I have been having a problem with my image displays and at least four queries in the last two weeks have failed to elicit any response from WordPress support. It occurred to me that you readers might be able to help me. At the very least, I’d like to know if this is my problem alone (as I suspect) or a general browser problem.
Please click on this image and tell me if you see a much smaller image on a white background, a larger image on a black background, or something else. Also tell me what browser and operating system you are using.

You see, when I click on the image in Chrome, I see a little thumbnail image, much smaller than this image, on a white background. Using Firefox, I see a larger image on a black background. Until a few weeks ago, clicking on the image would always show me a larger image, the full size stored in my media library. It’s worked that way for years. I count on it working that way so I can show you larger images. Sometimes it’s imperative that the larger image be available so you can read small print or see specific details or just enjoy a beautiful photograph.
At the very least I’d like to know if other people using Chrome see a thumbnail image or a larger image. (Stats say one third of my readers use Chrome.) Your input might not help me fix the problem, but it will give me more information for the WordPress support people if I can ever get a response from them. And of course if you have any suggestions, I’d appreciate those too.
(The picture is linked to the image file and set to full size. The maximum image size in my dashboard media settings is 1500 wide and this particular image is 1280. It displays in the post at about 710.)
Thanks for your help.
UPDATE: Feb 22, 4:10 pm — Found the problem!! It’s very easy to reduce the size of one’s screen view by sliding around on the touchpad on a Mac laptop. Apparently I’d done that at some point without realizing it. I discovered, by accidentally mousing over it, that there is a gray magnifying glass in the right corner of Chrome’s omnibox that shows when you’re at less than 100%. By clicking on it, one can enlarge or reduce the size of the display. At 100%, the icon doesn’t show at all. And at 100%, my flower image shows at the large size I expected. Whew. I am so relieved. Also feeling a bit stupid at the moment, but I’ll get over it. You know, if I live long enough, I might finally get this whole computer thing figured out …
I have both browsers installed on my system PT, though I’ve only used Chrome once or twice. I’ve looked at this post in both of them and get essentially the same results with both: A scaled-to-fit version of the image that I can click on to see full sized. The background, when not obscured by the full sized image, is dark grey in Firefox and white in Chrome.
It occurs to me that my Chrome installation is probably out of date. Could it be that Google “broke” something in the latest version? I know Firefox has a history of having to quickly “update” their updates for just that reason!
I hadn’t thought about an update breaking something. I know that happens. Maybe I can find an answer in a Chrome forum somewhere. Thanks for that suggestion. And I’m glad to hear you’re not seeing the little image I see; I was distressed thinking a lot of readers might be seeing it that way.
Your site changes in appearance frequently for me, and i am not sure if it is my phone’s doing or what. Specific to your request, the crocus image i get is a bit larger on a white screen. I am on Sprint, and know it is not Chrome, but not sure what they call my browser… ignorance on my part. Usually when i click images in your posts, they are significantly larger than this one, though.
This one’s a biggie, comparable to some other big ones I’ve posted. But at least you aren’t seeing it smaller, which is definitely not supposed to happen when you click on an image.
And I apologize for the frequent changes. I indulge myself, playing with different features, etc. Fun for me but maybe not so nice for my readers.
simply magnifique… I did click on the image and it’s still wonderful! 🙂 the color has reminded me of my humble “violettes de Toulouse”…
http://myvirtualplayground.wordpress.com/2014/02/22/fleurs-de-fevrier-mes-dernieres-violettes-et-leur-liqueur-cheers/
* * *
my very best, have a great weekend and friendly greetings, cheers! 🙂 Mélanie
Thanks, Melanie. What I need to know, however is what browser you are using and whether the image got larger or smaller when you clicked on it.
Firefox, large image on black background. OS is Win7.
Thx. I’m becoming increasing convinced that my problem is the Chrome browser. I tried reinstalling it last night, but that didn’t help. Or it’s some complex combination of my Chrome, my Mac, and WP’s coding. 🙁
I installed Chrome just to check. With Chrome on my machine, the picture is large, with a white background, and it’s off to the left. With Firefox, it’s in the middle.
Thank you for taking the time to do that. Yes, that’s what you should see, and what I used to see.
I am running Windows Vista (32 bit) and in both Chrome, which is my default browser, and in IE 9 the graphic looks fine before and or after I click on it. I no longer have Firefox installed.
Thanks for the input. You’re the second Chrome user that says it looks okay (doesn’t get smaller). I’m trying to be reassured by that.
Sorry… one more thing I should have included in my first post. Below is the version of Chrome browser I have installed just for your reference.
