, Print this image, Send this image in an e-mail, and Open My Pictures folder.

The Save this image button opens the Save Picture dialog box and allows you to save the image somewhere on your system.

The Print this image button opens the Print dialog box allowing you to specify the printer and additional options before sending the image to the printer.

The Send this image in an e-mail button opens a new e-mail message with the default e-mail client and includes the picture as an attachment to the message.

The Open My Pictures folder button opens the My Pictures folder within Microsoft Windows Explorer for browsing. The image cannot be saved to the My Pictures folder using this button.

This feature is not intended to be used with every image found on a Web page. This feature is intended for images that adhere to one or more of the following guidelines:

  • Images that are greater than 130 pixels wide by 130 pixels high
  • High resolution images, such as a digital photograph
  • Web galleries of scanned photos and images
  • Other images specifically intended for download by the web page developer

This feature is not intended to be used with the following image types:

  • An image that would be used for a web page design layout or similar function, such as an image map
  • An image or group of images used together to create a pattern
  • A thumbnail linked to a larger image or new web page
  • A banner ad
  • A company or web page logo
  • A background image

The hovering toolbar has a context menu that can be accessed by right-clicking on the hovering toolbar while it is displayed. This menu presents the option to turn off the My Pictures hovering toolbar feature, as well as help for the feature.

Note  This feature will also update the context menu when right-clicking an image with the E-mail Picture and Print Picture options. These two options function as the equivalent button in the hovering toolbar does, and are described previously.

Customization

This feature is able to be turned off in multiple ways. To globally turn this feature off, right-click the mouse on the toolbar when the toolbar is being displayed and click, "Disable image toolbar". Alternatively, go to the Advanced tab of the Internet Options which is located on the Tools menu. Uncheck the "Enable Image Toolbar" check box and click the OK button.

A web developer is able to turn this feature off on a page-by-page basis, using the HTTP-EQUIV and CONTENT attributes of the meta element. Setting http-equiv="imagetoolbar" and content="no" (or false) disables the image toolbar for the entire page.

<head>
  <meta http-equiv="imagetoolbar" content="no">
</head>

A Web developer is able to turn this feature off on an image-by-image basis using the GALLERYIMG attribute of the IMG element. To do this, set the GALLERYIMG attribute to no or false.

<img src="mypicture.jpg" height="200" width="200" galleryimg="no">

If the image toolbar is turned off for the entire page by using the META element, an individual image can still display the toolbar by using the GALLERYIMG attribute of the IMG element..

<html>
<head>
  <meta http-equiv="imagetoolbar" content="no">
</head>

<body>
...
<img src="mypicture.jpg" height="100" width="100" galleryimg="yes">
...
</body>
</html>

Advanced Topics

The image toolbar is customizable by changing or adding keys in the registry. The following is a list of registry entries and what effect they have on the image toolbar, and can be found in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\main key.

Name Type Value Description
Enable_Image_Toolbar REG_SZ yes | no Default value is yes. Setting this value to no will disable the image toolbar for the particular user that is logged into the machine at that time.
Offset REG_DWORD 10 Default value is 10. This tells the image toolbar how many pixels to space itself from the top and left edge of the image. This registry entry is missing by default. The user must add this entry to change the default value.
Image_Filter REG_DWORD 130 Default value is 130. This tells the image toolbar how many pixels wide and high the image must be in order to display the image toolbar. This registry entry is missing by default. The user must add this entry to change the default value.

Note   The registry entries that control the image toolbar are set on a user by user basis. Changing these values will only change the behavior for the user profile in use.

About My Pictures Photo Support was introduced in Microsoft Internet Explorer 6