Hide an image in html

February 7, 2008 8:55 PM

Hide an image in html... a neat CSS trick. Highlight the block of text at the bottom of the page as if you were going to cut & paste it.

The image is from Shepard Fairey and the text is from Ted Kennedy's endorsement speech of Obama, Jan. 28, 2008.

(Apologies for the TinyUrl, but it's the only way I could pass all of the speech's text. The direct and true link to this app is http://metaatem.net/highlite/.)

posted by Dave Faris (32 comments total)

From MetaFilter's own slacktoid.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 8:58 PM on February 7, 2008

Wow. I struggle to imagine the uses for this, but it's neat.
posted by dammitjim at 9:00 PM on February 7, 2008

Thanks for this! I'm going to send stealth goatses to everyone I know, and even more people I don't.
posted by nowonmai at 9:01 PM on February 7, 2008 [1 favorite]

That's surprisingly cool.
posted by middleclasstool at 9:04 PM on February 7, 2008

The IMG tag returns!
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:05 PM on February 7, 2008 [10 favorites]

Very cool when I switched to firefox. The fat lady sings, cause it ain't working in Opera.
posted by BrotherCaine at 9:08 PM on February 7, 2008

That is damn freaking cool.
posted by rtha at 9:09 PM on February 7, 2008

Hrm. Does it only work in Firefox? Because I just tried loading it in IE7, and apparenlty no dice there, either. The app also seems to have a little trouble with apostrophes, converting them to gobbledygoop.
posted by Dave Faris at 9:15 PM on February 7, 2008

Firefox and Safari only, apparently.
posted by tepidmonkey at 9:23 PM on February 7, 2008

This won't work in IE or Opera because they don't support CSS3. Here's a little more on the CSS that's being used. CSS3 is already being implemented slowly in non-proprietary and proprietary ways in Firefox and Safari. CSS3 support is coming for Opera eventually. IE7 still doesn't fully support CSS2.1, but this isn't the thread for browser bashing. Of course, if you wonder what CSS is, this helps.
posted by josephtate at 9:29 PM on February 7, 2008

In related news, obamafilter.com is available! sheesh.
posted by cdmwebs at 9:33 PM on February 7, 2008 [1 favorite]

stealth goatses

You're naughty.

I was thinking of sending more silly things like the guy running from the hippo but one needs a simple image, that can handle becoming more abstract with big pixels, like this.
posted by nickyskye at 9:34 PM on February 7, 2008 [1 favorite]

Ok, cdmwebs... just for you.
posted by Dave Faris at 9:47 PM on February 7, 2008

Ok, cdmwebs... just for you.

Much better. I guess.
posted by cdmwebs at 10:32 PM on February 7, 2008

Wow. I struggle to imagine the uses for this, but it's neat.

Psht, who cares about usability? It's cool, and that's all the usability you need.
posted by spiderskull at 11:27 PM on February 7, 2008

A bit on the clunky side, but neat none the same.

Time to get all Illuminati and sh*T:

Dig it:
Excerpt from Bushes state of the union address.

(What's the character field limitation. 256?)
posted by Skygazer at 11:28 PM on February 7, 2008

/obvious
posted by Skygazer at 11:34 PM on February 7, 2008

here's a way to make this work in IE and Opera.
posted by davejay at 12:27 AM on February 8, 2008 [3 favorites]

Because you know you wanted to.
posted by Pinback at 12:29 AM on February 8, 2008

(Damn! MeFi chops off the end of the URL between live preview & post. Oh well...)
posted by Pinback at 12:32 AM on February 8, 2008

Since nobody has yet mentioned Dan Slater's long-defunct page about putting a Perkin Elmer 4572mm f/11 missile tracking lens on a Nikon D1, I hereby do so.
posted by dansdata at 1:16 AM on February 8, 2008

D'oh. There is of course a reason why nobody mentioned it on THIS page.
posted by dansdata at 1:17 AM on February 8, 2008

Off on a bit of a tangent: some nifty js image zoomery code from Cabel. (down the bottom for the visual effect)
posted by peacay at 1:40 AM on February 8, 2008

Steganography in reverse, kinda sorta almost.
posted by pax digita at 3:11 AM on February 8, 2008

Right now, you're all looking at a picture of me naked.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:05 AM on February 8, 2008

Nice tits.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:08 AM on February 8, 2008

"Right now, you're all looking at a picture of me naked."

Not just right now, my friend. Not just right now.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 6:50 AM on February 8, 2008 [5 favorites]

I feel like I'm missing something, cause I couldn't see any image.
posted by agregoli at 7:02 AM on February 8, 2008

I got nothing.
posted by Pollomacho at 8:04 AM on February 8, 2008

Ok, I'll admit that I want to use this for the reports that I have to send to my corporate office.

"Hey, quin just sent up the latest personnel update, copy the text and paste it into this word document"

"Uh, sir?"

"My God! Why is there a giant penis on your screen? This is a place of business! You are a disgrace; now get out!"

<evil laugh> Bwahahaha </evil laugh>
posted by quin at 8:53 AM on February 8, 2008

Thanks everyone. I agree it's lacking a bit of... purpose, but it was fun to make anyway.

Over in projects, Alvy Ampersand asked if posting it here would screw my bandwidth cost. So far hosting this has cost me $22.50, I know that because I used EC2 for the first time launching something. If this were on a shared host, the 15gigs in and 14gigs out would have probably cost a lot more. I'm going to move it to my normal host when traffic dies down just a bit more (it's already down a lot from the first day).

If anyone's interested in graphs from google analytics or more about EC2 in this context, just let me know, I'd be happy to post.
posted by slactoid at 4:54 AM on February 10, 2008

I vote yes, I'd be interested to see your stats/experiences using it. I don't know very much about it other than the basic concept.
posted by middleclasstool at 1:55 PM on February 10, 2008