Version 33.0.1750.117 m
Ah yes, I forgot to ask for that info. I discovered when I reinstalled it last night that a new version was just released (the one you have). But it didn’t fix my problem.
I see a large image on a black b.g. I use Firefox. I think your problem is Chrome. It’s a weird browser and when I used it, I had weird problems like you’re describing. Because Chrome is meant to be a very light weight browser and tends to have few bells and whistles it might be a default setting on images or something like that. Or you may have a plugin that conflicts with your browser (possibly) that is causing the problem.
That’s my two cents.
Annie
Thx for the input. Yes, I’ve pretty much decided it’s a Chrome issue. So far I’ve had no luck fixing it or finding an answer in forums. Maybe my son can figure it out the next time he’s over here. It bugs me to not see what I’m supposed to see.
I have Safari 7.0.1 (Apple’s Mavericks OS) and the image works fine for me. When I click it, the window rolls over to display jus the image, filling it entirely top to bottom and showing white background on the side. The flowers are beautiful, btw.
Your images come out much better than those in my posts. I know there’s a trick to enlarging them, but wordpress seems to restrict mine. The options they give when I insert them, as from google images, stop at “100%” and the images remain small, even when clicked on. ??
No trick, really. You just upload larger images to your media library. (On your Dashboard, under Settings > Media, make sure your largest size is set large enough to accommodate anything you might want to upload.) When you put the image into your post, in the dialog box set it to “full size.” What shows in your post should then be the largest size your theme will accommodate and will enlarge to the size in your library when people click on it. Or if you want a smaller size in your post set that instead of “full size.” When people click on it, it should still enlarge to whatever size is in your library.
Glad you liked the picture. I thought everyone might enjoy a preview of spring …
Duh. I figured out what I was doing wrong. To use media I was saving the thumbnail to my desktop and then dragging that into the post. I should have been opening the image first. Also, my settings were still on original default sizes of 150, 300 and 1024 and I see that some images are larger than that. I’m still on the left side of the learning curve.
As fast as technology is advancing, I’ve just assumed I’ll always be on the left side of the curve. I can’t learn fast enough to keep up, and being retired really takes you out of the loop. I learned so much more, so much faster, when I was working, doing lots of different things, interacting with colleagues, etc. I’ve actually had nightmares about needing to place and emergency phone call and not being able to figure out how to make a call with my smartphone (it’s one of the things I don’t do with the phone).
Despite studying electronics in college, I learned the vast majority of what I know about computers from all those incredibly smart people I worked with on the job. It’s amazing how fast I fell behind when my health forced me to quit…
Oh, I know, I know. When I was working, I was practically the resident computer expert. I could almost make that machine wash my windows and do my dishes. Now I can only read, with envy, discussions of which publishing software is better and why. None of the current favorites even existed when I retired. (Of course, the entire industry is slowly dying, so I’m not that envious.)
TADA!! Fixed it!! See note added to end of post.
Congratulations on your new-found computer prowess! 😆
Talk about feeling sheepish …
Awww… don’t feel sheepish. We all run into these kinks. I don’t care how expert you are, these days it’s impossible to keep up with everything.
There are so many weeds to get into that sometimes you overlook the simple, obvious stuff.
Please – I didn’t proof my response and it did read as a criticism. Not the case at all! I am, however, less than happy with my phone’s performance…. I do enjoy your site, articles, and posted photos– you spend hours on your blogsite and it shows! Glad you solved/resolved the image size issue 🙂
Fear not, I didn’t take it as criticism at all. It’s a fair observation. I am constantly making changes, large and small, and it’s nice to hear on occasion that someone has noticed. Well, except when those changes turn out not to have been for the better. Then I have to hope no one noticed.
Just in case you weren’t aware (apologies if you were), relative to your update, on a Mac you can depress “command” and either + or – to change the size of the whole page, or of an image filling the page. That’s the feature I use regularly.
Yep, that’s one of the few keyboard commands I remember. I once made the mistake of looking up a list of all the keyboard commands/key combinations on a Mac and ran away screaming. I’ve since calmed down a bit and I think there are fewer than a dozen I use regularly.
Speaking of running away screaming, apparently Apple devices make it very easy to insert special characters into text such as in comments. I’d love to be able to do that (you know I love my smilies), but the Windows “Character Map” pop-up thing is a nightmare to work with!
On the other hand, zooming in and out is a breeze. I just hold the Control key down while using the scroll wheel on my mouse. While the last zoom level doesn’t persist when it comes to images, it does when it comes to the blogs I visit. That comes in quite handy for blogs with an uncomfortably small typeface. 😀
I used to know a lot of those special ALT keyboard characters, back when I was working. All kinds of symbols, diacritics, dingbats, etc. Sad how one forgets those things if not using them every day. Making it worse, my working years were spent with Windows. Moving to a Mac a few years ago (buying son’s Mac was cheaper than a new Windows machine) has left me in a sort of limbo, where the Windows commands no longer apply and I don’t have a job forcing me to learn all the Mac commands.
