Post History

Mobile browser cannot open older Codidact images

## Difference between older images and recent images
Following a link to the url of an image uploaded to Codidact redirects to an AWS link for recently uploaded images. For older images, following the link instead starts a file download. On desktop this downloaded file opens as an image, but on mobile the downloaded file is not recognised as an image due to an appended `.bin` in the filename, and will not open.

The example image links are taken from Meta posts. For convenience I have edited both posts so that in each case the image is a link to the standalone image. This means you can click the image on desktop or tap the image on mobile and it will open the standalone image.

*Note that clicking or tapping an image in most Codidact posts will have no effect. In those cases you can get a link by right clicking/long pressing and selecting "Copy Image Link". Exact wording may vary between browsers.*

### Recent Meta post
- [Automatically added redundant markdown when editing tags]

### Older Meta post
- [Move keyboard focus into the search term box when search is clicked]

## Redirect with recent images
Clicking/tapping the image or pasting the URL of the image into a new browser tab (desktop or mobile) results in being redirected to a new URL, which displays the image in the browser.

### Original URL

```text
https://meta.codidact.com/uploads/3sifm64vlhqhz84vk97lkbu6kl8a
```

### Redirected URL

```text
https://s3.amazonaws.com/storage.codidact.com/3sifm64vlhqhz84vk97lkbu6kl8a
```
 
## Download with older images
Clicking/tapping the image or pasting the URL of the image into a new browser tab (desktop or mobile) results in a file being downloaded.

### URL
```text
https://meta.codidact.com/uploads/gl22tann626tcy50n0mq340osonb
```

### Filename on desktop
```text
gl22tann626tcy50n0mq340osonb
```

### Filename on mobile
```text
gl22tann626tcy50n0mq340osonb.bin
```

Note the `.bin` extension that has been added on mobile. My mobile gives an error message saying it has no app to open `.bin` files. Renaming the file to remove to `.bin` still results in my mobile being unable to display the image.

Renaming the file to have an extension of either `.png` or `.jpg` (at least one of which must be incorrect) results in my mobile displaying the image correctly. The fact that it can display the image correctly even with an incorrect image file extension suggests that it is getting the image type (PNG or JPEG) from the file content, rather than from the filename extension. It just seems to struggle when there is no extension or a `.bin` extension.


[Automatically added redundant markdown when editing tags]: https://meta.codidact.com/posts/288646

[Move keyboard focus into the search term box when search is clicked]: https://meta.codidact.com/posts/287030