JPG image renders as code - html

Question

My image thumbnail links to the full size image. Now only the image is showing up as some sort of code. I have been using the same HTML editor for years, all the pages are the same. It is only this group of 5 pages that have thumbnails. Take this link for example:
ÿØÿáExifII*ÿìDucky2ÿáyhttp://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/ ÿíHPhotoshop 3.08BIMZ%G8BIM%üá‰È·Éx/4b4XwëÿîAdobedÀÿÛ
I also discovered that if I get this code an then go up to the history and click on the name of the photo it pops right up as it should have been. I have no idea how to fix this. I have uploaded the photos several times with two file managers, used other photo software aswell. My editor shows that these pages are fine, but IE shows that the pages have no style and all browsers show the linked image problem.
I know this doesn't make much sense to you professionals, but this is my business website and a customer told me about the problem. After 8 hours of trying to fix this I am hoping you could help.

Answer 1

The problem:
This problem occurs when an IMG changes or got touched (by adobe, in your case) AFTER it was uploaded to the server and the name of the new (or modified) IMG remained the same. The image shown does not get refreshed. The old image is still shown, even though the database holds the right image. I have narrowed it down to the fact that the IMAGE IS CACHED in the web browser. If we hit the RELOAD button in Firefox/Explorer/Safari, everything gets refreshed fine and the correct image just appears.
I verified that on your site running the following:
function is_cached(img_url){
var imgEle = document.createElement("img");
imgEle.src = img_url;
return imgEle.complete || (imgEle.width+imgEle.height) > 0;
}
And then I called this function which returns true or false depending on cached or not:
is_cached("photos/back_to_school_pr5_tn.jpg");
And the result came back as:
<- true
Remember: When uploading an image, its filename is not kept in the database. It is renamed as Image.jpg (to simply things out when using it). When replacing the existing image with a new one, the name doesn't change either. Just the content of the image file changes.
Solution one - No code required:
Since you are not in the coding business (as you claim), all you need to do is to rename the IMG after it's been touched by adobe.
Whenever you modify a photo in adobe or you upload a new IMG you should give it a new name since the older version of the IMG IS STILL IN CACHE.
Solution two - Coding required:
If touching the IMG with adobe is a constant thing that you do after you upload the original picture, then the above solution can be an hassle, so you might want to look into ways to force the web browser to NOT cache images from this page.
NOTE: This solution is only good for the future. In your case, the IMG is already cached.
Besides, this will only work if the actual IMG is inside your HTML, but on your site the link takes you to the actual IMG.
Solution three - Coding required:
An important addition to the above solution is that you can never force a browser to do anything. All you can do is make friendly suggestions. It's up to the browser and the user to actually follow those suggestions. A browser is free to ignore this, or a user could override the defaults.
So the best long-term solution will be to save the filename with the database. This way, if the image is changed, the src of the IMG tag will also change.
For example:
<img src="picture.jpg?1222259157.415" alt="">
where "1222259157.415" is the current time on the server. (Note: I used python's time.time() to generate that)