I think what threw me here was the reduced page size persisting even after I returned to normal size on subsequent pages. Had the smaller page included text instead of a lone image, I’d have realized immediately what the problem was.
Just learned something else the hard way. When I edited my media library (for the first time ever) I found that deleting images from the library makes them disappear from the posts in which they were used. Doesn’t seem right somehow.
That’s why I don’t edit my library. Or do it very, very carefully. I know I have dozens, perhaps hundreds, of images in there that are not in use by any post. I uploaded them, then changed my mind. Or I plugged in a different one later. Etc. Bad housekeeping on my part. Someday I’ll pay for it, probably literally, when I hit my space limit.
Speaking of media limits, I’m 2/3 of the way to mine and I’m wondering what I’ll do when I’m out of space. Considering how long it’s taking to go through the 3GB they gave me for free, the 10GB upgrade will probably last beyond the point where I stop blogging. But paying $20 per year to keep using it seems a bit extreme!
Probably a bargain at $20, considering the time it would take (for me, anyway) to go through an entire library, image by image, and delete those not in use anywhere (posts, headers, backgrounds, widgets, etc.). Recently I’ve been trying to be more vigilant about deleting unused images as I go along, but I’m still not as thorough as I should be.
Speaking of computer intricacies:
1. Mavericks, the latest OS for Mac, now incorporates data sets for character and keyboard data sets. Click on the tiny icon at the top margin and the set opens for insertion of a vast range of characters, emoticons and other symbols like 🏠 , ℞ , ⚽︎ and €. I wish the Emoji came in a larger size. This seems to be the largest: 😰 .
2. Remember our discussion of password vaults? Since moving to Mavericks I’m finding that there’s an option in Safari preferences for autofill of names and passwords that works just fine, and it’s as safe as your basic computer password. Exception: it doesn’t work when the sign-in and password are on different pages, or when the resident page is programmed to block it (which some are). Still, it’s a great convenience.
Okay, I confess I’m going “Huh? What icon? At the top margin of what?” Is the icon something you enabled with a setting in your system preferences? Sounds really handy. I just need to figure out what it’s called and where to find it. Admittedly I do most of my writing in WordPress and thus use its chart of symbols when I need one. But it would be handy to have said icon and chart available for other uses.NVM, I just found it!Re passwords … I’m gaining confidence with 1Password and am trying to remember to use it when I have to log in somewhere. Not yet confident enough to dump all the stuff stored in my browsers, but I’m getting there. I should just go cold turkey. 1Pass doesn’t work either when the sign-in and password are on different pages. My biggest stumbling block is always my Apple log-in. It’s an app, not a website, my son explained, and 1Pass won’t save app log-ins. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve had to go through the “Forgot my password” routine to set a new one and get into my Apple account.
I don’t know how Safari autofill works, but the one in Chrome stores that information in a way that is accessible to anyone who has access to your computer. Firefox does too. It’s very handy; that’s why it’s what I’ve always done. But if the information is stored in your browser(s), anyone with access to your computer has access to it. Far safer to store all that info in a separate password management program like 1Password, and scrub everything that’s stored in your browser(s). I know, I know, I’m still not practicing what I preach, but I’m moving in that direction.
I don’t recall having to activate the character set thing, but it could have been part of the installation I suppose Its icon is a tiny rectangle in the topmost margin of Safari. On my screen it’s between the bluetooth icon and the volume icon. Also, try this: look in the drop down Safari menu for Edit>Special Characters. (It’s the last item at the bottom on mine).
You’re right about the autofill being vulnerable to anyone having access to your computer, but if you’re like me that seems pretty secure. I have a reasonable password for that, and the only other people around it ever are the kids and grandkids. I guess the worst case would be a burglar taking the whole machine away and trying to break it. He isn’t going to spend time in the house trying. But if the computer were stolen, I guess I’d just change all my passwords. Yuk.
So glad you got it sorted out!
Me too. That sort of thing really bugs me until I get it worked out.
I’m glad you got your problem solved. The image shows up full screen on my monitor (using Firefox) but then the image is on my hard drive. I do not mind your use of my photo but would appreciate acknowledgement of the source in your post.
I’m so sorry. I always run credit lines if I can ascertain the source. I ran it through tineye and couldn’t find anything. I’m pleased to tell readers it’s one of your photos from your blog The Road to Here, and there are more lovely photos (including more crocuses) there for those who visit.